COMMENTARY:  By Eugene Doyle

Three more schools and a major hospital have been bombed in Iran and more in Lebanon by the US-Israeli military, all within the first week of launching their latest war.

This is a pattern, not “collateral damage”. Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations Amir-Saeid Iravani said on March 7 that the US and Israel “recognise no red line in committing their crimes” against his country.

Densely populated parts of Tehran are being pounded by wave after wave of US and Israeli bombs.  Shahid Hamedani School in Tehran was struck on March 6, the day of the funerals of schoolgirls (6-12 year-olds) killed in Minab, Iran.

• READ MORE: Nearly 2000 people in Israel hospitalised since Iran war broke out: Ministry
• Thousands of protesters in London demand end to US, Israeli war on Iran
• 165 massacred schoolgirls in Iran – and the silence that exposes the West’s moral selectivity
• China’s Wang Yi says Iran war should never have happened — calls for immediate  ceasefire
• Suffering in Gaza and occupied West Bank remains acute as the world focuses on the US-Israeli war on Iran
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

UN officials have confirmed that the Minab attack killed 160 children and five staff.

The Palestinians, despite the genocide inflicted on them by Israel and the West, have never become used to the daily killing of children: “The smallest coffins are always the heaviest,” Palestinians say.

Israel has killed many times more women, children and babies than they have Palestinian resistance fighters. There is even a name for this depravity — the Dahiya Doctrine.

Israel’s Dahiya Doctrine and the law of proportionality
International media are reporting that Dahiya, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, is suffering another brutal aerial bombardment from the Israelis.

Dahiya — al-Dahiya al-Janubiya — is home to 700,000 civilians living in high-density housing. The suburb lends its name to Israel’s policy of using massive, disproportionate force against civilians and infrastructure to weaken an enemy’s resolve.

It is, of course, a war crime to do so.

In the 2006 Lebanon War, Israel attacked Dahiya, a popular stronghold of the Hezbollah movement. The massive bombing campaign wasn’t to achieve a military objective; the target was civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Hundreds of children were among the dead.

I have a fabric reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica on my office wall. It has been coloured red, green black and white – the colours of the Palestinian flag — to draw the important parallel.

The governments of New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Canada and all the others, with rare noble exceptions like Spain, support this depraved criminality. We share values with the Israelis and the Americans, our leaders tell us.

The Principle of Proportionality is critical to protect children
The Americans and Israelis have a bloodlust and openly brag about their destructive abilities. Operation Epic Fury screams to the world: “war crimes”.

What should constrain US-Israeli violence is international law and the principle that there are limits to what is acceptable in “incidental” harm caused to civilians.

Proportionality is one of the foundational concepts in international law, along with other important injunctions like the prohibition of force against sovereign states. Under the Geneva Convention, before undertaking military action states are obligated to consider: Distinction (separating civilians from combatants), Proportionality, Precaution (taking care to minimise civilian harm), Military Necessity (i.e. don’t launch wars of aggression), and Humanity — prohibiting unnecessary suffering.

This is the exact opposite of the Dahiya Doctrine and the American Way of War — from Korea to Iraq by way of Vietnam. Over six million civilians were killed by the US in just those three conflicts alone.

Article 51 of the Geneva Convention
The principle of proportionality is codified in Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions, and affirmed as binding customary international law applicable to all parties in all conflicts.  This is further affirmed by the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Rule 14 which states:

“Launching an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, is prohibited.”

The West has torn up its copies of international law but we need to keep its spirit alive. New Zealand, Australia and most of the “civilised world” are signatories to various treaties that require them to enforce humanitarian law upon belligerents. Instead, our countries work day and night to support Israel and the US in their evil work. Evil is the appropriate word here.

I will give the last word to the Israeli commander who led the 2006 terror bombing of Dahiya, General Gadi Eisenkot, chief of Northern Command:

“What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. We will apply disproportionate force on it (villages) and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. This is a plan. And it has been approved.”

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser based in Wellington, publisher of Solidarity and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam war. This article was first published by Solidarity.

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.

Michael Leunig — who died in the early hours of Thursday December 19, surrounded by “his children, loved ones, and sunflowers” — was the closest thing Australian cartooning had to a prophet. By turns over his long career, he was a poet, a prophet and a provocateur.

The challenge comes in attempting to understand Leunig’s significance: for Australian cartooning; for readers of The Age and other newspapers past; and for the nation’s idea of itself.

On this day, do you remember the gently philosophical Leunig, or the savagely satirical one? Do you remember a cartoon that you thought absolutely nailed the problems of the world, or one you thought was terribly wrong-headed?

• READ MORE: ‘The pen has run dry’: Acclaimed cartoonist Michael Leunig dies
• Gallery: Michael Leunig’s life in cartoons

Leunig’s greatness lay in how intensely he made his audiences think and feel.

There is no one straightforward story to tell here. With six decades of cartooning at least weekly in newspapers and 25 book-length collections of his work, how could there be?

The light and the dark
One thread is an abiding fondness for the whimsical Leunig. Mr Curly and Vasco Pyjama live on in the imaginations of so many readers.

Particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, Leunig’s work seemed to hold a moral and ethical mirror up to Australian society — sometimes gently, but not without controversy, such as his 1995 “Thoughts of a baby lying in a childcare centre”.

Another thread is the dark satirist.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he broke onto the scene as a wild man in Oz, the Sunday Observer and the Nation Review who deplored Vietnam and only escaped the draft owing to deafness in one ear.

Then he apparently mellowed to become the guru of The Age, still with a capacity to launch the occasional satirical thunderbolt. Decidedly countercultural, together with Patrick Cook and Peter Nicholson, Leunig brought what historian Tony Moore has called “existential and non-materialist themes to the Australian black-and-white tradition”.

By 1999, he was declared a “national living treasure” by the National Trust, and was being lauded by universities for his unique contributions to the national culture.

But to tell the story of Leunig’s significance from the mid 90s on is to go beyond the dreamer and the duck. In later decades you could see a clear distinction between some cartoons that continued to console in a bewildering world, and others that sparked controversy.

Politics and controversy
Leunig saw 9/11 and the ensuing “War on Terror” as the great turning point in his career. He fearlessly returned to the themes of the Vietnam years, only to receive caution, rebuke and rejection from editors and readers.

He stopped drawing Mr Curly and Vasco Pyjama. The world was no longer safe for the likes of them.

Then there was a cartoon refused by The Age in 2002, deemed by editor Michael Gawenda to be inappropriate: in the first frame, a Jew is confronted by the gates of the death camp: “Work Brings Freedom [Arbeit Macht Frei]”; in the second frame an Israeli viewing a similar slogan “War Brings Peace”.

Rejected, it was never meant to see the light of day, but ABC’s Media Watch and Crikey outed it because of the constraint its spiking represented to fair media comment on the Middle East.

That the cartoon was later entered, without Leunig’s knowledge, in the infamous Iranian “Holocaust Cartoon” competition of 2006, has only added to its infamy and presaged the internet’s era of the uncontrollable circulation of images.

A decade later, from 2012, he reworked Martin Niemöller’s poetic statement of guilt over the Holocaust. The result was outrage, but also acute division within the Australian Jewish community.

Dvir Abramovich (chairperson of the Anti-Defamation Commission) made a distinction between something challenging, and something racist, believing it was the latter.

Harold Zwier (of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society) welcomed the chance for his community to think critically about Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank.

From 2019 — a mother, distracted, looking at her phone rather than her baby. Cries of “misogyny”, including from Leunig’s very talented cartoonist sister, Mary.

Then from 2021 — a covid-19 vaccination needle atop an armoured tank, rolling towards a helpless citizen.

Leunig’s enforced retirement (it is still debated whether he walked or was pushed) was long and drawn-out. He filed his last cartoon for The Age this August. By then, he had alienated more than a few of his colleagues in the press and the cartooning profession.

Support of the downtrodden
Do we speak ill of the dead? We hope not. Instead, we hope we are paying respect to a great and often angry artist who wanted always to challenge the consumer society with its dark cultural and geopolitical secrets.

Leunig’s response was a single line of argument: he was “Just a cartoonist with a moral duty to speak”.

You don’t have to agree with every provocation, but his purpose is always to take up the cause of the weak, and deploy all the weaponry at his disposal to support the downtrodden in their fight.

“The role of the cartoonist is not to be balanced”, said Leunig, but rather to “give balance”.

For Leunig, the weak were the Palestinian civilians, the babies of the post-iPhone generation, and those forced to be vaccinated by a powerful state; just as they were the Vietnamese civilians, the children forced to serve their rulers through state-sanctioned violence, the citizens whose democracy was undercut by stooges of the establishment.

That deserves to be his legacy, regardless of whether you agree or not about his stance.

The coming year will give a great many people pause to reflect on the life and work of Leunig. Indeed, he has provided us with a monthly schedule for doing just that: Leunig may be gone, but 2025 is already provided for, via his last calendar.

Dr Richard Scully, professor in modern history, University of New England; Dr Robert Phiddian, professor of English, Flinders University, and Dr Stephanie Brookes, senior lecturer, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The incoming Trump administration will bring a dangerous brew of Christian nationalism and anti-Palestinian racism

Things can always get worse. Much worse.

The Biden/Harris administration has bank-rolled and funded Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza, the sight of the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world.

• READ MORE: Just who is profiting from Israel’s wars? — Antony Loewenstein

Israeli soldiers wilfully post their crimes online for all the globe to see. Palestinian journalists are being deliberately targeted by Israel in an unprecedented way.

Every day brings new horrors in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond. And that’s not ignoring the catastrophes in Syria, Sudan and Myanmar.

But we can’t despair or disengage. It can be hard with an incoming Trump White House stuffed with radicals, evangelicals and bigots but now is not the time to do so.

We must keep on reporting, investigating, sharing, talking and raising public awareness of the real threats that surround us every day (from the climate crisis to nuclear war) and finding ways to solve them.

Always find hope.

New global project
Here’s some breaking news. I’ve said nothing about this publicly. Until now.

I’ve spent much of the year working on a documentary film series inspired by my best-selling book, The Palestine Laboratory. I’ve travelled to seven countries over many months, filming under the radar due to the sensitivity of the material.

I can’t say much more at this stage except that it’s nearly completed and will be released soon on a major global broadcaster.

The photo at the top of the page is me in a clip from the series in an undisclosed location (after I’d completed a voice-over recording session.)

Stay tuned for more. This work will be ground-breaking.

My recent work has largely focused on the worsening disaster in the Middle East and I’ve spoken to media outlets including CNN, Al Jazeera English, Sky News and others.

You can see these on my website and YouTube channel.

I’m an independent journalist without any institutional backing. If you’re able to support me financially, by donating money to continue this work, I’d hugely appreciate it.

You can find donating options in the menu bar at the top of my website and via Substack.

It prompted an outbreak of grim cheer in Israel. In Washington, there were similar pulsations of congratulation.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was dead, killed in Rafah after being spotted by an Israeli patrol and located by yet another one of those drones ubiquitous over the skies of Gaza.

Sinwar was considered the central figure behind the October 7 attacks on Israel, which left, in its wake, more than 1200 dead and 250 hostages of diminishing number.

• READ MORE: Other Binoy Kampmark articles

His death earlier this month prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare this to be “the beginning of the end”.

Notwithstanding this cherished scalp, Netanyahu also made it clear that the war would continue.

“It is harsh and it takes a heavy price from us.” Out of force of habit, a sinister quotation followed, this time from King David: “I will pursue my enemies and destroy them. And I will not turn back until they are wiped out.”

In priestly fashion, he promised the Palestinians that Hamas would never rule in Gaza, a sure sign that terms will be dictated, not from any equal level, but the summit of victory.

Same tone struck
The same tone was struck for those “people of the region”: “In Gaza, in Beirut, in the streets of the entire area, the darkness is withdrawing and the light is rising.” The deciders are in charge.

US President Joe Biden mirrored the approach. He focused on the bloody imprint of Sinwar’s legacy (“responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis, Palestinians, Americans and citizens from over 30 countries”).

Israel had been right to “eliminate the leadership and military structure of Hamas.”

Like Netanyahu, Biden made his own paternal assessment about the fate of the Palestinian people, one perennially subject to others. A rotten egg had been removed. Rejoice, for others will be laid under over guidance.

“This is now the opportunity for a ‘day after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power, and for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

The killing also prompted other assessments that say nothing about Palestinians, but everything about that all subsuming word of “terrorism”.

Israeli power had proved its point, suggesting the premise for resisting it had abated. It led to such remarks as those of Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to call it an end to “a reign of terror”, a point conveniently ignoring Israel’s own policy of ill-nourishment towards Palestinians since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.

Little context, history ‘irrelevant’
Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, boxing Sinwar as “a brutal murderer and terrorist who wanted to annihilate Israel and its people” told Hamas to “lay down its weapons”, suggesting that the suffering of those in Gaza had been exclusive and unilateral to the organisation.

Context, in short, was inconsequential, history an irrelevant past.

As these statements were being made, the Israeli strikes on Gaza have continued with unabated ferocity — and Lebanon, as well as now Iran.

Civilians continue perishing by the families, as do the habitual displacements. In Netanyahu’s cabinet, the pro-settler faction remains ever present.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir nurses fantasies of ethnically displacing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip — something he euphemises as “voluntary departure”. He explicitly said as much at a rally in May. “This is moral, rational and humanitarian.”

That Sinwar would perish in conflict was not unexpected. The extraordinary violence of October 7 was always going to trigger an extraordinarily violent response, and was intended to do so from the outset.

Israel’s method of retaliation, rather than understanding the historical, exploitative savagery of Hamas, was to stubbornly cling to previous patterns: the use of superior military technology, vaunted intelligence, the decapitation of organisations, picking off central figures in adversarial entities, wish lists that rank well in the making of war and delight intelligence chiefs.

Brokering of durable peace ignored
The method says little in the brokering of durable peace, the notion of strategy, the skills of diplomacy. It ignores the terrible truth that harvests in such matters are almost always bitter.

“A number of Israeli moderates have considered this a chance to retreat from a military solution and seek a grand bargain that would conclude conflicts against Hamas, Hezbollah and ease conflict with Iran. It would also involve the return of the surviving hostages.”

Sinwar’s killing is mistakenly positioned as a chance to end the sequence of wars that have become an annexure of Israel’s existence.

In Biden’s words, he “was an insurmountable obstacle to achieving all of those goals [about achieving peace]. That obstacle no longer exists.” Such statements are made even as others are already readying to occupy leadership roles for the next war.

The same could be said about the recent killing of Hezbollah’s Hasan Nasrallah. In 1992, Abbas al-Musawi, then Hezbollah’s secretary-general, was slain along with his wife and son.

His replacement: the resourceful, charismatic Nasrallah. It was he who pushed on the endeavours of the late Fuad Shukr, an architect in acquiring the militant group’s vast stockpile of missiles. Like a savage pruning, such killings inspire fresh offshoots.

Ibrahim Al-Marashi of California State University, San Marcos, puts it better than most. “History shows every single Israeli assassination of a high-profile political or military operator, even after being initially hailed as a game-changing victory, eventually led to the killed leader being replaced by someone more determined, adept and hawkish.”

Seeking a grand bargain
With this in mind, a number of Israeli moderates have considered this a chance to retreat from a military solution and seek a grand bargain that would conclude conflicts against Hamas, Hezbollah and ease conflict with Iran.

It would also involve the return of the surviving hostages. Hardly the sort of thing that thrills the likes of Ben-Gvir and his belligerent comrade in arms, Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich. The customary language of “degrade”, “annihilate” and “destroy” feature with dull regularity.

This is the State of Judah doing battle against the forces of night. It is, however, a night that risks blackening all, a harvest that promises another Sinwar and another Nasrallah. Guns, drones, and bombs only go so far.

Dr Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures in international politics at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. This article was first published by Eureka Street and is republished with the author’s permission.

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has “cleared the air” with the Fijian diaspora in Samoa over Fiji’s vote against the United Nations resolution on the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and People.

He denied that Fiji — the only country to vote against the resolution — had “pressed the wrong button”.

And he described last week’s vote as an “ambush resolution”, claiming it was not the one they had agreed on during the voting of the UN Special Committee of Decolonisation, reports The Fiji Times.

• READ MORE: Rabuka’s message to free Kanaky movement: ‘Don’t slap the hand that feeds you’
• ‘We’ll be talking about the future of negotiations’, says Rabuka on New Caledonia mission
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports
• Other CHOGM reports

However, a prominent Fiji civil society and human rights advocate condemned his statement and also Fiji’s UN voting.

Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) coordinator Shamima Ali said she was “ashamed” of Fiji’s stance over genocide in Palestine, its vote against ceasefire and “not wanting decolonisation”.

In Apia, Rabuka, who leaves for Kanaky New Caledonia on Sunday to take part in the Pacific Islands Forum’s “Troika Plus” talks on the French Pacific’s territory amid indigenous demands for independence, told The Fiji Times:

“We will not tell them we pressed the wrong button. We will tell them that the resolution was an ambush resolution, it is not something that we have been talking about.”

‘Serious student of colonisation’
The Prime Minister said he had been a “serious student of colonisation and decolonisation”.

“They started with the C-12, but now it’s C-24 members of the [UN] committee that talks about decolonisation.

“I was wondering if anyone would complain about my going [to Kanaky New Caledonia] next week because C-24 met last week and there was a vote on decolonisation.”

According to an RNZ Pacific interview, Rabuka had told the Kanak independence movement:”Don’t slap the hand that has fed you.”

Fiji was the only country that voted against the UN resolution while 99 voted for the resolution and 61 countries, including colonisers such as France, United Kingdom and the United States, abstained.

Another coloniser, Indonesia (West Papua), voted for it.

“I thought the [indigenous] people of the Kanaky of New Caledonia would object to my coming, so far we have not heard anything from them.

“So, I am hoping that no one will bring that up, but if they do bring it up, we have a perfect answer.”

Human rights advocate Shamima Ali said in a statement on social media it was “unbelievable” that Prime Minister Rabuka claimed to be “a serious student of colonisation and decolonisation” while leading a government that had been “blatantly complicit in the genocide of innocent Palestinians”.

“No amount of public statements and explanations will save this Coalition government from the mess it has created on the international stage, especially at the United Nations.

“We are ashamed of having a government that supports an occupation, votes against a ceasefire and does not want decolonisation in the world.

“Trust between the Fijian people and their government is being eroded, especially on matters of global significance that reflect on the entire nation.”

According to the government, Fiji is one of two Pacific countries which are members of the Special Committee on Decolonisation or C-24 and have been a consistent voice in addressing the issue of decolonisation.

Through the C-24 and the Fourth Committee, Fiji aligns with the positions undertaken by the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), in its support for the annual resolution on decolonisation entitled “Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples”.

Government reiterated its support of the regional position of the Forum, and the MSG on decolonisation and self-determination, as enshrined in the UN Charter.

The Fiji Permanent Mission in New York, led by Filipo Tarakinikini, is working with the Forum Secretariat to clarify the matter within its process.

Rabuka is currently in Samoa for the 2024 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), which is being held in the Pacific for the first time.

Pacific Media Watch

Published in the Christchurch Star newspaper yesterday — this was the advert rejected last week by Stuff, New Zealand’s major news website, by an editorial management which apparently thinks pro-Israel sympathies are more important than the industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and Lebanon.

Stuff told the Palestinian Solidarity Movement Aotearoa (PSNA) on Thursday last week it would not print this full-page “genocide in their own words” advertisement which had been booked and paid to go in all Stuff newspapers this week.

Stuff gave no “official” reason for banning the advert about Israel’s war in Gaza aside from saying they would not do so “while the ongoing conflict is developing”.

• READ MORE: UN inquiry accuses Israel of crime of ‘extermination’ in Gaza
• Stop telling us porkies – appeal to NZ media to stop reporting debunked Israeli war propaganda as though it was true – John Minto
• One year of Israel’s war on Gaza: Key moments since October 7

It seems that for Stuff, pro-Israel sympathies are more important that Palestinian realities.

It’s worth pointing out that Stuff has, over many years, printed full page advertisements from a Christian Zionist, Pastor Nigel Woodley, from Hastings.

Woodley’s advertisements have been full of the most egregious, fanciful, misinformation and anti-Palestinian racism.

Our advertisement on the other hand is 100 percent factual and speaks truth to power – demanding the New Zealand government hold Israel to account for its war crimes and 76-years of brutal military occupation of Palestine.

• We would like the public to judge our advertisement – it is online here in the Christchurch Star on Page 9.

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

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

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

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

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

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

-WP

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) August 4, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPECIAL REPORT: Samidoun

On Friday, July 5, France announced the continued provisional detention on mainland France of 5 Kanak defendants, out of seven pro-independence “leaders” who had been deported from Kanaky New Caledonia on June 23.

The subsequent announcements of the arrest of 11 pro-independence activists, including 9 provisional detentions (including Joël Tjibaou and Gilles Jorédié, incarcerated in Camp Est) and 7 incarcerations in mainland France (Christian Tein, Frédérique Muliava, Brenda Wanabo-Ipeze, Dimitri Tein Qenegei, Guillaume Vama, Steve Unë and Yewa Waethane), more than 17,000 kilometres from their homeland, revived the mobilisations that had begun a month earlier as part of the fight against the plan to “unfreeze” the Kanaky electoral body.

Suspended after President Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of the National Assembly, this project actually aims to reverse the achievements of the Nouméa Accords signed in 1998.

• READ MORE:  PIF hopes to send delegation to New Caledonia, says Forum chair
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia crisis reports

It is part of the strategy of strengthening French colonialism in Kanaky by extending the ability to vote on local matters, including independence referandums, to an even greater number of settlers, making the indigenous Kanaks a de facto minority at the ballot box.

On July 11, 10 Centaur armoured vehicles, 15 fire trucks, a dozen all-terrain military armoured vehicles and numerous army trucks were landed by ship in Kanaky, where the population remains under curfew.

This entire sequence bears witness to the manner in which France, through its colonial administration, deploys a repressive security arsenal that on the one hand protects the settlers on the land and their reactionary militias, and on the other, attempts to destroy the country’s Kanak independence movement.

Imprisonment and incarceration are a weapon of choice in this overall colonial strategy.

Imprisonment is one of the key weapons of choice in colonial strategies to try to stifle independence and national liberation struggles, from the Zionist regime in Palestine to allied imperialist countries and colonial empires such as France.

While the figures are incomparable due to differences between the populations and conditions, in the West Bank, according to Stéphanie Latte Abdallah, one in three Palestinians has experienced one or more incarcerations during their life since 1967, or 35 percent of the population, while in Kanaky, the Nouméa prison, known as Camp Est, is populated by 95 percent Kanaks, while they represent only 39 to 43 percent of the Caledonian population.

Nicknamed “the island of oblivion” by the prisoners, the Camp Est prison locks up many young Kanaks excluded from the economic, educational and health systems, and symbolises the French colonial continuum, especially as the building partly occupies the space of the former French penal colony imposed there.

Silence of sociologists
Few studies exist of this over-incarceration of the Kanak population, and as Hamid Mokadem reminds us:

“The silence of sociologists and demographers on ethno-cultural inequalities is inversely proportional to the chatter of anthropologists on Kanak customs and culture.”

The incarceration rate is significantly higher than in mainland France, so much so that a new prison has been built.

The Koné detention center, and a project to replace Camp Est was announced in February 2024 by the Minister of Justice. He promised a 600-bed facility (compared to the 230 cells available at Camp Est) that would emerge after a construction project estimated at 500 million euros (NZ$908 million).

This is the largest investment by the French state on Kanak soil, a deadly promise that at the same time reaffirms France’s imperialist project in the Pacific, driven by its financial and geopolitical interests to retain its colonial properties there.

While waiting for this large-scale prison project, new cells have been fitted out in containers on which a double mesh roof has been installed, many without windows, and where the conditions of incarceration are even harsher than in the other sections of the prison, including those for men, women and minors, pre-trial detainees and those who have been convicted and sentenced.

The over-representation of the Kanak population has only increased, since incarceration has been one of the mechanisms through which the French government attempts to stem the movement against the plan to “unfreeze” and expand the electoral body, with 1139 arrests since mid-May.

The penalty of deportation
Local detention was supplemented by another penalty directly inherited from the Code de l’Indigénat: the penalty of deportation.

On June 23, after the announcement of the arrest of 7 Kanak independence activists in metropolitan France, the population learned that they were going to be deported 17,000 km from their homes.

A plane was waiting to transfer them to metropolitan France during their pretrial detention, all seven of them dispersed across the prisons of Dijon, Mulhouse, Bourges, Blois, Nevers, Villefranche and Riom.

This deportation of activists in the context of pre-trial detention directly recalls the events of 1988, and more broadly the way in which prison and removal were used in a colonial context.

From the 19th century and the deportation of Toussaint Louverture of Haiti to France, thousands of Algerians arrested during the uprisings against the French colonisation of Algeria at the same time as the detention of the prisoners of the Paris Commune in 1871, the Vietnamese of Hanoi in 1913, were deported to Kanaky or other colonies such as Guyana.

More recently, the Algerian revolutionaries, were massively incarcerated in metropolitan colonial prisons. From a principle inherited from the indigénat, and although today we have moved from an administrative decision to a judicial decision, the practice of deportation remains the same.

Particularly used in the context of anti-colonial resistance movements, the deportation of Kanak prisoners to metropolitan colonial prisons has been used on this scale since 1988 in Kanaky.

Ouvéa cave massacre
After the massacre of 19 Kanak independence fighters who had taken police officers prisoner in the Ouvéa cave, activists still alive were imprisoned, then deported, then released as part of the Matignon-Oudinot Accords.

Twenty six Kanak prisoners came to populate the prisons of the Paris region while they were still in preventive detention — while awaiting their trials and therefore presumed innocent, as is the case today for the CCAT activists currently incarcerated.

In the 1980s, French prisons were shaken by major revolts, particularly against the racism of the guards, who were mostly affiliated with the then-nascent Front National (FN), and more broadly against the penal policy of the Mitterrand left and the massively expanding length of sentences imposed at the time.

In 1988, as former prisoners wrote afterwards, some made a point of showing their solidarity with the Kanaks by sharing their clothes and food with them.

Because many of the activists were transferred in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, in trying conditions, with their hands cuffed during the 24-hour journey, underhand repression techniques of the Prison Administration that are still in force.

Similar deportation conditions were described by Christian Téin, spokesperson for the CCAT incarcerated in the isolation wing of the Mulhouse-Lutterbach Penitentiary Center. The  shock of incarceration is all the more violent.

Added to this is the pain of the forced separation of parents and children, which is found not only in the current situation in metropolitan France but also in Palestine. Also there is great difficulty in finding loved ones, in attempting to find out which prisons they are in, or even if they are currently detained, continually encountering administrative violence, with the absence of information and the cruelty of official figures.

Orchestrated psychological impact
All this is orchestrated so that the psychological impact, in the long term, aims to induce the prisoners and also their families to stop fighting.

At the time of the events in Ouvéa, the uprooting of independence activists from their lands to lock them up in mainland France was commonplace, and the Kanak detainees joined those from the Caribbean Revolutionary Alliance such as Luc Reinette and Georges Faisans, incarcerated in Île-de-France during the 1980s alongside Corsican and Basque prisoners.

Since then, this had only happened once, in the context of the uprisings in Guadeloup in 2021, where several local figures, mostly community activists, had been deported and then incarcerated in mainland France and Martinique in an attempt to stifle the revolts in which a large number of Guadeloupean youth were mobilised.

Here again, we could draw a parallel with Palestine. As Assia Zaino points out, since the 2000s, the incarceration of Palestinians has systematically been synonymous with being torn away from their families and loved ones.

Zionist prisons, located within the Palestinian territories colonised in 1948, “are integrated into the civil prison system [. . . ] and entry bans on Israeli soil are frequently imposed on the families of detainees for security reasons,” which in fact aims to attack the relatives of detainees and destabilise the national liberation struggle.

From prison, the struggle continues
This mass incarceration is confronted by the powerful presence of prisoners as symbols of courage and resistance.

We know that in Palestine, as during the Algerian war of national liberation, incarceration is an opportunity to learn from one’s people, to forge national revolutionary consciousness but also to continue the struggle, very concretely, by mobilising against incarceration.

Because the Palestinian prisoners’ movement has transformed the colonial prison into a school of revolution: each political party has a prison branch whose political bureau or leadership is made up of imprisoned leaders.

These branches have real weight in the decisions taken outside the walls, and they are the ones responsible for leading the struggle in the colonial prisons, in particular by declaring collective hunger strikes and developing alliances of struggle that can mobilise several thousand prisoners, but also for organising the daily life of revolutionaries in prison.

It was this movement of prisoners that played a major role in driving the Palestinian resistance groups to unite under a unified command with the total liberation of historic Palestine as their compass, and to overcome internal contradictions.

Historically, the prisoners also constituted a significant part the most radical elements of the Palestinian revolution, notably by massively refusing any negotiation with the Zionist state at the time when the disastrous Oslo Accords were being prepared.

Resistance in colonial prisons can also take cultural forms, as illustrated by the very rich Palestinian prison literature, composed of literary works written in secret and smuggled out by prisoners to bear witness to the outside world of the vitality of their ideals, their struggle and the conditions of detention.

Courage of the children
An example is Walid Daqqah, a renowned writer and one of the longest-held Palestinian prisoners, who was martyred on 7 April 2024 during his 38th year of detention in colonial prisons.

In short, from the children and adolescents who wear courageous smiles as they leave their trials surrounded by soldiers, to the women of Damon prison who heroically stand up to their jailers, to the resistance of the prisoners who fight by putting their lives and health at risk while having a central role in the Resistance outside, it is the daily struggle of the prisoners’ movement that makes detention a place where resistance to the colonial regime is organised, continuing even inside detention.

As Charlotte Kates, Samidoun’s international coordinator, said:

“Despite the intention to use political imprisonment to suppress Palestinian resistance and derail the Palestinian liberation movement, Palestinian prisoners have remained political leaders and symbols of steadfastness for the struggle as a whole.”

In Kanaky, it was the announcement of the incarceration of CCAT activists on June 23 that relaunched the movement, who became the driving forces behind this new round of mobilisation.

On May 13, while the population was setting up roadblocks on the main roads of Nouméa, a mutiny broke out in the Camp Est prison in reaction to the plan to unfreeze the electoral body.

The prison was therefore directly part of the mobilisation, and three guards were taken hostage on this first day of struggle. They were quickly released after the RAID (French national police tactical unit) intervened.

But during the night of May 14-15, another revolt took place in the prison, rendering no fewer than 80 cells unusable.

It is therefore in this context of uprising and intifada throughout Kanaky, both in prisons and outside, that the announcement of the deportation of the 7 Kanak leaders took place.

In addition to these highly publicised deportations, there were also dozens of similar cases of transfers from Camp Est.

Completely ignored by the government, these took place both before May 23 and during the month of July, including participants in the prison uprisings as well as long-term prisoners transferred to relieve congestion in the Kanak prison.

Silence which masks the scale of these colonial deportations only intends to make the task of the families and political supporters of the Kanaks even more difficult in their attempt to show solidarity with the prisoners.

Furthermore, upon their arrival in mainland France, the CCAT activists were separated into 7 different prisons, directly recalling the policy of dispersion already at work in Spain at the end of the 1980s against ETA prisoners, in reaction to the effectiveness of their prison organising.

Today as yesterday, the colonial power dispatches prisoners throughout the mainland to prevent a collective counter-offensive. The prisoners’ connections with one another, but also with the outside, are consequently largely hampered.

This isolation directly aims to break the movement by tearing off its “head” and preventing any form of common struggle against this confinement. We therefore know that the momentum of struggle outside seems to respond to a hardening of detention conditions inside prisons, as evidenced by the isolation in which the CCAT activists are kept.

Likewise in Palestine, where since last October 7, mass arrests have escalated to the development of military concentration camps characterised by inhumane conditions of incarceration where severe torture is a daily, routine occurrence.

Currently, both for the more than 9300 Palestinian prisoners detained in the 19 Zionist colonial prisons, and for the thousands of prisoners from Gaza arrested during the genocidal offensive of the occupying forces on the Strip incarcerated in military camps, the conditions of detention have deteriorated significantly.

If in the colonial prisons Palestinian prisoners suffer hunger, collective isolation, overcrowding, violence and physical and psychological torture, conditions which have led to the martyrdom of at least 18 prisoners since October 7, in the military detention camps the situation is even more extreme.

The thousands of prisoners from Gaza held there are handcuffed and blindfolded 24 hours a day, forced to kneel on the ground, motionless for most of the day, raped and sexually assaulted and tortured daily, which leaves the released prisoners with enormous trauma.

Sick prisoners are crammed in naked, equipped with diapers, on beds without mattresses or blankets, in military airplane hangars and warehouses and without any medical care.

In all cases, isolation reigns, in prisons as in military detention centers, and the Zionist regime aims to cut off the Palestinian prisoners — and their collective movement — from the outside world.

Stories of prison escapes
Beyond the heroic prison uprisings, many stories of escapes from colonial prisons also fuel resistance and demonstrate the resilience of prisoners.

In Palestine, to cite a recent example, we recall the “Freedom Tunnel” operation, where six Palestinian prisoners freed themselves from the Zionist-occupied Gilboa high-security prison by digging a tunnel using a spoon.

The six Palestinians — Mahmoud al-Ardah, Mohammed al-Ardah, Yaqoub Qadri, Ayham Kamamji, Munadil Nafa’at and Zakaria Zubaidi — became Palestinian, Arab and international symbols of Palestinian resistance and the will for freedom.

While they were all rearrested, their escape exposed the weaknesses under the colonial myth of “impenetrable Israeli security”, plunging the occupation’s prison system into an internal crisis.

In France, the CRAs (Administrative Detention Centres) represent an ultra-violent manifestation of racism and the management of exiles. People are locked up in terrible and therefore deadly conditions.

Thus, faced with colonial management of populations, particularly from former French colonies, resistance is being organised.

For example, on the night of Friday, June 21 to Saturday, June 22, 14 people held at the CRA in Vincennes managed to escape (only one person has been re-arrested since).

This follows the escape of 11 detainees in December from this same place of confinement. However, these detention centres are often recent and very well equipped.

From Palestine to the Hegaxone and the colonial prisons in Kanaky, the resistance fighters fight day by day within the prison system itself, and the escapes and uprisings in the prisons are events that weaken the colonial propaganda and its myth of invincibility and total superiority.

Resistance continues
Despite the tightening of detention conditions and the security arsenal that is deployed against liberation movements, it is clear that the resistance is not stopping and that, on the contrary, organizing is becoming even more vigorous.

In Kanaky, new blockades in solidarity with the prisoners have spread well beyond Nouméa since June 23, demanding their immediate release and repatriation to Kanaky, since “touching one of them is touching everyone”.

In mainland France, numerous gatherings have also taken place since Monday at the call of the MKF (Kanak Movement in France), and among others led by the Collectif Solidarité Kanaky in front of the Ministry of Justice in Paris, and also in front of the prisons where the activists are still incarcerated.

Their prison numbers have been made public so that it is possible to write to them and so that broad and massive support can be communicated to them in order to provide them with the strength necessary for this fight from metropolitan France.

From now on, tributes to the Kanak martyrs who fell under the bullets of the colonial militias and the French State are joined by banners for the freedom of the prisoners.

Marah Bakir, a representative of Palestinian women prisoners, arrested at the age of 15 by the colonial army and imprisoned for 8 years, made these comments during her first interview given upon her release on 24 November 2023:

“It is very difficult to feel freedom and to be liberated in exchange for the blood of the martyrs of Gaza and the great sacrifices of our people in the Gaza Strip.”  

The Kanaky ‘martyrs’:
Stéphanie Nassaie Doouka, 17, and Chrétien Neregote, 36, shot in the head on May 20 by a business manager.

Djibril Saïko Salo, 19, shot in the back on May 15 by loyalist settlers at a roadblock.

Dany Tidjite, 48, killed by an off-duty police officer who tried to impose a roadblock.

Joseph Poulawa, 34, killed on May 28 by two bullets in the chest and shoulder by the GIGN (the elite police tactical unit of the National Gendarmerie of France)

Lionel Païta, 26, killed on June 3 by a bullet to the head by a police officer at a roadblock.

Victorin Rock Wamytan, known as “Banane”, 38 years old, father of two children, killed on July 10 by a shot in the chest by the GIGN on customary lands

In Kanaky, the names of these martyrs, just like the 19 of the Ouvéa cave, will remain forever in the memory of the activists and people, and as one could read on another banner in Noumea: “The fight must not cease for lack of a leader or fighters, this direction remains forever. Kanaky”

This article, by Samidoun Paris Banlieue, was published first in French at: https://samidoun.net/fr/2024/07/la-question-carcerale-dans-la-colonisation-de-la-kanaky-a-la-palestine/. During the protests in Kanaky in May and ongoing, French military forces targeted demonstrators, imposed a countrywide ban on TikTok, and have seized multiple political prisoners from the Kanak independence movement. This article is republished from Samidoun.

Here is the livestream of Dr David Robie’s keynote address “Frontline Media Faultlines: How Critical Journalism Can Survive Against the Odds” at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference in Suva, Fiji, earlier this month.

The conference was hosted by the University of the South Pacific journalism programme in collaboration with the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) on 4-6 July 2024.

Dr Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report and deputy chair of the APMN, is introduced by Professor Cherian George of Hong Kong Baptist University.

• READ MORE: A report of the address is here
• Other Pacific Media Conference reports

Dr David Robie’s keynote address on July 4.  Livestream video: The Australia Today

Republished from The Australia Today’s YouTube channel and Café Pacific with permission.

The Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights and other protesters took to the streets of Fiji’s capital Suva yesterday in a rare demonstration demanding freedom, decolonisation and human rights in Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua.

The peaceful “pre-Bastille Day” protest came after recent events in Kanaky New Caledonia led to 10 deaths and a heavy build-up of French police and paramilitary forces.

It also followed ongoing human rights abuses and violations by Indonesia in West Papua.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports
• Fiji protesters out in numbers for peaceful Kanaky protest

“As France commemorates Bastille Day on July 14 and celebrates their own principles of ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’, its own action in the Pacific contradicts the national day,” said West Papuan activist Rosa Moiwend of the Pacific Network on Globalisation.

“French colonisation of Pacific territories and its continued acts of suppression in Māohi Niu and Kanaky New Caledonia are quite the opposite of what the French revolution achieved.

“Today, they are symbolic of the Bastille and the monarchy oppressing and abusing the people and denying their right to self-determination in their own lands,” she said.

The May riots and unrest in Kanaky New Caledonia has led to 3500 security personnel being deployed from France.

“At best, this is based on the severely misguided notion that the challenges of the decolonisation process can be resolved by force,” Moiwend said.

France’s true objectives ‘disguised’
“However, it is becoming clearer that the restoration of order and peace is just a disguise for France’s true objectives — a deliberate retrenchment and extension of colonial control.”

Almost two months after the outbreak of violence, tensions remain high and there is serious concern about the continuing restrictions on Kanaks.

Widespread reports of atrocities and police brutality against Kanaky youth have angered protest groups across the Pacific.

French authorities have extradited seven indigenous Kanak activists to prisons in France while awaiting trial on “conspiracy” charges over the rioting.

“French President Emmanuel Macron must be responsible for the current state of Kanaky New Caledonia,” said PANG in a statement.

“Blaming Kanak leaders and having them arrested and detained in France is a coverup and tactic to assert power. We call on President Macron to release the Kanak leaders and allow them legal representation.”

Olivia Baro from the Pacific Conference of Churches added that the issue of West Papua and the ongoing human rights abuse must not be forgotten, and Indonesia must be held responsible.

West Papuan voices ‘silenced’
Indonesia’s ongoing influence on the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) and the Pacific Islands Leaders Forum has continued to silence the voices of West Papuans.

As Pacific peoples, we will continue to stand in solidarity with West Papua and their right to self-determination.

“As we commemorate the Biak massacre this month and remember the many lives lost in West Papua, the continuous suppression of West Papua by Indonesia is a similar struggle to Kanaky New Caledonia, Palestine and many human rights struggles globally,” said Baro.

Despite restrictions set by authorities to prevent Palestine flags and banners at the march, the coalition stands in solidarity with our brothers, sisters and families in Palestine.

The Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji and their allies have been hosting vigils at the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre compound for Palestine, West Papua and Kanaky every Thursday over the last eight months.

The call on the Fiji government and Pacific leaders to support the ceasefire in Gaza, and protect the rights of Palestinians, West Papuans and Kanaks.

“The struggles of Palestinians are no different to West Papua, Kanaky New Caledonia,” FWCC Coordinator and NGOCHR Chair Shamima Ali.

“These are struggles of self-determination, and their human rights must be upheld.”

Pacific Journalism Review has challenged journalists to take a courageous and humanitarian stand over Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza in its latest edition with several articles about the state of news media credibility and the shocking death toll of Palestinian reporters.

It has also taken a stand in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who was set free in a US federal court in Saipan and returned to Australia the day before copies of the journal arrived back from the printers.

The journal went online last week and it celebrated three decades of publishing at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference hosted by The University of the South Pacific in Fiji in partnership with the Pacific islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Media Conference reports
• Pacific Journalism Review online

In the editorial provocatively entitled “Will journalism survive?”, founding editor Dr David Robie writes: “Gaza has become not just a metaphor for a terrible state of dystopia in parts of the world, it has also become an existential test for journalists — do we stand up for peace and justice and the right of a people to survive under the threat of ethnic cleansing and against genocide, or do we do nothing and remain silent in the face of genocide being carried out with impunity in front of our very eyes?

“The answer is simple surely.”

Launching the 30th anniversary edition, adjunct USP professor Vijay Naidu paid tribute to the long-term “commitment of PJR to justice and human rights” and noted USP’s contribution through hosting the journal for five years and also continued support from conference convenor associate professor Shailendra Singh.

Papua New Guinea’s Communication Minister Timothy Masiu also launched at the PJR event a new book, Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific, edited by Professor Biman Prasad (who is also Deputy Prime Minister of Fiji), Dr Singh and Dr Amit Sarwal.

The PJR editors, Dr Philip Cass and Dr Robie, said the profession of journalism had since the covid pandemic been under grave threat and the journal outlined challenges facing the Pacific region.

Among contributing writers, Jonathan Cook, examines the consequences of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) legal cases over Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, and Assange’s last-ditch appeal to prevent the United States extraditing him so that he could be locked away for the rest of his life.

Both cases pose globe-spanning threats to basic freedoms, writes Cook.

New Zealand writer Jeremy Rose offers a “Kiwi journalist’s response” to Israel’s war on journalism, noting that while global reports have tended to focus on the “horrendous and rapid” climb of civilian casualties to more than 38,000 — especially women and children — Gaza has also claimed the “worst death rate of journalists” in any war.

The journalist death toll has topped 158.

Independent journalist Mick Hall offers a compelling research indictment of the role of Western legacy media institutions, arguing that they too are in the metaphorical dock along with Israel in South Africa’s genocide case in the ICC.

He also cites evidence of the wider credibility implications for mainstream media in the Oceania region.

Among other articles in this edition of PJR, a team led by RMIT’s Dr Alexandra Wake, president of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (Jeraa), has critiqued the use of fact check systems, arguing these are vital tool boxes for journalists.

The edition also includes articles about the Kanaky New Caledonia decolonisation crisis reportage, three USP Frontline case study reports on political journalism, the social media ecology of an influencer group in Fiji, and a photo essay by Del Abcede on Palestinian protests and media in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.

Book reviews include the Reuters Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2024, Journalists and Confidential Sources, The Palestine Laboratory and Return to Volcano Town.

The PJR began publication at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994.

• Pacific Journalism Review – the 30th anniversary edition, edited by David Robie and Philip Cass. Auckland: Asia Pacific Media Network.

A New Zealand politician and human rights activist with a strong connection to Tonga’s Democracy movement and other Pacific activism has been farewelled after dying last week aged 80.

Keith Locke served as a former Green MP from 1999 to 2011.

While in Parliament, he was a notable critic of New Zealand’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan and the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, and advocated for refugee rights.

• READ MORE: Other obituaries, reports on Keith Locke

He was appointed a Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to human rights advocacy in 2021, received NZ Amnesty International’s Human Rights Defender award in 2012, and the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand’s Harmony Award in 2013.

Locke was often a voice for the Pacific in the New Zealand Parliament.

In 2000, he spoke out on the plight of overstayers who were facing deportation under the National Party government.

As the Green Party’s then immigration spokesperson, he supported calls for a review of the overstayer legislation.

Links to Pohiva
“We are a Polynesian nation, and we increasingly celebrate the Samoan and Tongan part of our national identity,” Locke said at the time.

“How can we claim as our own the Jonah Lomus and Beatrice Faumuinas while we are prepared to toss their relations out of the country at a moment’s notice?”

Locke had links to Tonga through his relationship with Democracy campaigner and later Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva, who died in 2019.

Locke defended Pohiva in 1996 when he was a spokesperson for the Alliance Party. He said he was horrified that Pohiva and two colleagues had been jailed for comments in their pro-democracy newspaper Kele’a.

He criticised the New Zealand government for keeping silent about what he described as a “gross abuse of human rights.”

In 2004, Locke called on the New Zealand government to speak out about what he called the suppression of the press in Tonga.

Locke, who was then the Greens foreign affairs spokesman, said several publications had been denied licences, including an offshoot of the New Zealand-produced Taimi ‘o Tonga newspaper.

Vale #KeithLocke, tireless and fearless campaigner for peace, justice and a sustainable future for a green planet … I’ll also remember him for friendship and commitment to independent truth publishing and OneWorld progressive bookshop. – @DavidRobie, editor, #AsiaPacificReport pic.twitter.com/SC0obJzfOA

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) June 21, 2024

Tribute by Asia Pacific Report editor David Robie.

‘Speak out as Pacific neighbour’
“We owe it to the Tongan people to support them in their hour of need.  We should speak out as a Pacific neighbour,” he said.

In 2007, ‘Akilisi was again charged with sedition, along with four other pro-democracy MPs, for allegedly being responsible for the rioting that took place following a mass pro-democracy march in Nuku’alofa.

“As the Greens’ foreign affairs spokesperson I went up to Tonga to support ‘Akilisi and his colleagues fight these trumped-up charges. I was shocked to find that the New Zealand government was going along with these sedition charges against five sitting MPs,” Locke said in an interview.

“I was in Tonga not long before the 2010 elections with a cross-party group of New Zealand MPs. We were helping Tongan candidates understand the intricacies of a parliamentary system.

“At the time I remember ‘Akilisi being worried that the block of nine ‘noble’ MPs could frustrate the desires of what were to be 17 directly-elected MPs. And so it turned out.

“Despite winning 12 of the popularly-elected 17 seats in 2010, the pro-democracy MPs were outvoted 14 to 12 when the votes of the nine nobles MPs were put into the equation.

“However, in the two subsequent elections (2014 and 2017) the Democrats predominated and ‘Akilisi took over as Prime Minister. I am not qualified to judge his record on domestic issues, except to say it couldn’t have been an easy job because of the fractious nature of Tongan politics.

“And ‘Akilisi has been in poor health.

‘Admirable stand’
“As Prime Minister he took an admirable stand on some important international issues, such as climate change. At the Pacific Island Forum he criticised those countries which stayed silent on the plight of the West Papuans.”

Locke said that Tonga may not yet be fully democratic, but that great progress had been made under Pohiva’s “humble and self-sacrificing leadership.”

Keith Locke was also an outspoken advocate for democracy and independence causes in Fiji, Kanaky New Caledonia, Palestine, Philippines, Tahiti, Tibet, Timor-Leste and West Papua and in many other countries.

His remembrance service was held with whānau and supporters at a packed Mount Eden War memorial Hall on Tuesday.

Dr Philip Cass is an editorial adviser for Kaniva Tonga. Republished as a collaboration between KT and Asia Pacific Report.

Among the many sayings attributed to Winston Churchill is, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

This sentiment seems appropriate as Israel potentially appears ready to embark on a war against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said this week a decision on an all-out war against Hezbollah was “coming soon” and that senior commanders of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had signed off on a plan for the operation.

• READ MORE: Rafah fighting ‘intensifying’ as Israel strikes north, south, central Gaza
• Are Israel and Hezbollah on the verge of full-blown war?
• Other War in Gaza reports

This threat comes despite the fact Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is far from over. Israel has still not achieved the two primary objectives Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put forth at the start of the conflict:

• the destruction of Hamas as a military and governing entity in Gaza
• the freeing of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas (about 80 believed to still be alive, along with the remains of about 40 believed to be dead).

Why Hezbollah is attacking Israel now
Israel has cogent reasons for wanting to eliminate the threat from Hezbollah. Hezbollah has been launching Iranian-supplied missiles, rockets and drones across the border into northern Israel since the Gaza war began on October 8.

Its stated purpose is to support Hamas by distracting the IDF from its Gaza operation.

Hezbollah’s attacks have been relatively circumscribed – confined so far to northern Israel. But they have led to the displacement of some 60,000 residents from the border area. These people are understandably fed up and demanding Netanyahu’s government takes action to force Hezbollah to withdraw from the border.

This anger has been augmented this week by Hezbollah publicising video footage of military and civilian sites in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, which had been taken by a low-flying surveillance drone.

The Israeli army said plans for an offensive in Lebanon were “approved and validated” amid escalating cross-border clashes with Hezbollah and a relative lull in Gaza fighting https://t.co/H0nq61Gbay pic.twitter.com/qzzFq3nDt5

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 18, 2024

The implication: Hezbollah was scoping the region for new targets. Haifa, a city of nearly 300,000, has not yet been subject to Hezbollah attacks.

The most far-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, have openly called for Israel to invade southern Lebanon. Even without this pressure, Netanyahu has ample reason to want to neutralise the Hezbollah threat because residents of northern Israel are strong supporters of his Likud party.

US and Iranian interests in a broader conflict
The United States is obviously concerned about the risk Israel will open a second front in its conflicts. As such, President Joe Biden has sent an envoy, Amos Hochstein, to Israel and Lebanon to try to reduce tensions on both sides.

In Lebanon, he cannot publicly deal directly with the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, because the group is on the US list of global terrorist organisations. Instead, he met the long-serving speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, who as a fellow Shia is able to talk with Nasrallah.

But Hezbollah answers to Iran — its main backer in the region. And it’s doubtful if any Lebanese leader can persuade it to desist from action approved by Iran.

Iran’s interests in the potential for an Israel-Hezbollah war at this time are mixed. It would obviously be glad to see Israel under military pressure on two fronts. But Iranian leaders see Hezbollah as insurance against an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.

Hezbollah has an estimated 150,000 missiles and rockets, including some that could reach deep into Israel. So far, Iran seems to want Hezbollah to hold back from a major escalation with Israel, which could deplete most of that arsenal.

That said, although Israel’s Iron Dome defensive shield has been remarkably successful in neutralising the rocket threat from Gaza, it might not be as effective against a large-scale barrage of more sophisticated missiles.

Israel needed help from the US, Britain, France and Jordan in countering a direct attack from Iran in April that involved some 150 missiles and 170 drones.

Israel and Hezbollah conflict: escalating cross-border tensions. Video: ABC News

Lessons from previous Israeli interventions in Lebanon
The other factor – especially for wiser heads mindful of history – is the country’s previous interventions in Lebanon have been far from cost-free.

Israel’s problems with Lebanon started when the late King Hussein of Jordan forced the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), then led by Yasser Arafat, to relocate to Lebanon in 1970. He did that because the PLO had been using Jordan as a base for operations against Israel after the 1967 war, provoking Israeli retaliation.

From the early 1970s, the PLO formed a state within a state in Lebanon. It largely acted independently from the perennially weak Lebanese government, which was divided on sectarian grounds, and in 1975, collapsed into a prolonged civil war.

The PLO used southern Lebanon to launch attacks against Israel, leading Israel to launch a limited invasion of its northern neighbour in 1978, driving Palestinian militia groups north of the Litani River.

That invasion was only partially successful. Militants soon moved back towards the border and renewed their attacks on northern Israel. In 1982, then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin decided to remove the PLO entirely from Lebanon, launching a major invasion of Lebanon all the way to Beirut. This eventually forced the PLO leadership and the bulk of its fighters to relocate to Tunisia.

Gaza Genocide: 17th June: In depth report on escalation of cross border conflict: Hezbollah v Israel: Dissolving of genocidal war cabinet by Netenyahu to select others: visit by U.S. Hochstein today & far right fascists Gver/Smotrich jostling for war cabinet positions pic.twitter.com/g5J44afWeB

— JANET Gibson (@JANETGi59151282) June 17, 2024

Despite this success, the two Israeli invasions had the unintended consequence of radicalising the until-then quiescent Shia population of southern Lebanon.

That enabled Iran, in its early post-revolutionary phase under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to work with Shia clerics in Lebanon to establish Hezbollah (Party of God in Arabic), which became a greater threat to Israel than the PLO had ever been.

Bolstered by Iranian support, Hezbollah has become stronger over the years, becoming a force in Lebanese politics and regularly firing missiles into Israel.

In 2006, Hezbollah was able to block an IDF advance into southern Lebanon aimed at rescuing two Israeli soldiers Hezbollah had captured. The outcome was essentially a draw, and the two soldiers remained in captivity until their bodies were exchanged for Lebanese prisoners in 2008.

Many Arab observers at the time judged that by surviving an asymmetrical conflict, Hezbollah had emerged with a political and military victory.

For a while during and after that conflict, Nasrallah was one of the most popular regional leaders, despite the fact he was loathed by rulers of conservative Sunni Arab states such as Saudi Arabia.

Will history repeat itself?
This is the background to discussions in Israel about launching a war against Hezbollah. And it demonstrates how the quote from Churchill is relevant.

Most military experts would caution against choosing to fight a war on two fronts. Former US President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq in 2003 when the war in Afghanistan had not concluded. The outcome was hugely costly for the US military and disastrous for both countries.

The 19th century American writer Mark Twain is reported to have said that history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Will Israel’s leaders listen to the echoes of the past?

Dr Ian Parmeter, research scholar, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

A pro-Palestinian advocacy group has put the New Zealand government “on notice” over its alleged complicity with Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza now in its eighth month.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) issued the government a “letter of demand” today for what it claims to be the government’s breaches of international law, and individual criminal liability under the Genocide Convention.

The PSNA said in the letter that “with the support of the Palestinian community,
human rights advocates, and community organisations, [we] hereby raise our concerns as to Aotearoa’s breaches of international law in relation to the unfolding situation in Gaza, as well as the individual criminal liability which may attach to New Zealand Government Ministers, Members of Parliament and other officials for aiding and abetting international crimes committed by Israel, including genocide, pursuant to the Rome Statute.

“This letter hereby puts you on notice for any relevant breach of the New Zealand domestic law or international law.”

• READ MORE: Nine killed as Israeli forces target people awaiting aid in southern Gaza
• Laws of war likely ‘consistently violated’ in Israeli strikes on Gaza: UN rights office
• PSNA issues notice to the government for complicity in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza
• Other War on Gaza reports

PSNA’S National chair John Minto said that “in writing this letter to you, we have engaged the assistance of several legal experts, students, academics, and human rights advocates.”

In a separate explanatory statement, Minto said the letter of demand “signals our intent with the support of members of the Palestinian community to pursue legal accountability for the lack of actions taken by the government, and key government ministers, in their roles.

“PSNA is deeply concerned about New Zealand failing to uphold our legal responsibilities under the Genocide Convention which requires the government to take actions that ‘prevent and punish the crime of genocide’.”

The letter was addressed to nine cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

The other ministers are Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters, Attorney-General Judith Collins, Immigration Minister Erica Standford, Regulation Minister David Seymour, Trade Minister and Associate Foreign Affairs Minister Todd McClay, Minister for Women Nicola Grigg, Associate Minister of Immigration Casey Costello, and Associate Minister of Defence Chris Penk.

‘We have never seen anything like this’: UN Commission of Inquiry head  Video: Al Jazeera

NZ’s obligations
The letter stated that New Zealand’s obligations under international law were:

1. Its responsibility under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) to prevent and to punish the ongoing genocide in Gaza;
2. Its obligation pursuant to the Geneva Conventions to ensure respect for international humanitarian law; and
3. Its obligations under customary international law to cooperate with other states to bring an end Israel’s ongoing serious breaches of peremptory norms, and to refrain from aiding or assisting Israel in those breaches.

Alleged breaches
The PSNA letter alleged the following breaches of international law:

1. 

   Potential failure to prevent the export of military components for use in weaponry by Israel. Specifically, failure to adequately regulate Rakon Limited (a company based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland) regarding the export of components to the United States for use in military equipment, which may be being used in Israel’s genocide;

2. Sending New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel to train alongside Israel Defence Forces during the US-led Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) military exercises beginning on 26 June 2024;
3. Sending NZDF personnel to assist in United States and United Kingdom-led military operations against the Houthis in Yemen, with the effect of suppressing regional protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza;
4. Withholding approval for funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA);
5. Failure to provide humanitarian visas to Palestinians in Gaza who have family members in Aotearoa (by contrast with the 2022 Special Ukraine Visa for Ukrainians fleeing from war);
6. Failure to take any measures of retortion against Israel, such as expelling diplomats or suspending diplomatic relations;
7. Continuing to allow shipping company ZIM to use New Zealand ports;
8. Failure to suspend the Israel Working Holiday Visa for Israeli citizens who have served with the Israel Defence Forces carrying out international crimes;
9. Relatedly, failure to implement a ban on investments in, and imports from, companies building and maintaining illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in line with UN Security Council resolution 2334 (UNSC2334 was co-sponsored at the UN Security Council by New Zealand in 2016); and
10. Failure to engage with proceedings in the genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and failing to denounce Israel’s breaches of ICJ rulings, most notably by illegally continuing its military assault on Rafah.

Minto concluded the detailed 39-page letter including supporting appendices by saying, “It is not too late for Aotearoa to hold Israel to account and to help bring an end to its impunity, and its atrocities.

“New Zealand must defend the international rule of law. We may rely upon it ourselves one day.”

PSNA plans to take further steps if it fails to get a “meaningful response” from the government and the relevant ministers by 18 July 2024.

• Full PSNA “letter of demand” to the New Zealand government

Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths of Plains FM96.9 radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region.

Dr Robie has just been made a Member of the NZ Order of Merit (MNZM) and Earthwise ask him what this means to him. Why has he campaigned for so long for Pacific issues to receive media attention?

Do Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia really feel like part of the Pacific world? What are the growing concerns about increasing militarisation in the Pacific and spreading Chinese influence?

• LISTEN AT PLAINS FM: The interview with Dr David Robie on Earthwise

And why is decolonisation in Kanaky New Caledonia from France such a pressing issue? Dr Robie also draws parallels between the Kanak, Palestinian and West Papuan struggles.

Dr Robie also talks about next month’s Pacific Media International Conference in Suva, Fiji, on 4-6 July 2024.

Broadcast: Plains Radio FM96.9

Interviewee: Dr David Robie, deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and a semiretired professor of Pacific journalism. He founded the Pacific Media Centre.
Interviewers: Lois and Martin Griffiths, Earthwise programme

Date: 12 June 2024 (28min), broadcast June 17.

Youtube: Café Pacific: https://www.youtube.com/@cafepacific2023

https://plainsfm.org.nz/

Café Pacific: https://davidrobie.nz/

The Earthwise interview with David Robie.                         Video: Plains Radio FM96.9FM

New Zealand activists Youssef Sammour and Rana Hamida have been selected to join the volunteer crew on the international Freedom Flotilla ship Handala, currently visiting European ports and heading to break Israel’s siege of Gaza.

They will be farewelled at 10:30am upstairs at the Auckland International Airport on Sunday, reports Kia Ora Gaza.

Trevor Hogan, a former Irish rugby champion and pro-Palestinian activist who participated in several flotillas that were water cannoned and pirated by the Israeli military in the past, has sent a special message to the volunteers and those supporting the freedom missions in “a time of great, unquantifiable grief”.

• READ MORE: Education head condemns Israel’s ‘shameful’ ruin of UN schools in Gaza
• Why is NZ being so obstinate over its weak position on Gaza and Palestine?
  
• At least 25 killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza today, including infant
• ‘Traumatised, exhausted’: 1 million ‘trapped’ as south Gaza war rages – World Food Programme
• Kia Ora Gaza website
• Other War on Gaza reports

“While our Handala has just left the Irish port of Cobh and we continue to work on reflagging the flotilla ships stuck in Istanbul, the decades of solidarity from Ireland remains palpable, unwavering and tremendously significant for Palestinians and the wider diaspora,” said Kia Ora Gaza.

“This is a reminder to everyone watching: on those dark days, take time to regroup, regather, and come back again. Until Palestine is free.”

Trevor Hogan’s message to the world in support of Palestine.  Video: Freedom Flotila Coalition

Concerns raised over US ‘floating pier’
Meanwhile, Ahmed Omar in Monoweiss reports that in March 2024, US President Joe Biden announced in his State of the Union address that the US would be building a temporary “floating pier” on the Gaza shoreline to deliver “humanitarian aid” to the starving population in Gaza.

“No US boots will be on the ground,” he promised.

Since then, however, critics have raised concerns that the pier is not only being used for “humanitarian” purposes but is being employed for military activities that aid in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.

An intelligence source from within the resistance in Gaza, who spoke to Mondoweiss under conditions of anonymity, said there were mounting signs the US pier could also be used to forcibly displace Palestinians.

This would provide an alternative to the original Israeli plan of forcing Palestinians into the Sinai, which was rejected by Egypt early on in the war.

“The floating pier project is an American solution to the displacement dilemma in Gaza,” the source said.

“It goes beyond both the Israeli solution of displacing Gazans into Sinai . . . and the Egyptian suggestion of displacing [Gazans] into the Naqab [desert].”

Instead, the source said, the US pier would be used to facilitate the displacement of Gazans to Cyprus, and then eventually to Lebanon or Europe.

These concerns have been brought into sharp relief after the Israeli army committed a massacre in Nuseirat refugee camp last weekend, killing at least 274 Palestinians in order to retrieve four Israeli captives.

The US pier was at the centre of coverage of the massacre, as multiple news sources, videos, and eyewitness accounts from Gaza indicated that US forces may have been involved in the operation and that humanitarian trucks entering Nuseirat were hiding the Israeli soldiers that carried out the massacre.

Reported in collaboration with Kia Ora Gaza.

The editorial board of the Columbia Law Review journal — made up of faculty and alumni from the university’s law school — shut down the review’s website on Monday after editors refused to halt publication of an academic article by a Palestinian human rights lawyer that was critical of Israel.

Al Jazeera reports that the student editors of the journal said they were pressured by the board to not publish the article which accused Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza and implementing an apartheid regime against Palestinians.

The review’s website was taken down after the article was published on Monday morning and remained offline last night, reports AP news agency.

• READ MORE: 66 killed in central Gaza as Palestinians flee renewed Israeli offensive
• The censored Columbia Law Review article
• Other Gaza censorship reports

A static homepage informed visitors the domain was “under maintenance”.

Several editors at the Columbia Law Review described the board’s intervention as an unprecedented breach of editorial independence at the periodical.

In a letter sent to student editors yesterday, the board of directors said it was concerned that the article, titled “Nakba as a Legal Concept,” had not gone through the “usual processes of review or selection for articles”.

However, the editor involved in soliciting and editing the aricle said they had followed a “rigorous review process”.

‘A microcosm of repression’
The author of the article, human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah, a Harvard doctoral candidate, said the suspension of the journal’s website should be seen as “a microcosm of a broader authoritarian repression taking place across US campuses”.

The Intercept reports that this was the second time in barely eight months that Eghbariah had been censored by US academic publications.

Last November, the Harvard Law Review made the unprecedented decision to “kill” (not publish) the author’s edited essay prior to publication. The author was due to be the first Palestinian legal scholar published in the quality journal.

As The Intercept reported at the time, “Eghbariah’s essay — an argument for establishing ‘Nakba’, the expulsion, dispossession, and oppression of Palestinians, as a formal legal concept that widens its scope — faced extraordinary editorial scrutiny and eventual censorship.”

“When the Harvard publication spiked his article, editors from another Ivy League law school reached out to Eghbariah.

“Students from the Columbia Law Review solicited a new article from the scholar and, upon receiving it, decided to edit it and prepare it for publication.

“Now, eight months into Israel’s onslaught against Gaza, Eghbariah’s work has once again been stifled.”

“Zionism and Nakba are mutually constitutive.”
-Rabea Eghbariah

This perspective unmasks Zionism’s euphemisms of “right to exist” & “safe homeland” to reveal its vile heart of racism & violence—the ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian People. https://t.co/6E4Oqohobk pic.twitter.com/pKsneYPIt2

— Eusocial Ape (@EusocialApe) June 5, 2024

A New Zealand solidarity group for Palestine with a focus on settler colonialism has condemned the latest atrocities by the Israeli military in its attack on Rafah — in defiance of the International Court of Justice order last Friday to halt the assault — and also French brutality in Kanaky New Caledonia.

In its statement, Justice for Palestine (J4Pal) said that Monday had been “a day of unconscionable and unforgivable violence” against the people of Rafah.

As global condemnation over the attack on displaced Palestinians in a tent camp and the UN Security Council convened an emergency meeting on the ground invasion, a new atrocity was reported yesterday.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: Tent cities attacked as tanks roll into Rafah
• Other Israeli War on Gaza reports

Israeli forces shelled a tent camp in a designated “safe zone” west of Rafah and killed at least 21 people, including 13 women and girls, in the latest mass killing of Palestinian civilians.

“Gaza deserves better. Kanaky deserves better. Aotearoa deserves better. All our babies deserve better,” said the group.

“It is not our role to articulate what indigenous Kanak people are fighting for. Kanak people are the experts in their own lives and struggle, and they must be listened to on their own terms at this critical moment,” the statement said.

“Our work for Palestinian rights is, however, part of a larger struggle against settler-colonialism. It is our duty, honour and joy to make connections in this common struggle.

‘Dangerous ideologies’
“These connections begin right here in Aotearoa, where Māori never ceded sovereignty. As New Zealand’s current government, France and Israel all demonstrate, the dangerous ideologies of colonialism are not yet the footnotes in history we strive to make them.

“We recognise common injustices:

• The failure of media to place the current uprising in the context of 150 years of history of French violence in Kanak,
• The characterisation of Kanak activists as ‘terrorists’ all while a militarised foreign force represses them on their own land,
• The deliberate transfer of a settler population to disenfranchise indigenous people and their control over their own territory,
• A refusal to engage with the righteous aspirations of the Kanak people, and
•The lack of support from Western governments around these aspirations.”

Justice for Palestine said in its statement that it was its sincere belief that a world without colonialism was not only necessary, it was near.

“With thanks to the steadfastness of not only Kanak, Māori and Palestinian people, and indigenous people everywhere.

“The struggle of the Kanak people is an inspiration and reminder that while we may face the brute power of empire, we are many, and we are not going anywhere.”

Justice for Palestine is a human rights organisation working in Aotearoa to promote justice, peace and freedom for the Palestinian people.

It added: “Now is the hour for Te Tiriti justice, and liberation for both the Kanak and Palestinian people.”

Thousands of students across Aotearoa New Zealand protested in a nationwide rally at seven universities across the country in a global day of solidarity with Palestine, calling on their universities to divest all partnerships with Israel.

A combined group of students and academic staff from the country’s two largest universities chanted “AUT take a stand” at their rally in the Hikuwai Plaza in the heart of Auckland University of Technology (AUT).

Students from the neighbouring University of Auckland (UOA) also took part.

• READ MORE: Ahead of ICJ ruling, Israel intensifies assault on Gaza’s Rafah
• Other Israeli War on Gaza reports

The students carried placards such as “Educators against genocide”, “Stand for students. Stand for justice. Stand with Palestine”, “Maite Te Awa Ki Te Moana” – te reo for “From the river to the sea – Free Palestine”.

Another sign said, “No universities left in Gaza”, referring to Israeli military forces having destroyed all 12 universities in the besieged enclave during the war now in its eighth month.

“We urge all students, alumni, and staff from universities across Aotearoa to sign the University Students’ Open Letter,” said organisers.

“Let’s hold our institutions accountable, demanding they meet our calls for action and adhere to the guidelines of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

‘Gross injustices’
“Together, we can push for change and recognise Israel’s violations for what they are — gross injustices against humanity.

“Stand with us in this global movement of solidarity with Palestine.”

The rally was in support of thousands of students around the world demonstrating against the Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Their aim with their universities:

* Declare and recognise Palestine as an independent and sovereign state;
* Disclose and divest all partnerships with Israel; and
* Denounce antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of discrimination.

Ali, the “voice of Free Palestine”.      Video: Café Pacific

A declaration said that the nationwide protest expressed “our unapologetic solidarity with Palestinians and our commitment to the Palestinian struggle for liberation “.

“We refuse to be silent or complicit in genocide, and we reject all forms of cooperation between our institutions and the Israeli state.

‘Major win’ at Melbourne University
Meanwhile, in Melbourne pro-Palestine protesters who occupied a university building last week called off their encampment.

Protest leaders told a media conference at the University of Melbourne that had agreed to end the protest after the institution had agreed to disclose research partnerships with weapons manufacturers.

“After months of campaigning, rallies, petitions, meetings and in recent weeks, the encampment, the University of Melbourne has finally agreed to meet an important demand of our campaign,” a spokesperson later told the ABC.

“This is a major win.”

Following an open letter by Auckland University academics speaking out in support of their students’ right to protest against the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza, a group of academics at Otago University have today also called on New Zealand academic institutions to “repair colonial violence” and end divestment from any economic ties with Israel.

“In order to honour commitments to decolonisation and human rights, universities must act now,” says the open letter signed by more than 165 academics.

“As a te Tiriti-led university in Aotearoa New Zealand”, the academic staff said they were calling for the University of Otago to immediately:

• READ MORE: ‘Student revolution’: US protesters promise to continue despite crackdown
• Biden hails ‘press freedom, democracy’ but ignores Gaza media death toll of 142
• Other War on Gaza student protest reports

1. Endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and disclose and divest from any economic ties to the apartheid state of Israel,
2. Condemn those universities [that] have called on police to violently remove protesters from their campuses, and
3. Call for the protection of students’ rights to protest and assemble and endorse the aims of those protests — the immediate demand of ceasefire and longer term demands to end the apartheid, violence, and illegal occupations under which Palestinians continue to suffer.

The full letter states:

“Kia ora koutou,

“As we write this letter, universities across the United States have become battlegrounds. University administrators are sanctioning and encouraging violence against students and faculty members as they protest the genocidal violence in Gaza.

“Over 35,000 Palestinians have been killed—of those deaths, it is estimated that more than 13,000 of them have been children. Israel has destroyed all 12 universities in Gaza and targeted staff and students at those universities.

“The recent discovery of mass graves in Gaza, the hands and feet of many victims bound, has shocked the conscience of the world.

“In keeping with a long tradition of campus protest, students and staff are demanding their universities stop contributing to genocidal violence.

Student bodies brutalised
“In return, their bodies have been brutalised, their own universities endorsing their arrests. Universities should, at the very least, offer crucial spaces for protest, debate, and working through collective responses to urgent social issues. Instead, administrators have called in militarised police forces, fully decked out in anti-riot regalia to repress student protests.

“The results have been predictable: Professors and students have been arrested en masse and physically assaulted (beaten, pepper-sprayed, shot with rubber bullets, knocked unconscious, choked, and dragged limp across university lawns, their hands cuffed behind them).

“We at the University of Otago, an institution committed to acknowledging, confronting, and seeking to repair colonial violence, are part of a society that extends far beyond the borders of Aotearoa New Zealand.

“Acknowledging our history, including that history within its students’ experiences and working practices, compels us as a collective to call out and condemn colonial violence as and when we see it. It is not at all surprising that many of the protests in Aotearoa New Zealand calling for a ceasefire in Gaza have been organised and led by Māori alongside Palestinian activists.

“Most recently, the Ngāti Kahungunu iwi have come out against the genocide, with one of the rally organisers, Te Ōtane Huata, stating “Tino rangatiratanga to me isn’t only self-determination of our people, it is also collective liberation.”

“If it is to mean anything to be a te Tiriti-led university here in Aotearoa New Zealand, we must include acknowledgment that the history of Aotearoa New Zealand has been marked by consistent and egregious violations of that very treaty, and that such violations are indelibly part of settler colonialism.

“Violent expropriation, cultural annihilation, and suppression of resistance have been the hallmarks of this project.

Decolonisation and human rights
“In order to honour commitments to decolonisation and human rights, universities must act now. We thus call for the University of Otago to immediately:

“1. Endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and disclose and divest from any economic ties to the apartheid state of Israel,
“2. Condemn those universities who have called on police to violently remove protesters from their campuses,
“3. Call for the protection of students’ rights to protest and assemble and endorse the aims of those protests – the immediate demand of ceasefire and longer term demands to end the apartheid, violence, and illegal occupations under which Palestinians continue to suffer.

“In other words, the University must call for a liberated Palestinian state if it is to conceptualise itself as a university that seeks to confront its own settler-colonial foundations.

“The above position aligns with the named values of our universities here in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is our duty that we make these demands, particularly as Palestinians have seen the systematic destruction of their universities and educational infrastructure while Palestinian students of our universities have witnessed their families and friends targeted by the Israeli government.

“If the University of Otago wants to authentically position itself as an institution that takes seriously its role as a critic and conscience of society and acknowledges the importance of coming to grips with ongoing settler-colonial violence, it should take these demands seriously.

“We further support the Open Letter to Vice-Chancellor Dawn Freshwater from Auckland University Staff in Solidarity with Students Protesting for Palestine.”

In solidarity,
Dr Peyton Bond (Teaching Fellow, Sociology, Gender Studies and Criminology)
Dr Simon Barber (Lecturer in Sociology)
Rachel Anna Billington (PhD candidate, Politics)
Dr Neil Vallelly (Lecturer in Sociology)
Erin Silver (PhD candidate, Sociology)
Professor Richard Jackson (Leading Thinker Chair in Peace and Conflict Studies)
Dr Lynley Edmeades (Lecturer in English)
Dr Olivier Jutel (Lecturer in Media, Film and Communication)
Lydia Le Gros (PhD candidate & Assistant Research Fellow, Public Health)
Dr Abbi Virens (Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Sustainability)
Sonja Bohn (PhD candidate, Sociology)
Joshua James (PhD Candidate, Gender Studies)
Sophie van der Linden (Postgrad Student, Bioethics)
Dr Fairleigh Evelyn Gilmour (Lecturer in Gender Studies, Criminology)
Brandon Johnstone (Administrator, TEU Otago Branch Committee Member)
Dr David Jenkins (Lecturer in Politics)
Jordan Dougherty (Masters student, Sociology)
Rosemary Overell (Senior Lecturer in Media, Film and Communication)
Dr Sebastiaan Bierema – (Research Fellow, Public Health)
Dr Sabrina Moro (Lecturer in Media, Film and Communication studies)
Rauhina Scott-Fyfe (Māori Archivist, Hocken Collections)
Dr Lena Tan (Senior Lecturer, International Relations & Politics)
Cassie Withey-Rila (Assistant Research Fellow, Otago Medical School)
Duncan Newman (Postgrad student, Management)

• The full list of signatories is here

The Aotearoa chapter of the Women’s International league for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) has appealed to the New Zealand government to call out Israel over the “cruel and barbaric use of force” in Gaza and demand a permanent ceasefire.

The league’s open letter was sent to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters today as Israeli tanks took over the Rafah crossing on Gaza’s border with Egypt and aircraft bombarded residential homes.

This may be the start of the long threatened assault on southern Gaza where 1.6 million people have been sheltering since the end of last year.

• READ MORE: Palestinians ‘trapped and attacked’ as Israeli forces seize Rafah crossing
• Other War on Gaza reports

The border attack comes after Israel announced it would continue its military operation in Rafah even after Hamas had accepted a Gaza ceasefire proposal put forward by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

WILPF works to end and prevent war, ensure that women are represented at all levels in the peace-building process, defend the human rights of women, and promote social, economic and political justice.

The WILPF open letter also condemned the closure of the global Al Jazeera television network’s operation in Israel. It said:

“Kia ora Prime Minister Luxon and Minister of Foreign Affairs Peters,

“The closure of Al Jazeera media in Israel at the same time as the Israeli occupation forces initiate the long-planned invasion of southern Gaza — an act deplored by many around the world – should prompt all democratic governments to call an end to this cruel and barbaric use of force in Gaza, along with settler violence in the West Bank

“Palestinians have been ordered to move but, as I am sure you are aware, there is no safe place to move to.

“Thousands more Palestinians will die if the Israeli government continue their genocidal practices.

“I call on you as the New Zealand government and representatives of us all to call Israel out and demand a permanent ceasefire.

“New Zealand governments have spoken up in former times, at the League of Nations and at the United Nations, including against the genocide in Rwanda.

“Government reiterated its support for a two-state solution but Israeli impunity will prevent that outcome.

“One small state can start a trend.

“If the government is unable or unwilling to call an end to the Israeli invasion and a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, can you tell [us] the reasons, please.”

About 500 people honoured Palestinian journalists in the heart of the New Zealand city of Auckland today for their brave coverage of Israel’s War on Gaza, now in its seventh month with almost 35,000 people killed, mostly women and children.

Marking the annual May 3 World Press Freedom Day “plus two”, the crowd also strongly applauded UNESCO’s Guillermo Cano Award being presented to the Palestinian journalists for their “courage and commitment”.

Several speakers gave tributes to the journalists, the more than 100 Gazan news workers killed had their names read out and put on display, and cellphones were lit up due to the breeze preventing candle flames.

• READ MORE: Auckland academics call out university stance over pro-Palestine protest
• Media freedom award for the Gaza journalists who have paid a terrible price in Israel’s genocidal war
• Other War on Gaza reports

Activist MC Anna Lee, wo represents several groups including NZEI Te Riu Roa Educators for Gaza/Palestine, praised the journalists and said they set an example to the world.

Shut the Gaza war down chants in Auckland.     Video: Café Pacific

Journalist Dr David Robie, convenor of Pacific Media Watch, said 143 journalists had been killed, according to Al Jazeera and the Gaza Media Office, and it was mostly targeted “assassination by design”.

He paid tribute to several individual journalists as well as the group, including Shireen Abu Akleh, shot by an Israeli sniper more than a year before the October 7 war outbreak, and Hind Khoudary, a young journalist who had inspired people around the world.

The Guillermo Cano Prize was awarded to the Gaza journalists in Santiago, Chile, as part of World Press Freedom Day global events.

Nasser Abu Baker, president of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS) and vice-president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), received the UNESCO prize on behalf of his colleagues in Gaza.

‘Unique suffering, fearless reporting’
The UN cultural agency has recognised the “unique suffering and fearless reporting” of Gaza’s journalists by awarding them the freedom prize.

Apart from those journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza since October 7, nearly all the rest have been injured, displaced or bereaved.

From the start of the conflict, Israel closed Gaza’s borders to international journalists, and none have been allowed free access to the enclave since.

A thousand Gazan journalists were working at the start of the war, and more than a 100 of them have been killed.

“As a result,” reports the IFJ, “the profession has suffered a mortality rate in excess of 10 percent — about six times higher than the mortality rate of the general population of Gaza and around three times higher than that of health professionals.

PJS president Baker said: “Journalists in Gaza have endured a sustained attack by the Israeli army of unprecedented ferocity — but have continued to do their jobs, as witnesses to the carnage around them.

“It is justified that they should be honoured on World Press Freedom Day.

Naming the martyred Gaza journalists.   Video: Café Pacific

‘Most deadly attack on press freedom’
“What we have seen in Gaza is surely the most sustained and deadly attack on press freedom in history. This award shows that the world has not forgotten and salutes their sacrifice for information.”

IFJ general secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “This prize is a real tribute to the commitment to information of journalists in Gaza.

“Journalists in Gaza are starving, homeless and in mortal danger. UNESCO’s recognition of what they are still enduring is a huge and well-deserved boost.”

Kia Ora Gaza – doctors speak out.      Video: Café Pacific

Gaza Freedom Flotilla blocked
Also at the rally today were Kia Ora Gaza’s organiser Roger Fowler and two of the three New Zealand doctors who travelled to Turkiye to embark on the Freedom Flotilla which was sending three ships with humanitarian aid to break the Gaza siege.

Israel thwarted the mission for the time being by pressuring the African nation of Guinea-Bissau to withdraw the maritime flag the ships would have been sailing under.

However, flotilla organisers are working hard to find another flag country for the ships and the doctors vowed to rejoin the mission.

Pacific Media Watch

A score of Palestine solidarity protesters draped themselves in white shrouds with mock blood in a sombre “die-in” demonstration at Te Komitanga Square — the heart of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city — today as speakers urged people to take a stronger boycott against Israeli products.

The rally by hundreds of protesters marked Israel’s killing of more than 34,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children — and wounding more than 77,000 in its genocidal war on Gaza.

The war has lasted 205 days so far with no let-up in the deadly assault on the besieged enclave and protesters staged 35 events around New Zealand this week as global demonstrations continue to grow.

• READ MORE: Israel blocks international mission to sail desperately needed aid into Gaza
• Israeli pressure delays Freedom Flotilla’s departure for Gaza: Organisers
• Hundreds of university students arrested in US as Gaza war protests spread

Opposition MPs took part in the rally, including Labour’s Shanan Halbert and Green Party’s Steve Abel and Ricardo Menéndez March.

Activist and educator Maryam Perreira called on Palestine supporters to step up their boycott and divestments pressure — “it’s working, sanctions brought down apartheid South Africa and this will bring down the Israeli genocidal regime”.

“Food not bombs for Gaza”.    Video: Café Pacific

She said the courage and commitment of the Palestinian resistance had become an inspiration to the world.

Send Israeli ambassador home
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott called for sanctions action by the New Zealand government.

He urged Palestine supporters to call on the government to:

• Send the Israeli ambassador home, and
• End the working holiday visa for 200 Israelis who come to New Zealand to rest and relax “after committing genocide in Gaza”.

Scott called on New Zealanders to email Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Immigration Minister Erica Stanford to take action.

“Try just one email and see how it goes. Then another on another topic. Then another. That’s how I started a while ago,” Scott said.

“We need a tide of emails to get them to understand that Kiwis don’t want the Israeli ambassador here.

“Neither do we want the young Israelis committing genocide today and to walk among us tomorrow.”

More than 13,000 people have signed a petition calling for the closure of the Israeli embassy in Welington.

“They can’t demonise an entire nation.”  Video: Café Pacific

Superfund divestment
Scott said divestment pressure also worked – it is one of the driving forces for student protests at some 70 universities across the US over the past week with police arresting hundreds.

He spoke about the NZ government’s Superfund which has investments all over the world.

“A few years ago, they invested in Israeli banks which were investing in the building of illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestine Territories. They were involved in investing and enabling crimes against humanity,” Scott said.

“Our efforts got the NZ Superfund to divest from those banks in 2021.”

“BDS – more action call.”    Video: Café Pacific

He called on people with KiwiSaver fund accounts to check them out for investments in “Israeli companies who are in any way involved in the occupation”.

“We’re now calling for everyone to boycott Israeli products — or those companies which are complicit in Israeli crimes against humanity or the illegal occupation, land theft, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and now genocide.”

Scott cited the boycott target list of the global BDS movement — Ahava (“Dead Sea mineral skin care products”), BP and Caltex, Hewlett-Packard, McDonalds, Obela Hummus and SodaStream.

“The key is for all of us to take action today. Remember — boycott, divest, sanction.”

Meanwhile, 1News reports that three New Zealand doctors planning to sail with an independent flotilla carrying aid to Gaza have had their mission “scuppered at the last minute”. They blame Israel for the delay.

The doctors — Dr Ali Al-Kenani, Dr Wasfi Shahin and Dr Faiez Idais — left for Istanbul 10 days ago where they joined other international volunteers in the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, said 1News.

Organisers of the humanitarian aid mission said the boats were set to sail under the flag of the West African nation of Guineau Bisseau but said the country had withdrawn permission to use its flag under pressure from Israel.

The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza.

All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave.

However, organisers received word of an “administrative roadblock” initiated by Israel in an attempt to prevent the departure.

• READ MORE: Nelson Mandela’s grandson joins Gaza flotilla, slams ‘genocide complicit’ leaders
• Other Gaza Freedom Flotilla reports

Israel is reportedly pressuring the Republic of Guinea Bissau to withdraw its flag from the flotilla’s lead ship — Akdeniz (“Mediterranean”).

This triggered a request for an additional inspection, this one by the flag state, that delayed yesterday’s planned departure.

“This is another example of Israel obstructing the delivery of life-saving aid to the people in Gaza who face a deliberately created famine,” said a Freedom Flotilla statement.

“How many more children will die of malnutrition and dehydration because of this delay and an ongoing siege which must be broken?”

Israeli tactics
This is not the first time that Israel has used such tactics to stop Freedom Flotilla ships from sailing.

“We have overcome them before and are diligently working to overcome this latest attempt,” said the flotilla statement.

“Our vessels have already passed all required inspections and we are confident that the Akdeniz will pass this inspection provided there is no political interference.

“We expect this to be no more than a few days delay. Israel will not break our resolve to reach the people of Gaza.”

‘Freedom flotilla’ defying Israel’s Gaza blockade.       Video: Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera reports that lawyers, aid workers and activists are on board the ship in preparation for efforts by the flotilla to break the Israeli air, land and sea blockade of Gaza.

About 100 media people are on board as well, hoping to provide a more global eye on what is happening in Gaza.

Chief Mandla Mandela, the grandson of former South African President Nelson Mandela, is part of the flotilla that plans to soon set off for Gaza.

“For us South Africans, the Palestinian issue has always been close and dear to our hearts,” Mandela said, noting that this grandfather had also said, “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people.”

Published in collaboration with Kia Ora Gaza.

Chief Mandla Mandela, a member of the National Assembly of South Africa and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, has joined the Freedom Flotilla in istanbul as the ships prepare to sail for Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza.

Mandela is also the ambassador for the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine.

When he met with flotilla participants yesterday, including the Kia Ora Gaza team from Aotearoa New Zealand, he said: “It was not only our efforts in South Africa that defeated the apartheid regime, but it was also efforts in every corner of the world through international solidarity of the anti-apartheid campaign.”

• READ MORE: Other Kia Ora Gaza and Freedom Flotilla reports

Chief Mandla Mandela talks to the Freedom Flotilla.   Video: Freedom Flotilla/Palestine Human Rights

Mandela said that while his grandfather was incarcerated for life imprisonment on Robben Island, he drew “immense inspiration” from the Palestinian struggle.

He added that Palestine “was the greatest moral issue of our time, yet many governments choose to remain silent and look away”.

“Many have been complicit in the genocide, the ethnic cleansing, the war crimes, and crimes against humanity that have been meted out on a daily basis against our Palestinian brothers and sisters — not just the 7th of October, but for the past 76 years.”

— Chief Mandla Mandela

Incredible to see Mandla Mandela address Gaza Freedom Flotilla participants in Istanbul today.

He spoke of his grandfather Nelson Mandela’s deep love for the Palestinian struggle and how Palestine inspired generations of South Africans in their fight for freedom. pic.twitter.com/6aVwwB4fIu

— Aamer Rahman (@aamer_rahman) April 24, 2024

When New Zealanders commemorate Anzac Day today on April 25, it’s not only to honour the soldiers who lost their lives in World War I and subsequent conflicts, but also to mark a defining event for national identity.

The battle of Gallipoli against the Ottoman Empire, the story goes, was where the young nation passed its first test of courage and determination.

The question of why New Zealand soldiers ended up on Turkish beaches in April 1915 is typically not part of these commemorations. Rather, our collective memories begin with the moment of the early morning landing.

• READ MORE: New lessons about old wars: keeping the complex story of Anzac Day relevant in the 21st century
• A century on, the Balfour Declaration still shapes Palestinians’ everyday lives
• Less than illustrious: remembering the Anzacs means also not forgetting some committed war crimes
• Other war on Gaza reports

Consider, for example, the timing of the Anzac Day dawn service, or the Museum of New Zealand-Te Papa Tongarewa’s exhibition, Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War, which plunges visitors straight into the action.

This selective retelling of history is necessary for the “coming of age” narrative to work. It helps conceal that Britain was pursuing its own colonial ambitions against the Ottomans, and that New Zealand took part in World War I as “a member of the British club”, as historian Ian McGibbon puts it, loyally devoted to the imperial cause.

Against the background of the recent horrors and escalating tensions in the Middle East, however, it seems more important than ever to make these silences speak in our commemorations of Gallipoli.

Britain’s colonial interests
While the causes of World War I are complex and multifaceted, historians have extensively documented that Britain had long seen parts of the decaying Ottoman Empire as prey for colonial expansion.

Already, in the late 1800s, Britain had taken control of Cyprus and Egypt.

Turkey’s Middle Eastern possessions were of interest to the government in London because they provided not only a land route to the colony in India, but also rich oil reserves.

Hence, when the Ottoman Empire signed an alliance with Germany — mainly to guard against Russian territorial aspirations – and somewhat reluctantly entered World War I, the British did not lament this as a diplomatic defeat.

“The decrepit Ottoman Empire was more useful to them as a victim than as a dependent ally,” as the late historian Michael Howard explained.

The day after Britain declared war on the Ottomans on November 5, 1914, British troops attacked Basra (in today’s southern Iraq) to secure nearby oil facilities.

In the following months, the Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia won a number of easy victories, which fuelled the belief the Turkish military was weak. This in turn led Britain to devise a plan to launch a direct strike on Constantinople, the Ottoman capital.

First, however, they had to clear the Gallipoli peninsula of enemy defences. And who better suited to this task than the first convoy of Anzac troops, just a short distance away in Egypt after passing through the Suez Canal?

Palestine: a complex tangle of pledges
As is well known, war planners in London had underestimated the enemy’s military strength. The battle of Gallipoli ended in a Turkish victory over Britain and its allies.

Nevertheless, fortunes eventually turned against the Ottoman Empire.

Although a whole century has gone by, British diplomatic efforts and secret agreements that were meant to accelerate the collapse of the Ottoman Empire still shape the Middle East today.

Most significantly, it is the violent conflict over Palestine that can be traced back to colonial power dealings during World War I. The crux of the problem is that Britain affirmed three irreconcilable wartime commitments in relation to Palestine.

First, in the hope of initiating an Arab revolt against Ottoman rule, the British made promises to Sharif Husayn, the emir of Mecca, about the creation of an independent Arab kingdom.

Second, in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the Ottomans’ Arab lands into British and French spheres of interest, Palestine was designated for international administration.

Third, in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, the British government pledged support for a “Jewish national home” in Palestine — a move motivated by a mixture of realpolitik and Biblical romanticism.

In the end, it was the third commitment that turned out to be the most enduring.

How should we remember Gallipoli?
Amid this complex history, we must not forget the thousands of New Zealand soldiers who died in World War I — men who had either volunteered, expecting a quick and heroic war, or served as draftees.

However, we need to have a public discussion about whether it is still appropriate for our commemorations to skip over the question of why these men fought in Europe and the Mediterranean.

Facing up to this question not only makes us aware of our responsibilities towards the Middle East problem, but it can also serve as a lesson for the future — not to blindly follow great powers into their military adventures.

Olli Hellmann, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Students and activist staff at Australia’s University of Sydney (USyd) have set up a Gaza solidarity encampment in support of Palestinians and similar student-led protests in the United States.

The camp was pitched as mass graves, crippled hospitals, thousands of civilian deaths and the near-total destruction of infrastructure haunted Gaza with Israel’s war on the besieged Palestinian coastal enclave passing the 200 days milestone.

Nearly 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced and more than 14,500 children killed in the attack, which critics have dubbed a war of vengeance.

• READ MORE: In numbers: 200 days of Israel’s war on Gaza
• University students in Cairo, Sydney launch protests for Gaza amid crackdown in US
• Other war on Gaza reports

In Sydney, according to the university’s student newspaper, Honi Soit, the camp was established on the campus when tents were pitched “emblazoned with graffiti reading ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘from the river to the sea’”.

Students form several Australian universities were in attendance for the launch of the encampment, which was inaugurated with a student activist “speak out” on the subject of the war on Gaza and the demand for USyd management to drop any ties to the state of Israel.

According to the student newspaper: “Many chants that were used on US campuses in the past week were repeated at the encampment tonight like “disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest” followed by “Albanese/Sydney Uni you will see, Palestine will be free”.

Making our message clear!

We won’t let our university get away with being complicit with the weapons companies that arm the genocide in Gaza.#gazacampusyd #FreePalestine #FreeGaza #fromtherivertothesea pic.twitter.com/LHOqFsRg1B

— USyd SFP | Join the Gaza Solidarity Camp! (@SFP_USyd) April 24, 2024

Pro-Palestinian protests are gaining momentum at colleges and universities across the United States with street protests outside campuses as police have cracked down on the demonstrators.

Students at New York University, Columbia, Harvard and Yale are among those standing in solidarity with Palestinians and demanding an end to the war on Gaza.

Tensions flare at US universities over Gaza protests.

Tensions between pro-Palestinian student protesters and school administrators flared at several US universities Monday, as in-person classes were cancelled and demonstrators arrestedhttps://t.co/ByWzL8ZWhN pic.twitter.com/W5I08JqoBg

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) April 23, 2024

Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey, reporting from New York, said student demonstrators from New York University (NYU) gathered for hours in a park just off the campus to protest against the genocide.

The protest moved to the park following the mass arrest of 133 students and academic staff who had participated in a protest on the NYU campus the night before.

“As news spread of their arrests, so have demonstrations around the country — at other colleges and universities,” Saloomey said.

Columbia announced that it was introducing online classes for the the rest of the year to cope with the protests.

Watch Saloomey’s AJ report:

Columbia protests: Chants of ‘Azaadi’.               Video: Al Jazeera

The Al Jazeera Explainers team have put together a comprehensive report detailing the numbers that highlight the unprecedented level of violence unleashed by Israel on Gaza in the 200 days of war.

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters is putting off recognition of Palestine as a state, despite opposition Labour’s formal request that he make the move.

Peters said diplomatic recognition of Palestine was a matter of “when not if”, but doing so now could impede progress towards a two-state solution — and the focus should be on aid for civilians.

Labour’s foreign affairs spokesperson David Parker had written to Peters, calling for New Zealand to take “meaningful action” by recognising Palestine as a state.

• READ MORE: Gordon Campbell on Winston Peters’ pathetic speech at the UN
• Other reports on Palestine

He noted this did not mean a recognition of Hamas, “which is one political party in the Palestinian territories”.

“There can be no lasting peace without Palestinian statehood,” Parker wrote, pointing to 139 of the 193 member states of the United Nations having already recognised it.

“Recognition signals this. It doesn’t matter that the state is yet to be fully established, with agreed borders. Many states and much of the Western world recognised Israel well before it was established as a state. Similarly with Kosovo.”

Parker said New Zealand should do this by inviting the Palestinian Authority to send an ambassador to present their credentials to New Zealand, a role which could be performed by the Head of the General Delegation of Palestine based in Canberra Izzat Abdulhadi.

‘Immediate ceasefire’ needed
Peters, however, said the “immediate and urgent need is for an immediate ceasefire and the provision of aid to help alleviate the desperate plight of an innocent civilian population”.

“The government supports the establishment of a Palestinian state and has done so for decades. We must see momentum towards this goal and it’s a matter of ‘when not if’ we see Palestinian statehood,” he wrote.

However, he said they could not afford to take focus away from the current crisis.

“Bluntly asserting statehood unilaterally at this point, however well intentioned, would do nothing to alleviate the current plight of the Palestinian people. Indeed, it might impede progress.

“We would need to be sure that any change in our current settings would contribute credibly to a serious diplomatic push to achieve a two-state solution. We do not believe we are currently at that point.

“We are realistic that achieving this will require serious negotiations, including over the territory and political authority of a future Palestinian state. Statehood is neither a prerequisite for renewed negotiations, nor is it a guarantee they will progress faster.

“It is important for any Palestinian state that it does not contain elements that threaten Israel’s security, and that the Palestinian Authority can govern effectively. That is why we have said an organisation like Hamas — which commits terrorism — cannot be part of future governance in Palestine.”

Case for recognition
Parker had laid out his case for recognition, saying Israel had ignored two resolutions of the UN General Assembly backed by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations, including “its closest ally, the United States, which has repeatedly said the loss of civilian life in Gaza is an unacceptable price to pay for Israel’s pursuit of Hamas”.

“The international community, including New Zealand, should not stand by and watch Israel breach international law and ignore entreaties without taking meaningful action,” he wrote.

“The absence of progress for many years, and the current war, make the status quo ever more untenable.

“The occupying Israeli government forces cannot legitimately continue to deprive Palestinians of basic rights to govern themselves.

“We believe it is time now for New Zealand to reinforce our opposition to the war and our support for a lasting peace including Palestinian independence.”

Parker said Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s recent statements also contemplating recognition was coincidental, and Labour had already decided to make the proposal to Peters.

He accepted it was unlikely Peters would be able to give an immediate response, other than to say no.

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

• Asia Pacific Report says that in the UN Security Council vote last week, only the US voted against Palestine becoming a full member of the United Nations by using its veto. But an overwhelming majority of 12 nations out of the 15 voted in favour of admission, including three of the permanent members (China, France and Russia). Only the fifth permanent member, UK, and Switzerland abstained.
• Palestine currently has had permanent observer status since 2012.

Palestine solidarity activists are preparing a flotilla to deliver urgently needed humanitarian aid to Gaza, vowing to break Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian territory on board the Akdeniz, a seven-deck passenger ship.

Currently docked in Istanbul, the ship will carry 800 people from more than 30 nations, from Indonesia to the US state of Hawai’i, and is expected to transport 5500 tonnes of aid to Gaza once it sets sail from Turkey in the coming days.

On Friday, reports in Israel media suggested the Israeli authorities are preparing to intercept it. The activists joining the Akdeniz will be mindful of a previous fatal attempt by a vessel of comparable size to set sail from Turkey to Gaza.

• READ MORE:  Rousing farewell for Kiwi doctors flying out to Gaza aid flotilla
• Other Kia Ora Gaza and Freedom Flotilla reports

The Mavi Marmara was a Turkish aid ship, part of a flotilla attempting to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip in May 2010. Israeli commandos intercepted the flotilla in international waters, boarded the Mavi Marmara and killed nine Turkish activists, injuring several others.

The incident sparked international condemnation and strained relations between Turkey and Israel.

The acquisition of the Akdeniz was made possible through the support of four million donors worldwide.

Organised by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), a coalition of 12 countries including Turkey — and New Zealand through Kia Ora Gaza — in partnership with İnsani Yardım Vakfı (IHH), the mission aims to break the deadly siege that has severely impacted the lives of the people of Gaza for years amid Israel’s genocidal war that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians since October 7.

Pro-Palestinian activist and human rights lawyer Huwaida Arraf, who was on the Mavi Marmara in 2010, announced she would also join the flotilla.

“While we recognise Israel’s potential for intercepting the mission, we hope for a peaceful outcome. If they choose to attack, those on board are prepared to engage in nonviolent resistance,” she told reporters.

Rousing farewell for #Kiwi #doctors flying out to #Gaza aid flotilla #AsiaPacificReport #KiaOraGaza #humanitarianaid @palestine @EyeonPalestine @OnlinePalEng @PalestineChron @uriohau https://t.co/4MSlwmRNYf pic.twitter.com/YUmJDlYDT7

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) April 19, 2024

Redemption and hope
Former US diplomat and retired US Army Colonel Ann Wright is one of the primary organisers of the FFC. In 2003, she resigned from the US government in protest against the Iraq War.

Speaking to The New Arab, Wright said the mission of the flotilla was to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza’s starved population.

“When you witness genocide, you can’t stand back. I’m 77, but even if I were 100, I’d still be on this ship,” said Wright.

Wright and her fellow activists are also determined to shine a spotlight on the dire humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza, bringing international human rights observers to the territory to witness the unfolding genocide.

“Our message to the people of Gaza is that we love you and are trying desperately to stop this genocide . . . To the Israeli people, I say you have a responsibility to stop your government’s genocide of Palestinians,” she said.

“I know the propaganda that comes from governments at war, having been a former US diplomat. But what’s happening in Gaza is genocide, and when you see what your government has done, you’ll be horrified.

“But now, I am older, and as I watch what is happening to the people of Gaza, I am appalled. It is not only the children, although that is what hits me the most.

‘Object to the US’
“But now, it is the time to object to what my country, the US is doing. This is what conscientious objection is about. I am putting my body, my money, my time, my everything on the line to say, ‘I object to what my country is doing, we should not be doing this’.

An activist called Michael said: “I want to stand up for those people in the US who agree with what I am doing and represent my country on this journey.”

Michael said he drew courage from the people of Gaza.

“The people of Palestine have lived under occupation for so long that it impresses me how a people like that can still have that courage and continue to stand for what they believe is right. I am guided by the bravery and courage of the people of Gaza in particular but all of Palestinians.”

Solidarity without borders
Argentinian surgeon Dr Carlos Tortta, a member of Doctors Without Borders, will also be on the ship.

“In all those places I saw a lot of pain but in no place I found such an amount of people killed and wounded and suffering like in Gaza when I worked in Al Shifa hospital in 2009,” he told The New Arab.

“When people ask me why I am going, the answer is why not? We are health workers, so it is natural to want to be with those injured,” he added.

Lee Patten, a 63-year-old former merchant navy officer from Liverpool, told The New Arab he felt compelled to join the voyage.

“When I see those poor children, I cannot simply turn away and leave them with no one to care for them,” he said.

The harrowing images emanating from Gaza have left an indelible mark on Lee.

“The sight of defenceless, innocent children is deeply distressing. It’s unfathomable to comprehend that such suffering is deliberate,” Lee explained.

Gaza ‘a stark warning’
“There seems to be a prevailing notion that what is happening in Gaza is confined to Palestinians and could never happen to Europeans. It’s astounding. Gaza serves as a stark warning to us all.”

As the onslaught continues with Israeli strikes devastating Gaza’s infrastructure, some participants on the boat say they are not going solely to help people but are determined to initiate the rebuilding process after the war.

Among them are several architects who have joined the mission to help in rebuilding Gaza.

Dilara Karasakiz, a 28-year-old Turkish architect among the almost 300 Turkish citizens participating, said she was taking this perilous journey for this very reason.

“I am going on this journey to help rebuild Gaza. We will rebuild everything Israel has destroyed.

“Gazans deserve a good standard of life, and we’re asking for their suffering to end and for them to be free. I’m not afraid because this ship is just a symbol of humanity.

“Why would I be afraid? I hope we’ll arrive in Gaza and bring some hope.”

Salwa Amor is an independent documentary maker. Most recently she was one of the producers of the award-winning BBC Panorama Children of Syria two-part series. This article was first published by The New Arab.

Meta, the giant social media corporation, has “unpublished” Green Left’s longstanding Facebook page, which had tens of thousands of followers.

We had been regularly posting stories, videos and photographs on the page from our consistent reporting of the news and views that seldom get into the mainstream media.

But our recent interviews with veteran Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled have resulted in what appears to be a 10-year ban, imposed without warning, nor an avenue of appeal.

• READ MORE:  Meta’s broken promises — systemic censorship of Palestine content on Instagram and Facebook
• Leila Khaled on the Kurdish struggle
• Facebook censorship on West Papua – then deafening silence — David Robie

Khaled, 79, is a member of the Palestinian Council (Palestine’s parliament) and a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. She lives in political exile in Jordan.

She is recognised as the Che Guevara of Palestine; she has enormous respect from Palestinians and millions of progressive people around the world.

The Facebook banning came shortly after Zionist organisations combined with right-wing media (SkyNews and the Murdoch media) to pressure Labor to say it would prevent Khaled from addressing Ecosocialism 2024 — a conference GL is co-hosting in Boorloo/Perth in June — by not only denying her a visa, but even banning her from speaking by video link.

Multiple visits
As GL reported, the excuse for such political censorship is, as the Executive Council of Australian Jewry alleged in its letter to Labor, that allowing Khaled to speak “would be likely to have the effect of inciting, promoting or advocating terrorism”.

This is nonsense.

Khaled has visited Britain on multiple occasions over the past few years. Israel issued her a visa to visit the West Bank in 1996.

She has visited Sweden and South Africa and, on one of her multiple visits, met Nelson Mandela (once also labelled a “terrorist” by the West), who warmly welcomed her.

A growing number of human rights activists, academics, journalists and community leaders have protested against this blatant political censorship. Their statements are here and we urge you to join in by sending us a short statement.

Khaled told GL the real reason for this censorship is to “make us shut up about what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank today”.

Meta has been exposed for carrying out “systematic online censorship”, particularly of Palestinian voices.

Suppression of content
In December 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented “over 1050 takedowns and other suppression of content on Instagram and Facebook that had been posted by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses”.

Meta did not apply the same censorship to pro-Zionist posts that incited hate and violence against Palestinians.

HRW noted that “of the 1050 cases reviewed for this report, 1049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel”.

Other studies have described the systematic “shadow banning” of pro-Palestinian posts on Facebook and Instagram.

AccessNow, which defends the “digital rights of people and communities at risk” reports that Meta is “systematically silencing the voices of both Palestinians and those advocating for Palestinians’ rights” through arbitrary content removals, suspension of prominent Palestinian and Palestine-related accounts, restrictions on pro-Palestinian users and content, shadow-banning, discriminatory content moderation policies, inconsistent and discriminatory rule enforcement.

Social media corporations, such as Meta and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), exercise a lot of power to manipulate people’s social and political views. This power has grown exponentially as more people access their news, views and information online.

Break this power
The search for ways to break this power will go on.

In the meantime there is one way readers can break the social media bans and restrictions on GL’s voice-for-the-resistance journalism: become a supporter and get GL delivered to you.

It has always been a struggle to keep people-power media projects alive. But GL has been going since 1991 and, with your help, we will not let the giant social media corporations silence us.

Republished with permission from Green Left.

A leader of one of New Zealand’s main Palestine solidarity groups today called on the government to expel the Israeli ambassador and call for an immediate ceasefire in the genocidal war on Gaza.

“We know what the crimes are — occupation. Land theft. Ethnic cleansing. Apartheid. Genocide. All crimes against humanity,” Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott told a cheering protest rally in Auckland’s Te Komititanga (Britomart) Square.

“My challenge to the politicians of Aotearoa is stand up for international law. Oppose Israeli crimes against humanity. Speak up.”

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: Ceasefire talks in Doha struggling amid disputes
• UN Security Council does not pass draft US resolution on Gaza ceasefire
• Other War on Gaza protests

Expressing a frequently cited epithet, “Silence is complicity”, Scott gave a brief rundown on the months of protest since the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, pointing out that the struggle really began after the Second World War with the Naqba (“Catastrophe”) forced expulsions of Palestinians in 1948.

“Another week. Another rally. Another month! Another rally,” Scott began.

“Another year. Another decade. And another decade. Another rally . . .

“This didn’t start on October 7 last year. It started in 1948.”

Heavy Israeli attacks
Scott’s condemnation of the New Zealand government for its “silence” followed news reports today that Israeli forces had launched “violent” ground and air attacks on Khan Younis and bombed homes in Rafah and Deir el-Balah, killing at least 14 Palestinians.

Scott said that “many long term campaigners” would know that “Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa stalwart, Janfrie Wakim, her husband [David] and a whole bunch of Palestine supporters were pivotal in setting up these [Auckland] rallies”.

“Monthly rallies. They were set up in 1981,” he said.

“Forty-three years ago. Forty-three long damn years ago . . .  silence from [New Zealand] governments.

“Throughout those years, we knew that extreme racism and Jewish supremacy was baked into the core of Zionist ideology.”

Turning to the systematic theft of Palestinian land, Scott asked: “Who here knew about the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine — the Israeli theft of Palestinian land.

“The Israeli ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians from their homes and lands.”

The Israeli apartheid had treated Palestinians as second class humans, if Zionist Israel had thought of Palestinians as humans at all.

“We took on South African apartheid back in the day,” he said about the 1981 anti-aterheid Springbok rugby tour protests which were inspirational in forcing eventual change to the minority white-ruled regime in Pretoria.

“But [with] the Israeli apartheid of Palestinians. . . Our governments have done nothing.

“All of those breaches of international law! Laws Aotearoa has signed up to. All crimes against humanity,” Scott said.

“You. I. And most people with a simple interest in knowing what was happening in Palestine know the facts. The truth.

“For decades, we have been taking action shouting the issues from the roof tops. Almost begging successive governments to take action.

“Not to spout silly, petty words and then look the other way but take real action.”

Scott said PSNA had written to ministers, taken delegations to Wellington, and visited local MPs in their offices as well as holding rallies.

“Successive governments knew. They all knew about these crimes against humanity.”

But for more than 85 years of Israel committing crimes against humanity, successive New Zealand governments had taken “no real action”.

“They have never sent the Israeli ambassador home to show our displeasure of those crimes against humanity,” Scott said.

He said New Zealand governments had allowed 200 young Israelis to come to Aotearoa to “rest and relax” after enforcing a vicious deadly occupation of Palestine.

“A dehumanising apartheid. And now, to rest and relax after committing genocide.

“What the hell are the politicians thinking? Where are their moral compasses? Israelis committing genocide,” Scott said.

“With a warm smile — welcome to Aotearoa and thanks for bringing your blood stained money with you. Feel free to walk among us, free from consequences.

“We must sanction genocidal Israel. Send the ambassador home. End the Israeli working holiday visa! Ban ZIM shipping agents from our lands.

“Silence is complicity — to the politicians: End your silence.”

Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March praised he crowd for protesting week after week and applying pressure on the government — “it’s thanks to you,” he said to resounding cheers.

He explained the moves the Green Party was taking to persuade the government to grant humanitarian visas for members of Palestinian families in New Zealand impacted on by the brutal ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

A Palestinian campaigner, Billy Hania, was also among many speakers. He broadcast a series of outspoken messages, including a Tiktok rundown on NZ government ministers’ support for Israel and from Michael Fakhri, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

He also praised many of the regular protesters for their perseverance and solidarity, naming several in the crowd.

Meanwhile, Hanan Ashrawi, a former member of the Palestine Legislative Council, has told Al Jazeera’s Inside Story that the US should support a “straightforward” resolution in the UN Security Council instead of using “using evasive tactics”.

UN Security Council members are expected to vote on a new resolution put forward by the elected “E10” members calling for an immediate ceasefire on Monday.

Israel is reported to have killed more than 32,070 people in the war on Gaza arrested more than 7350 Palestinians in West Bank so far during the war.

Visiting the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip, UN Secretary-General Antònio Guterres said a line of blocked aid trucks stuck on Egypt’s side of the border while Palestinians faced starvation on the other side was a “moral outrage”.

The New Zealand government is being urged to create a special humanitarian visa for Palestinians in Gaza with ties to this country.

More than 30 organisations — including World Vision, Save the Children and Greenpeace — have sent an open letter to ministers, calling on them to step up support.

They also want the government to help evacuate Palestinians with ties to New Zealand from Gaza, and provide them with resettlement assistance.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘Everyone is susceptible to death’ — Palestinian New Zealander Muhammad Dahlen
• ‘This is one way we could help’ — World Vision spokesperson Rebekah Armstrong
• Israel’s war on Gaza live: More than 100 killed in al-Aqsa Hospital attack

Their appeal is backed by Palestinian New Zealander Muhammad Dahlen, whose family is living in fear in Rafah after being forced to move there from northern Gaza.

His ex-wife and two children (who have had visitor visas since December) were now living in a garage with his mother, sisters and nieces who do not have visas.

“There is no food, there is no power . . .  it is a really hard situation to be living in,” he told RNZ Morning Report.

If his family could receive visas to come to New Zealand “it literally can be the difference between life and death”.

‘Everyone susceptible to death’
With Israel making it clear it still intended to send ground forces into Rafah “everyone is susceptible to death and at least we would be saving some lives”.

Dahlen said New Zealand had a tradition of accepting refugees from areas of conflict, including Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Syria.

“So why is this not the same?”

He appealed to Immigration Minister Erica Stanford and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters to intervene and approach the Egyptian government.

“We need these people out,” he said.

“Please give them visas; this is a first step. This is something super super difficult and huge and requires ministerial intervention.”

Border permission needed
At the Gaza-Egypt border potential refugees needed to gain the permission of officials from both Israel and Egypt.

Egypt had concerns about taking in too many refugees from Gaza so the New Zealand government would need to provide assurances flights had been organised.

If the government offered a charter flight to bring refugees to this country, “that would be amazing”.

World Vision spokesperson Rebekah Armstrong said the government had responded with immigration support in other humanitarian emergencies.

“We provided humanitarian visas for Ukrainians when their lives were torn apart by war, and we assisted Afghans to leave and resettle in this country when the Taliban returned to power. The situation for vulnerable Palestinians is no different.

“Palestinians are living in a perilous environment, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes; children and families starving with literally nothing to eat; and healthcare and medical treatment nearly impossible to access,” Armstrong said.

This is not a detainment camp in World War II, nor a prison in the Holocaust, this is Gaza in 2024. A chilling reminder that history repeats.

A holocaust is happening right before our eyes and the world is silent. pic.twitter.com/Y4SgE1yjji

— Mohamad Safa (@mhdksafa) March 10, 2024

Several hundred
The organisations did not know exactly how many people would qualify for such a visa, but estimated it could be several hundred.

“We know there’s around 288 Palestinian New Zealanders in New Zealand, and they have estimated that there would be around 300-400 people that are their family members that they’d like to bring here,” Armstrong said.

“That’s a very small number and as we’ve seen, in the case of Ukraine . . . the actual number of people that have probably come here would be significantly less than that, it’s not like they’re asking for the world. I think it’s quite a conservative number myself.”

She told Morning Report similar visas for Ukrainians and Afghans had been organised within days or weeks.

“It would be New Zealand’s response to this catastrophic situation that is unfolding. We want to be on the right side of history and this is one way we could help.”

She said embassies in the region would need to assist with the logistics of people leaving Gaza.

NZ government ‘monitoring’
Stanford said in a statement the government was monitoring the situation in Gaza.

“The issue in Gaza is primarily a humanitarian and border issue, not a visa issue, as people are unable to leave.

“People who have relatives in Gaza can already apply for temporary or visitors’ visas for them,” Stanford said.

But Armstrong said: “If there is the political will, the government can do this.

“Other countries are doing this . . .  Canada and Australia are getting people out. It’s tricky, but it’s not impossible.”

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

Acclaimed journalist Mehdi Hasan joins Democracy Now! to discuss US media coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza and how the war is a genocide being abetted by the United States.

Hasan says US media is overwhelmingly pro-Israel and fails to convey the truth to audiences.

“Palestinian voices not being on American television or in American print is one of the biggest problems when it comes to our coverage of this conflict,” he says.

• READ MORE: Is­rael army plan to in­vade Gaza’s Rafah ap­proved as Qatar talks to re­sume
• ‘Food not bombs’ Gaza protesters picket MFAT offices in Auckland

Hasan has just launched a new media company, Zeteo, which he started after the end of his weekly news programme on MSNBC earlier this year.

Hasan’s interviews routinely led to viral segments, including his tough questioning of Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev, but the cable network announced it was canceling his show in November.

The move drew considerable outrage, with critics slamming MSNBC for effectively silencing one of the most prominent Muslim voices in US media.

Rafah invasion threat
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to threaten a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, which human rights groups warn would be a massacre.

President Biden has said such an escalation is a “red line” for him, but Netanyahu has vowed to push ahead anyway.

“Where is the outcry here in the West?” asks Hasan of reports of Israeli war crimes, including the killing of more than 100 journalists in the past five months in Gaza and the blockade of aid from the region.

“It’s a stain on [Biden’s] record, on America’s conscience.”

Transcript:

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The death toll in Gaza has topped 31,300. At least five people were killed on Wednesday when Israel bombed an UNRWA aid distribution center in Rafah — one of the UN agency’s last remaining aid sites in Gaza. The head of UNRWA called the attack a “blatant disregard [of] international humanitarian law”.

This comes as much of Gaza is on the brink of famine as Israel continues to limit the amount of aid allowed into the besieged territory. At least 27 Palestinians have died of starvation, including 23 children.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera has reported six Palestinians were killed in Gaza City when Israeli forces opened fire again on crowds waiting for food aid. More than 80 people were injured.

In other news from Gaza, Politico reports the Biden administration has privately told Israel that the US would support Israel attacking Rafah as long as it did not carry out a large-scale invasion.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we begin today’s show looking at how the US media is covering Israel’s assault on Gaza with the acclaimed TV broadcaster Mehdi Hasan. In January, he announced he was leaving MSNBC after his shows were cancelled. Mehdi was one of the most prominent Muslim voices on American television.

In October, the news outlet Semafor reported MSNBC had reduced the roles of Hasan and two other Muslim broadcasters on the network, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi, following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

US Media fails on Gaza, fascism.       Video: Democracy Now!

Then, in November, MSNBC announced it was cancelling Hasan’s show shortly after he conducted this interview with Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is an excerpt:

MEHDI HASAN: You say Hamas’s numbers — I should point out, just pull up on the screen, in the last two major Gaza conflicts, 2009 and 2014, the Israeli military’s death tolls matched Hamas’s Health Ministry death tolls, so — and the UN, human rights groups all agree that those numbers are credible. But look, your wider point is true.

MARK REGEV: Can I challenge that?

MEHDI HASAN: We shouldn’t —

MARK REGEV: Will you allow me —

MEHDI HASAN: We shouldn’t —

MARK REGEV: — to challenge that, please? Can I just challenge that?

MEHDI HASAN: Briefly, if you can.

MARK REGEV: I’d like to challenge that.

MEHDI HASAN: Briefly.

MARK REGEV: I’ll try to be as brief as you are, sir. Those numbers are provided by Hamas. There’s no independent verification. And secondly, more importantly, you have no idea how many of them are Hamas terrorists, combatants, and how many are civilians. Hamas would have you believe that they’re all civilians, that they’re all children.

And here we have to say something that isn’t said enough. Hamas, until now, we’re destroying their military machine, and with that, we’re eroding their control.

But up until now, they’ve been in control of the Gaza Strip. And as a result, they control all the images coming out of Gaza. Have you seen one picture of a single dead Hamas terrorist in the fighting in Gaza? Not one.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, but I have —

MARK REGEV: Is that by accident, or is that —

MEHDI HASAN: But I have, Mark —

MARK REGEV: — because Hamas can control — Hamas can control the information coming out of Gaza?

MEHDI HASAN: Mark, but you asked me a question, and you said you would be brief. I haven’t. You’re right. But I have seen lots of children with my own lying eyes being pulled from the rubble. So —

MARK REGEV: Now, because they’re the pictures Hamas wants you to see. Exactly my point, Mehdi.

MEHDI HASAN: And also because they’re dead, Mark. Also —

MARK REGEV: They’re the pictures Hamas wants — no.

MEHDI HASAN: But they’re also people your government has killed. You accept that, right? You’ve killed children? Or do you deny that?

MARK REGEV: No, I do not. I do not. I do not. First of all, you don’t know how those people died, those children.

MEHDI HASAN: Oh wow.

AMY GOODMAN: “Oh wow,” Mehdi Hasan responded, interviewing Netanyahu adviser Mark Regev on MSNBC. Soon after, MSNBC announced that he was losing his shows. Since leaving the network, Mehdi Hasan has launched a new digital media company named Zeteo.

Mehdi, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. I want to start with that interview you did with Regev. After, you lost your two shows, soon after. Do you think that’s the reason those shows were cancelled? Interviews like that?

MEHDI HASAN: You would have to ask MSNBC, Amy. And, Amy and Nermeen, thank you for having me on. It’s great to be back here after a few years away. Look, the advantage of not being at MSNBC anymore is I get to come on shows like this and talk to you all. You should get someone from MSNBC on and ask them why they cancelled the shows, because I can’t answer that question. I wish I knew. But there we go.

The shows were cancelled at the end of November. I quit at the beginning of January, because I wanted to have a platform of my own. I couldn’t really spend 2024, one of the most important news years of our lives — genocide in Gaza, fascism at the door here in America with elections — couldn’t really spend that being a guest anchor and a political analyst, which is what I was offered at MSNBC while I was staying there. I wanted to leave. I wanted to get my voice back.

And that’s why I launched my own media company, as you mentioned, called Zeteo, which we’ve done a soft launch on and we’re going to launch properly next month. But I’m excited about all the opportunities ahead, the opportunity to do more interviews like the one I did with Mark Regev.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, could you explain Zeteo? First of all, what does it mean? And what is the gap in the US media landscape that you hope to fill? You’ve been extremely critical of the US media’s coverage of Gaza, saying, quite correctly, that the coverage has not been as consistent or clear as the last time we saw an invasion of this kind, though far less brutal, which was the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, it’s a great question. So, on Zeteo, it’s an ancient Greek word, going back to Socrates and Plato, which means to seek out, to search, to inquire for the truth. And at a time when we live in a, some would say, post-truth society — or people on the right are attempting to turn it into a post-truth society — I thought that was an important endeavor to embark upon as a journalist, to go back to our roots.

In terms of why I launch it and the media space, look, there is a gap in the market, first of all, on the left for a company like this one. Not many progressives have pulled off a for-profit, subscription-based business, media business. We’ve seen it on the right, Nermeen, with, you know, Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire and Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, and even Tucker Carlson has launched his own subscription-based platform since leaving Fox.

And on the progressive space, we haven’t really done it. Now, of course, there are wonderful shows like Democracy Now! which are doing important, invaluable journalism on subjects like Gaza, on subjects like the climate. But across the media industry as a whole, sadly, in the US, the massive gap is there are not enough — I don’t know how to put it — bluntly, truth tellers, people who are willing to say — and when I say “truth tellers,” I don’t just mean, you know, truth in a conventional sense of saying what is true and what is false; I’m saying the language in which we talk about what is happening in the world today.

Too many of my colleagues in the media, unfortunately, hide behind lazy euphemisms, a both-sides journalism, the idea that you can’t say Donald Trump is racist because you don’t know what’s in his heart; you can’t say the Republican Party is going full fascist, even as they proclaim that they don’t believe in democracy as we conventionally understand it; we can’t say there’s a genocide in Gaza, even though the International Court of Justice says such a thing is plausible.

You know, we run away from very blunt terms which help us understand world. And I want to treat American consumers of news, global consumers of news — it’s a global news organisation which I’m founding — with some respect. Stop patronising them. Tell them what is happening in the world, in a blunt way.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, talk about this. I mean, in your criticism of the US media’s coverage, in particular, of Israel’s assault on Gaza — I mean, of course, you have condemned what happened, the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7. You’ve also situated the attack in a broader historical frame, and you’ve received criticism for doing that.

And in response, you’ve said, “Context is not causation,” and “Context is not justification.” So, could you explain why you think context, history, is so important, and the way in which this question is kind of elided in US media coverage, not just of the Gaza crisis, but especially so now?

MEHDI HASAN: So, I did an interview with Piers Morgan this week. And if you watch Piers Morgan’s shows, he always asks his pro-Palestinian guests or anyone criticising Israel, you know, “Condemn what happened on October 7.” It’s all about October the 7th. And what happened on October 7 was barbarism. It was a tragedy. It was a terror attack. Civilians were killed. War crimes were carried out. Hostages were taken. And we should condemn it. Of course we should, as human beings, if nothing else.

But the world did not begin on October 7. The idea that the entire Middle East conflict, Israel-Palestine, the occupation, apartheid, can be reduced to October 7 is madness. And it’s not just me saying that.

You talk to, you know, leading Israeli peace campaigners, even some leading Israeli generals, people like Shlomo Brom, who talk about having to understand the root causes of a people under occupation fighting for freedom. And it’s absurd to me that in our media industry people should try and run away from context.

My former colleagues Ali Velshi and Ayman Mohyeldin, who Amy mentioned in the introduction, they were on air on October 7 as news was coming in of the attacks, and they provided context, because they’re two anchors who really understand that part of the world.

Ayman Mohyeldin is perhaps the only US anchor who’s ever lived in Gaza. And they came under attack online from certain pro-Israel people for providing context. This idea that we should be embarrassed or ashamed or apologetic as journalists for providing context on one of the biggest stories in the world is madness.

You cannot understand what is happening in the world unless we, unless you and I, unless journalists, broadcasters, are explaining to our viewers and our listeners and our readers why things are happening, where forces are coming from, why people are behaving the way they do. And I know America is a country of amnesiacs, but we cannot keep acting as if the world just began yesterday.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about a piece in The Intercept — you also used to report for The Intercept — the headline, “In internal meeting, Christiane Amanpour confronts CNN brass about ‘double standards’ on Israel coverage”. It’s a really interesting piece. They were confronting the executives, and “One issue that came up,” says The Intercept, “repeatedly is CNN’s longtime process for routing almost all coverage relating to Israel and Palestine through the network’s Jerusalem bureau.

As The Interceptreported in January, “the protocol — which has existed for years but was expanded and rebranded as SecondEyes last summer — slows down reporting on Gaza and filters news about the war through journalists in Jerusalem who operate under the shadow of Israel’s military censor.”

And then it quotes Christiane Amanpour, identified in a recording of that meeting. She said, “You’ve heard from me, you’ve heard my, you know, real distress with SecondEyes — changing copy, double standards, and all the rest,” Amanpour said. The significance of this and what we see, Mehdi? You know, I’m not talking Fox right now. On MSNBC . . .

MEHDI HASAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: . . . and on CNN, you rarely see Palestinians interviewed in extended discussions.

MEHDI HASAN: So, I think there’s a few issues there, Amy. Number one, first of all, we should recognise that Christiane Amanpour has done some very excellent coverage of Gaza for CNN in this conflict. She’s had some very powerful interviews and very important guests on. So, credit to Christiane during this conflict. Number two . . .

AMY GOODMAN: International . . .

MEHDI HASAN: . . .  I think US media organisations . . .

AMY GOODMAN: . . .  I just wanted to say, particularly on CNN International, which is often not seen . . .

MEHDI HASAN: Very good point.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On CNN domestic.

MEHDI HASAN: Very good — very good point, Amy. Touché.

The second point, I would say, is US media organisations, as a whole, are engaging in journalistic malpractice by not informing viewers, listeners, readers that a lot of their coverage out of Israel and the Occupied Territories is coming under the shadow of an Israeli military censor.

How many Americans understand or even know about the Israeli military censor, about how much information is controlled? We barely understand that Western journalists are kept out of Gaza, or if when they go in, they’re embedded with Israeli military forces and limited to what they can say and do.

So I think we should talk about that in a country which kind of prides itself on the First Amendment and free speech and a free press. We should understand the way in which information comes out of the Occupied Territories, in particular from Gaza.

And the third point, I would say, is, yeah, Palestinian voices not being on American television or in American print is one of the biggest problems when it comes to our coverage of this conflict. When we talk about why the media is structurally biased towards one party in this conflict, the more powerful party, the occupier, we have to remember that this is one of the reasons.

Why are Palestinians dehumanised in our media? This is one of the reasons. We don’t let people speak. That’s what leads to dehumanisation. That’s what leads to bias.

We understand it at home when it comes to, for example, Black voices. In recent years, media organisations have tried to take steps to improve diversity on air, when it comes to on-air talent, when it comes to on-air guests, when it comes to balancing panels. We get that we need underrepresented communities to be able to speak. But when it comes to foreign conflicts, we still don’t seem to have made that calculation.

There was a study done a few years ago of op-eds in The New York Times and The Washington Post on the subject of Israel-Palestine from 1970 to, I think it was, 2000-and-something, and it was like 2 percent of all op-eds in the Times and 1 percent in the Post were written by Palestinians, which is a shocking statistic.

We deny these people a voice, and then we wonder why people don’t sympathise with their plight or don’t — aren’t, you know, marching in the street — well, they are marching in the streets — but in bigger numbers. Why America is OK and kind of, you know, blind to the fact that we are complicit in a genocide of these people? Because we don’t hear from these people.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Mehdi, I mean, explain why that’s especially relevant in this instance, because journalists have not been permitted access to Gaza, so there is no reporting going on on the ground that’s being shown here. I mean, dozens and dozens of journalists have signed a letter asking Israel and Egypt to allow journalists access into Gaza. So, if you could talk about that, why it’s especially important to hear from Palestinian voices here?

MEHDI HASAN: Well, for a start, Nermeen, much of the imagery we see on our screens here or in our newspapers are sanitised images. We don’t see the full level of the destruction. And when we try and understand, well, why are young people — why is there such a generational gap when it comes to the polling on Gaza, on ceasefire, why are young people so much more antiwar than their elder peers, part of the reason is that young people are on TikTok or Instagram and seeing a much less sanitised version of this war, of Israel’s bombardment.

They are seeing babies being pulled from the rubble, limbs missing. They are seeing hospitals being — you know, hospitals carrying out procedures without anesthetic. They are seeing just absolute brutality, the kind of stuff that UN humanitarian chiefs are saying we haven’t seen in this world for 50 years.

And that’s the problem, right? If we’re sanitising the coverage, Americans aren’t being told, really, aren’t being informed, are, again, missing context on what is happening on the ground. And, of course, Israel, by keeping Western journalists out, makes it even easier for those images to be blocked, and therefore you have Palestinian — brave Palestinian journalists on the ground trying to film, trying to document their own genocide, streaming it to our phones.

And we’ve seen over a hundred of them killed over the last five months. That is not an accident. That is not a coincidence. Israel wants to stamp out independent voices, stamp out any kind of coverage of its own genocidal behavior.

And therefore, again, you’re able to have a debate in this country where the political debate is completely disconnected to the public debate, and the public debate is completely misinformed. I’m amazed, Nermeen, when you look at the polling, that there’s a majority in favor of a ceasefire, that half of all Democrats say this is a genocide. Americans are saying that to pollsters despite not even getting the full picture. Can you imagine what those numbers would look like if they actually saw what was happening on the ground?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to go to what is unfolding right now in Gaza. You said in a recent interview that in the past Israel was, quote, “mowing the lawn,” but now the Netanyahu government’s intention is to erase the population of Gaza. So let’s go to what Prime Minister Netanyahu said about the invasion of Rafah, saying it would go ahead and would last weeks, not months. He was speaking to Politico on Sunday.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: We’re not going to leave them. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7th doesn’t happen again, never happens again. And to do that, we have to complete the destruction of the Hamas terrorist army. … We’re very close to victory. It’s close at hand.

We’ve destroyed three-quarters of Hamas fighting terrorist battalions, and we’re close to finishing the last part in Rafah, and we’re not going to give it up. … Once we begin the intense action of eradicating the Hamas terrorist battalions in Rafah, it’s a matter of weeks and not months.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, your response to what Netanyahu said and what the Israelis have proposed as a safe place for Gazans to go — namely, humanitarian islands?

MEHDI HASAN: So, number one, when you hear Netanyahu speak, Nermeen, doesn’t it remind you of George Bush in kind of 2002, 2003? It’s very — you know, invoking 9/11 to justify every atrocity, claiming that you’re trying to protect the country, when you, yourself, your idiocy and your incompetency, is what led to the attacks. You know, George Bush was unable to prevent 9/11, and then used 9/11 to justify every atrocity, even though his incompetence helped allow 9/11 to happen.

And I feel the same way: Netanyahu allowed the worst terror attack, the worst massacre in Israel to happen on his watch. Many of his own, you know, generals, many of his own people blame him for this. And so, it’s rich to hear him saying, “My aim is to stop this from happening again.” Well, you couldn’t stop it from happening the first time, and now you’re killing innocent Palestinians under the pretence that this is national security.

Number two, again George Bush-like, claiming that the war is nearly done, mission is nearly accomplished, that’s nonsense. No serious observer believes that Hamas is finished or that Israel has won some total victory. A member of Netanyahu’s own war cabinet said recently, “Anyone who says you can absolutely defeat Hamas is telling tall tales, is lying.” That was a colleague of Netanyahu’s, in government, who said that.

And number three, the red line on Rafah that Biden suppposedly set down and that Netanyahu is now mocking, saying, “My own red line is to do the opposite,” what on Earth is Joe Biden doing in allowing Benjamin Netanyahu to humiliate him in this way with this invasion of Rafah, even after he said he opposes it? I mean, it’s one thing to leak stuff . . .

AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi . . .

MEHDI HASAN: . . . over a few months . . .

AMY GOODMAN: . . . let’s go to Biden speaking on MSNBC. He’s being interviewed by your former colleague Jonathan Capehart, as he was being questioned about Benjamin Netanyahu and saying he’s hurting Israel more than helping Israel.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: He has a right to defend Israel, a right to continue to pursue Hamas. But he must, he must, he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken.

He’s hurting — in my view, he’s hurting Israel more than helping Israel by making the rest of the world — it’s contrary to what Israel stands for. And I think it’s a big mistake. So I want to see a ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: And he talked about a, well, kind of a red line. If you can address what Biden is saying and what he proposed in the State of the Union, this pier, to get more aid in, and also the dropping — the airdropping of food, which recently killed five Palestinians because it crushed them to death, and the humanitarian groups, United Nations saying these airdrops, the pier come nowhere near being able to provide the aid that’s needed, at the same time, and the reason they’re doing all of this, is because Israel is using US bombs and artillery to attack the Palestinians and these aid trucks?

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, it’s just so bizarre, the idea that you could drop bombs, on the one hand, and then drop aid, on the other, and you’re paying for both, and then your aid ends up killing people, too. It’s like some kind of dark Onion headline. It’s just beyond parody. It’s beyond belief.

And as for the pier, as you say, it does not come anywhere near to adequately addressing the needs of the Palestinian people, in terms of the sheer scale of the suffering, half a million people on the brink of famine, over a million people displaced. Four out of five of the hungriest people in the world, according to the World Food Programme, are in Gaza right now.

The idea that this pier would, A, address the scale of the suffering, and, B, in time — I mean, it’s going to take time to do this. What happens to the Palestinians who literally starve to death, including children, while this pier is being built?

Finally, I would say, there’s reporting in the Israeli press, Amy, that I’ve seen that suggests that the pier idea comes from Netanyahu, that the Israeli government are totally fine with this pier, because it allows them still to control land and air access into Gaza, which is what they’ve always controlled and which in this war they’ve monopolised.

The idea that the United States of America, the world’s only superpower, cannot tell its ally, “You know what? We’re going to put aid into Gaza because we want to, and you’re not going to stop us, especially since we’re the ones arming you,” is bizarre.

It’s something I think Biden will never be able to get past or live down. It’s a stain on his record, on America’s conscience. The idea that we’re arming a country that’s engaged in a “plausible genocide,” to quote the ICJ, is bad enough. That we can’t even get our own aid in, while they’re bombing with our bombs, is just madness.

And by the way, it’s also illegal. Under US law, you cannot provide weaponry to a country which is blocking US aid. And by the way, it’s not me saying they’re blocking US aid. US government officials have said, “Yes, the Israeli government blocked us from sending flour in,” for example.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, let’s go to the regional response to this assault on Gaza that’s been unfolding with the kind of violence and tens of thousands of deaths of Palestinians, as we’ve reported. Now, what has — how has the Arab and Muslim world responded to what’s going on? Egypt, of course, has repeatedly said that it does not want displaced Palestinians crossing its border. The most powerful Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates, if you can talk about how they’ve responded? And then the Axis — the so-called Axis of Resistance —  Houthis, Hezbollah, etc. — how they have been trying to disrupt this war, or at least make the backers of Israel pay a price for it?

MEHDI HASAN: So, I hear people saying, “Oh, we’re disappointed in the response from the Arab countries.” The problem with the word “disappointment” is it implies you had any expectations to begin with. I certainly didn’t. Arab countries have never had the Palestinians’ backs.

The Arab — quote-unquote, “Arab street” has always been very pro-Palestinian. But the autocratic, the despotic, the dictatorial rulers of much of the Arab world have never really had the interests of the Palestinian people at their heart, going back right to 1948, when, you know, Arab countries attacked Israel to push it into the sea, but, actually, as we know from historians like Avi Shlaim, were not doing that at all, and that some of them, like Jordan, had done deals with Israel behind the scenes.

So, look, Arab countries have never really prioritised the Palestinian people or their needs or their freedom. And so, when you see some of these statements that come out of the Arab world at times like this, you know, you have to take them with a shovel of salt, not just a grain.

Also, I would point out the hypocrisy here on all sides in the region. You have countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which were involved in a brutal assault on Yemen for many years, carried out very similar acts to Israel in Gaza in terms of blockades, starvation, malnourishment of the Yemeni children, in terms of bombing of refugee camps and hospitals and kids and school buses. That all happened in Yemen.

Arab countries did that, let’s just be clear about that, things that they criticise Israel for doing now. And, of course, Iran, which sets itself up as a champion of the Palestinan people, when Bashar al-Assad was killing many of his own people, including Palestinian refugees, in places like the al-Yarmouk refugee camp, Iran and Russia, by the way, were both perfectly happy to help arm and support Assad as he did that.

So, you know, spare me some of the grandiose statements from Middle East countries, from Arab nations to Iran, on all of it. There’s a lot of hypocrisy to go around.

Very few countries in the world, especially in that region, actually have Palestinian interests at heart. If they did, we would have a very different geopolitical scene. There is reporting, Nermeen, that a lot of these governments, like Saudi Arabia, privately are telling Israel, “Finish the job. Get rid of them. We don’t like Hamas, either. Get rid of them,” and that Saudis actually want to do a deal with Israel once this war is over, just as they were on course to do, apparently, according to the Biden administration.

We know that other Arab countries already signed the, quote-unquote, “Abraham Accords” with Israel on Trump’s watch.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the number of dead Palestinian journalists and also the new UN investigation that just accused Israel of breaking international law over the killing of the Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon. On October 13, an Israeli tank opened fire on him and a group of other journalists. He had just set up a live stream on the border in southern Lebanon, so that all his colleagues at Reuters and others saw him blown up.

The report stated, quote, “The firing at civilians, in this instance clearly identifiable journalists, constitutes a violation of . . .  international law.” And it’s not just Issam in southern Lebanon. Well over 100 Palestinian journalists in Gaza have died. We’ve never seen anything like the concentration of numbers of journalists killed in any other conflict or conflicts combined recently. Can you talk about the lack of outrage of other major news organisations and what Israel is doing here? Do you think they’re being directly targeted, one after another, wearing those well-known “press” flak jackets? It looks like we just lost audio to Mehdi Hasan.

MEHDI HASAN: Amy, I can — I can hear you, Amy, very faintly.

AMY GOODMAN: Oh, OK. So . . .

MEHDI HASAN: I’m going to answer your question, if you can still hear me.

AMY GOODMAN: Great. We can hear you perfectly.

MEHDI HASAN: So, you’re very faint to me. So, while I speak, if someone wants to fix the volume in my ear. Let me answer your question about journalists.

It is an absolute tragedy and a scandal, what has happened to journalists in Gaza, that we have seen so many deaths in Gaza. And the real scandal, Amy, is that Western media, a lot of my colleagues here in the US media, have not sounded the alarm, have not called out Israel for what it’s done. It’s outrageous that so many of our fellow colleagues can be killed in Gaza while reporting, while at home, losing family members, and yet there’s not a huge global outcry.

When Wael al-Dahdouh, who we just saw on the screen, from Al Jazeera, loses his immediate family members and carries on reporting for Al Jazeera Arabic, why is he not on every front page in the world? Why is he not a hero? Why is he not sitting down with Oprah Winfrey?

I feel like, you know, when Evan Gershkovich from The Wall Street Journal is wrongly imprisoned in Russia, we all campaign for Evan to be released. When Ukrainian journalists are killed, we all speak out and are angry about it. But when Palestinian journalists are killed on a level we’ve never seen before, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, where is the outcry here in the West over the killing of them?

We claim to care about a free press. We claim to oppose countries that crack down on a free press, on journalism. We say journalism is not a crime. But then I don’t hear the outrage from my colleagues here at this barbarism in Gaza, where journalists are being killed in record numbers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key findings include:

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

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

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

Thousands marched for Palestine across Australia at the weekend in the wake of Israel’s massacre of more than 100 starving Palestinians who were trying to get flour from an aid truck southwest of Gaza City.

Israel’s siege on Gaza has stopped Palestinians from accessing food, medical supplies and other crucial aid. A United Nations report found that more than 90 percent of the population, more than 2 million people, are facing starvation and malnutrition.

This is made worse by the cutting of funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) by Western governments, the main organisation providing aid to Gaza, after Israel alleged that 12 of its 30,000 staff were involved in the October 7 incursion.

• READ MORE: Death toll ris­es as Is­raeli forces in­ten­si­fy at­tacks in south­ern Gaza
• Other War on Gaza reports

The Labor government has refused to restore funding to UNRWA despite foreign minister Penny Wong conceding she had not seen any evidence to support Israel’s allegations.

“Our government has suspended funding to UNRWA when instead it should be restoring it and increasing it,” Greens senator Larissa Waters told the Meanjin/Brisbane rally on March 3, reported Alex Bainbridge.

Waters said that Foreign Minister Penny Wong was right to condemn Israel’s attack on food vans but that she was “not bowled over by the strength of response because Senator Wong has said she’s going to get her department to have a little word to the Israeli ambassador”.

“That’s all she’s going to do after we saw desperate parents getting slaughtered [while getting] food for their children.”

‘Solidarity with Palestinian women’
The rally had a “Solidarity with Palestinian women” theme in recognition of International Women’s Day on March 8.

Call on global Jewish community to rise up against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.   Video: Green Left

Protesters held a minute’s silence in recognition of United States Air Force serviceperson Aaron Bushnell who self-immolated on February 25 in protest against the US government’s participation in genocide.

Israel has begun its bombardment offensive against Rafah, the small city in southern Gaza where 1.4 million people are sheltering. More than 30,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7.

A YouGov survey found that more than 80 percent of Australians support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, showing the Palestine solidarity movement has cut through the establishment media pro-Israel messaging.

Edie Shepherd, from the Tzedek Collective, an anti-Zionist Jewish group told thousands at the rally in Gadigal/Sydney on March 3 that the global Jewish community must “rise up against the dominant Zionist frameworks that wield hate, power militarism to carry out atrocities against Palestinians”, reported Peter Boyle.

“The greatest shame is that our survival of genocide has been weaponised to commit genocide against Palestinians now.”

Nasser Mashni, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), told the March 3 rally in Garramilla/Darwin that “Israelis and Zionists want to kill Palestinians”, reported Stephen W Enciso.

‘They want decolonisation’
“Palestinians do not want to kill Israels. Indigenous folk do not want to kill their colonisers. They just want to be acknowledged. They want [a] treaty. They want their rights. They want restitution. They want racism to stop and decolonisation to start,” he said.

Kulumbirigin Danggalaba Tiwi woman Mililma May drew links between the colonial violence faced by Indigenous people in Australia and Palestine.

She pointed to the coronial inquest into the killing of Kumanjayi Walker by former constable Zachary Rolfe, in which Rolfe gave evidence about widespread racism in the Northern Territory Police Force.

“We are witnessing in plain evidence the racism and the deep horror that exists in the NT police, as across the colony,” May said.

“We live in the same states and under the same violence as Palestine. It just manifests itself in different ways.”

Kites flying for Gaza
A kite-flying for Gaza event was organised by Pilbara for Palestine in Karratha, Western Australia on March 3.

Children made and flew kites decorated with Palestinian flags, watermelons and “Free Palestine” in solidarity with the children on Gaza.

Organiser Chris Jenkins told Green Left that the action “demonstrated once again that support for Palestine exists from the CBD to the bush”.

The community also raised money for UNRWA.

In Muloobinba/Newcastle a “Hands off Rafah” rally and kite-flying event was held on March 2 at Nobby’s Beach, reported Khaled Ghannam.

Former Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon, who visited Palestine in June last year, said the Israeli occupation impacts on everything Palestinians do.

“One of the common things that people we interviewed said was, ‘please take our voice to the world’,” she said.

“We are part of a massive global movement, millions of people are on the move around the world in so many countries, with a similar message to us:

• Ceasefire now,
• Restore UNRWA funding, and
• End the occupation.”

She said the UN had called on Australia and other countries to stop arming Israel.

Republished with permission from Green Left.

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) should act urgently to establish an international protection force to safeguard Palestinian civilians and ensure the unobstructed delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza as a last-ditch attempt to prevent imminent, says DAWN.

If the UNSC is blocked by a US veto or fails to reach consensus, the UN General Assembly should reconvene the 10th session of “Uniting for Peace” and authorise such a force itself.

Recent airdrops of aid, now with the participation of the US Air Force, are “inadequate to meet the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza”, says DAWN (Democracy for the Arab World Now).

• READ MORE: Mal­nour­ished chil­dren die at alarm­ing rate as Is­rael steps up Gaza at­tacks
• Open letter: Dear President Biden, why do you support genocide in Gaza?
• Other War on Gaza reports

It signals the availability of international military forces to help stabilise the situation.

“We urgently need the UNSC to authorise an international protection force to ensure the safe and effective delivery of food to starving Palestinian men, women, and children, just as it has done in other situations of catastrophic conflicts,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN.

“Tragically, without such intervention, it has become clear that Israel will continue to deliberately block such aid, which is the sole cause of the starvation and imminent famine in Gaza.”

On February 29, at least 117 Palestinians were killed, and more than 750 others were wounded after Israeli troops opened fire on civilians gathered at a convoy of food trucks southwest of Gaza City, highlighting both the desperation of the starving civilian population and their inability to safely access humanitarian aid.

Aid delivery halted
International humanitarian organisations have halted all aid delivery to northern Gaza for nearly two weeks due to the lack of security, which is a direct result of actions and policies of the Israeli military, including targeting Palestinian police forces attempting to secure aid delivery.

The Biden administration reportedly warned Israel last week that as a direct result of its actions, “Gaza is turning into Mogadishu”.

The same day, the UN Security Council met in an emergency session called by Algeria on what is now being described as the “flour massacre,” but members failed to agree on a statement about the deaths and injuries of civilians seeking aid.

At a meeting of the UNSC last week under the auspices of UNSC Resolution 2417, UN agencies warned that at least 576,000 people in Gaza were facing famine-like conditions.

The  UN World Food Programme noted that there would be an “inevitable famine” in the besieged Palestinian enclave, amid increasing reports of children dying of starvation as Israel continued to hinder aid delivery to the population.

Gaza was seeing “the worst level of child malnutrition anywhere in the world,” Carl Skau, deputy head of the World Food Programme, told the UN Security Council last week, with one child in every six under the age of two acutely malnourished.

“Civilians and aid groups have described food shortages so dire that people were turning to leaves and bird food and other types of animal feed for sustenance.”

A new World Bank report has found that Gaza’s total economic output had shriveled by more than 80 percent in the last quarter of 2023, 80 to 96 percent of Gaza’s agricultural infrastructure had been damaged or destroyed, and about 80 percent of Gazans had lost their jobs.

Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 9, Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive has killed more than 30,000, more than 10,000 of them children, and wounded more than 70,000 people.

“The whole world is watching in horror as Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians, not only impeding the delivery of aid but actually firing and killing people desperately trying to obtain a few sacks of flour,” said Whitson.

“If the international community doesn’t have the guts to hold Israel accountable for its atrocities and end this grotesque, genocidal assault on Palestinian civilians, the very least it can do is establish a UN protection force to ensure the safe delivery of aid.”

• Read the full DAWN report here

By Faruk Hanedar in Istanbul

“Women, children, and families have no food. They are trying to drink water from puddles. People are eating grass.”

— Kia Ora Gaza advocate Roger Fowler

New Zealand activist Roger Fowler has condemned the Israeli regime’s actions in the Gaza Strip, saying “this is definitely genocide”.

“The Israeli regime has not hidden its intention to destroy or displace the Palestinian people, especially those in Gaza, from the beginning,” he said.

“They are committing a terrible act — killing tens of thousands of people, injuring more, and destroying a large part of this beautiful country.”

• READ MORE: John Minto: Why is mainstream media in NZ so blatantly ignoring Gaza?
• US vetoes another UN Security Council resolution urging Gaza war ceasefire
• Al Jazeera’s live newsfeed on Gaza
• Other images and videos from today’s Auckland protest
• Other John Minto commentaries

The death toll from the Israeli War on Gaza topped 29,000 this week – mostly women and children – and there were reports of deaths from starvation.

Fowler demanded action to halt the attacks and expressed hope about the potential effect of the international Freedom Flotilla — a grassroots organisation working to end the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza.

He noted large-scale protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza and emphasised efforts to pressure governments, including through weekly protests in New Zealand to unequivocally condemn Israel’s actions as unacceptable.

Long-standing mistreatment
He stressed that the “tragedy” had extended beyond recent months, highlighting the long-standing mistreatment endured by Palestinians — particularly those in Gaza — for the last 75 years.

Fowler pointed out the dire situation that Gazans faced — confined to a small territory with restricted access to essential resources including food, medicine, construction materials and necessities.

He noted his three previous trips to Gaza with land convoys, where he demonstrated solidarity and observed the dire circumstances faced by the population.

“Boycott is a very effective action,” said Fowler, underlining the significance of boycotts, isolation and sanctions, while stressing the necessity of enhancing and globalising initiatives to end the blockade.

“I believe that boycotting has a great impact on pressuring not only major companies to withdraw from Israel and end their support, but also on making the Israeli government and our own governments understand that they need to stop what they are doing.”

Fowler also criticised the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) “genocide decision” for being ineffective due to the arrogance of those governing Israel.

South Africa brought a genocide case against Israel to the ICJ in December and asked for emergency measures to end Palestinian bloodshed in Gaza, where nearly 30,000 people have been killed since October 7.

World Court fell short
The World Court ordered Israel last month to take “all measures within its power” to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza but fell short of ordering a ceasefire.

It also ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective” measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip.

Fowler said all nations must persistently advocate and exert pressure for adherence to decisions by the UN court.

Fowler acknowledged efforts by UN personnel but he has concerns about their limited resources in Gaza, citing the only avenue for change is for people to pressure authorities to stop the genocide and ensure Israel is held accountable.

“It’s definitely tragic and heartbreaking. Women, children, and families have no food. They are trying to drink water from puddles. People are eating grass. This is a very desperate situation. No one is talking about the children. Thousands of people are under the rubble, including small babies and children,” he said.

Roger Fowler is a Mangere East community advocate, political activist for social justice in many issues, and an organiser of Kia Ora Gaza. This article was first published by Anadolu Agency and is republished with permission.

kiaoragaza.net

Unfortunately there was no discussion of foreign policy during Aotearoa New Zealand’s general election last year. Aside from the odd obligatory question in a TV debate it barely got a mention.

Our international relations tend to be glossed over because most policy is shared by Labour and National at least.

It wasn’t always this way. Back in the 1970s there was a palpable feeling of pride across the country as the Norman Kirk Labour government sent a New Zealand frigate to protest against French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

• READ MORE: Bureaucratic muck up releases two versions of joint statement from New Zealand, Australia and Canada on the Beehive website
• A shameful NZ response to genocide of Palestinians in Gaza
• NZ to deploy Defence Force to Red Sea
• Other War on Gaza reports

A similar community pride surrounded developing our anti-nuclear policy in the 1980s and relief as well when New Zealand did not buckle to US pressure and stayed out of the infamous invasion of Iraq in 2003 while the rest of the Western world fell for the huge propaganda blitz about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction”.

It has been an awful surprise to see New Zealand give up that independence so easily in the last two years.

We rightly joined the condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because while there were clear reasons for Russia’s action there was no justification.

But then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her successor Chris Hipkins just gave up even the pretence of independence.

Fast downhill ride
Both attended belligerent NATO meetings and it’s been a fast downhill ride since. Our new National-led coalition government is continuing the same political momentum.

Nevertheless, it still came as a shock last month when Prime Minister Christopher Luxon — flanked by Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins — announced we were sending military personnel to join the US-led bombing of Yemen.

There was no United Nations mandate for war and it was supported only by the tiniest minority of Western countries.

The Houthi group in Yemen have attacked Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea to pressure Israel to end its slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

Yemeni groups have done this because the Western world has turned its back on the people of Gaza and refuses to condemn Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians.

Shouldn’t we be speaking strongly for an immediate permanent ceasefire in Gaza like most of the world rather than joining in bombing one of the world’s poorest countries?

A ceasefire in Gaza would end the attacks on Red Sea shipping and dramatically reduce tensions across the Middle East.

That’s what an independent New Zealand would have done.

Shame, instead of pride
Instead of pride, most of us feel shame as the world now looks on us as a small, obsequious appendage to the US empire — an empire which has blocked three UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The killing of civilians and the taking of civilian hostages is a war crime under the fourth Geneva convention and must always be condemned, no matter who the perpetrator.

We were right to condemn the killing of Israeli civilians, but our government’s refusal to condemn the killing of more than 28,000 Palestinians, including more than 12,000 children, or even call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — until it belatedly did so this week — leaves an indelible stain on our reputation.

Our lack of independence was on display again last month when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found a plausible case exists that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Instead of backing up the court ruling with demands Israel end the killing of Palestinians New Zealand has been all but silent with the Prime Minister blundering his way through question time in Parliament without a clue about our international responsibilities.

While all but ignoring the genocide ruling by the ICJ, Luxon was quick to halt New Zealand funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency over Israeli allegations that 12 of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees had been implicated in terrorism.

A classic diversion by Israel to avoid the dreadful truth of their killing of Palestinians in Gaza. New Zealand happily joined the diversion.

Why are Israeli attacks on UNRWA so much more important for the Prime Minister than genocide committed against the Palestinian people?

The simple truth is we are swimming against the great tide of humanity which stands with Palestinians.

Our government has pushed us into the dark shadow of US/Israeli policies of oppression and domination. We need to be back out in the sun.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). Republished with permission from The Daily Blog.

A West Papuan pro-independence leader has accused Indonesia of new human rights atrocities this week while the republic has apparently elected a new president with a past record of violations in Timor-Leste and West Papua.

Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto has declared victory in the presidential election on Wednesday after unofficial vote counts showed him with a significant lead over his rivals, reports Al Jazeera.

The 72-year-old former Kopassus special forces commander, who had run unsuccessfully for president twice before, was given a dishonourable discharge in 1998 after claims that his force kidnapped and tortured political opponents of Soeharto as his regime crumbled.

• READ MORE: Prabowo Subianto claims victory in Indonesian presidential election
• Other West Papua reports

He has also been accused of human rights abuses in East Timor, which won independence from Indonesia amid the collapse of the Soeharto regime, and also in West West Papua.

On the day that Indonesia went to the polls — Valentine’s Day, February 14 — Benny Wenda, president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), accused Jakarta’s military of continuing its “reign of terror” in rural West Papua.

“The latest tragedy they have inflicted on my people occurred in the Puncak regency,” Wenda said in a statement.

“Military raids on the February 3 and 4 devastated a number of highland villages.

‘Villagers tortured, houses burnt’
“Numerous houses were burnt to the ground, villagers were tortured, and at least one Papuan died from his wounds — though Indonesian control of information makes it difficult to know whether others were also killed.”

Wenda said that “as always”, the military had claimed the victims were TPNPB resistance fighters — “a grotesque lie, immediately denied by the villagers and their relatives”.

Wenda also accused Indonesia of “hypocrisy” over Israel’s war on Gaza.

“We have complete sympathy with [Palestinians over their suffering] in what is happening in Gaza,” he said.

“But Indonesian hypocrisy on Palestine cannot be ignored. They are bringing a legal case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about Israel’s occupation of Palestine while intensifying their own brutal and bloody military occupation of West Papua.

“They are supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ while conducting their own genocide in West Papua.

Denying West Papuan rights
“They are crying about Palestinians’ right to self-determination while continuing to deny West Papuans that same right.”

More than 500,000 West Papuans have been killed since the occupation began in 1963, says the ULMWP.

In the past six years, more than 100,000 Papuans were estimated to have been displaced, made refugees in their own land as a result of Indonesian military operations.

“Genocide, ecocide, and ethnic cleansing — West Papuans are victims of all three. The world must pay attention to our plight.”

There were no reports of reaction from the Jakarta authorities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charges were being considered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Police have been contacted for comment.

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

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

Pacific protesters were prominent in the 17th week of Aotearoa New Zealand solidarity demonstrations for Palestine and a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in Auckland today.

Flags of Fiji, Tonga and West Papua were featured alongside the sea of Palestinian banners and at least one group declared themselves as “Tongans for Palestine – Long live the intifada”.

The rally in Auckland’s Te Komititanga — also known as Britomart Square, an urban rail transport hub — drew a large crowd of about 250 in the heart of New Zealand’s largest city shopping precinct.

• READ MORE: What to know about the ICJ’s historic ruling about Israel’s conduct in Gaza
• Israel’s war on Gaza live: Children killed as Israel attacks kindergarten
• ‘Ceasefire now’ protesters march on NZ naval base, demand Luxon upholds Israel genocide court order
• Other Palestine solidarity protests

Thousands of people have been taking part in the weekly protest rallies and marches across New Zealand since the war on Gaza began after a deadly attack on Israel last October 7 following 75 years of repression and occupation since the Nakba — the “catastrophe” — in 1948.

South Africa has warned that Israel is ignoring the World Court’s “on notice” genocidal orders about its war on Gaza.

The death toll is now more than 27,000 — and more than 900 Palestinians have been killed since the ICJ (International Court of Justice) ruled that Israel must take steps to prevent civilian deaths.

Speakers in Auckland today drew parallels between the Zionist settler colonial project in Palestine and NZ’s colonial history, saying the Waitangi Treaty was now under threat from NZ’s most rightwing government in history.

‘Right side of history’
The protest came just two days before Waitangi Day — 6 February 1840 — the national holiday marking the signing of the foundational Treaty of Waitangi between the British Crown and 500 traditional Māori chiefs.

“There are many things we can do in Aotearoa to stand on the right side of history,” said one of the organisers, Josie Sims of Solidarity Action Network Aotearoa (SANA).

“We’re calling on the NZ Defence Force to refuse their orders to go to Yemen. We’re asking for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, and we’re asking that this government takes a clear position on an immediate ceasefire.”

Protesters directed their criticism at the nearby American McDonalds and Starbucks fast food and coffee outlets for allegedly supporting genocide. They are among many companies being boycotted worldwide.

“Maccas, Maccas, you can’t hide, you’re making meals for genocide,” chanted the protesters in reference to the global chain providing free meals to the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) troops engaged in the assault on Gaza.

The Palestinian Ambassador to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, Dr Izzat Abdulhadi, last night appealed for “unity”, “strategy” and “networking” for the pathway forward to an independent state.

Responding to speculation about “the day after” when Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is finally over at a community event in Auckland’s Western Springs Garden Community Hall, he condemned draconian Zionist Israeli “plans” for the Occupied Palestinian Territories without consultation.

It was up to Palestinians themselves to decide through a process of self-determination, he told a crowd of about 60 people.

• READ MORE: Israeli settler violence – Palestinians in the occupied West Bank targeted
• Other photos, videos from the public meeting

And he warned that reconstruction was a huge task with the United Nations indicating in a new report that 30 percent of the besieged enclave’s buildings and much of the infrastructure had been destroyed by Israel.

He said it could take up to 20 years to rebuild Gaza.

The United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) has reported: “In total, a staggering 69,147 structures, equivalent to approximately 30 percent of the Gaza Strip’s total structures, are affected.”

Dr Abdulhadi also criticised Australia for its “deeply disappointing and regrettable” decision to pause funding for the Palestine relief agency UNRWA. He had appealed to Canberra to restore the funding.

He also hoped that New Zealand would continue its UNRWA relief funding.

But first, the ambassador said, an immediate permanent ceasefire was urgently needed to cope with the humanitarian needs of the Gaza carnage.

Facilitator Samar Al Malalha highlighted the death toll of more than 27,000 civilians — mostly women and children — after 118 days, but warned people not to just “think numbers”.

He said they ought to empathise with each and every person and child — and sometimes entire families — who had been killed.

A poetic vision
Architect and poet Dr Sameh Daraghmeh presented a poetic vision of the Palestinian diaspora and tangata whenua.

Meanwhile, more than 800 European and American officials have signed a letter to their governments denouncing Israel’s war on Gaza as “one of the worst human catastrophes of this century”.

According to current and former officials spearheading or supporting the initiative, the letter marks the first time that officials from US and Israel ally nations across the Atlantic have united to publicly criticise their governments over the war.

The officials argue that they are speaking up because they, as civil servants, consider that it is their duty to help improve policy and to work in their nations’ interests, and that they are speaking up because they believe their governments need to change direction on the war.

“Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice and human rights globally,” the letter was quoted by The New York Times as saying.

‘Breathtakingly hypocritical’
There was a “plausible risk” that their governments’ policies were contributing to “grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide,” it added.

The document protected the identities of signers as they feared reprisal.

Al Jazeera senior political analyst Marwan Bisahara said it was an important step for civil service officials to join other dissenting segments of society in the West who have called for an end to the war.

“We are already in the fourth month of this war, which has killed so many people — children, old people, young people,” he said.

“The fact that they [letter signees] too are joining in . . .  accumulates pressure on Western governments that have been breathtakingly hypocritical.”

Bishara also said the International Court of Justice’s ruling last month likely played a role in the crafting of the letter.

“I think once the court [ICJ] came out with its decision imposing six interim orders, it in many ways encouraged a lot of people to start speaking more and more for justice [in Gaza].”

COMMENTARY: By John Minto

In 2003, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s “apartheid wall” being built through Palestinian territory was a violation of international law and should be dismantled. Israel ignored the ruling and more than 20 years later the wall remains a potent symbol of Israeli policies of segregation based on ethnicity.

Last December, Israel was taken to the court again, this time by South Africa which argued Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza with genocidal talk from Israeli leaders and indiscriminate killing of civilians — more than 27,000 killed so far including more than 12,000 Palestinian children.

The charge of genocide against Israel will take years to be heard and decided upon but in the meantime South Africa argued for the court to issue interim orders to require Israel to end its military operation and allow desperately needed humanitarian assistance to flow freely into Gaza.

• READ MORE: Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza live: Rafah’s displaced brace for Israeli offensive

Last month, the ICJ gave an interim ruling and although it did not demand an immediate ceasefire, it agreed with South Africa’s case that there was evidence to suggest Israel had breached the Genocide Convention and requiring Israel to report back to the court within a month on the steps it was taking to protect Palestinian lives and their very existence in Gaza.

Israel is now on probation. What happens in the coming weeks will determine whether Israel ends its killing spree in Gaza or shows the ICJ its middle finger as it did in 2003.

Commentary on the ICJ decision indicates the huge moral weight the decision carries for Israel and its small coterie of supporters, including New Zealand, which has been complicit through its silence, to end the war on Gaza.

The only way Israel will follow the ICJ ruling is if it comes under enough pressure from countries such as New Zealand.

Strong demand or look away?
Western countries have previously called on other countries to abide by ICJ rulings — such as the ruling which said Russia must end its war in Ukraine. Will we make the same strong demand of Israel or will we look the other way?

So far New Zealand has been equivocal, Foreign Minister Winston Peters making a few obligatory tweets but nothing more. The contrast with how we dealt with Russia compared with Israel could not be clearer.

The Foreign Minister’s stance seems more aimed to avoid difficult conversations with US representatives at diplomatic cocktail parties than pressure to end the killing of Palestinian children.

With Israel’s history of ignoring international law, New Zealand must speak out in a principled, assertive way. The alternative is to be silent and for this country to suffer derision for such cowardly, obsequious behaviour.

Already New Zealand is swimming against the tide of world opinion. We have refused to criticise the killing of Palestinian civilians by Israel despite loudly condemning the killing of Israeli civilians in the October 7 attack.

We have also refused to condemn other war crimes such as the “collective punishment” of Palestinians through the withholding of food, water and other necessities of life. We haven’t even made an unequivocal call for an immediate, permanent ceasefire or called for an International Criminal Court investigation into war crimes on and after October 7.

We did this for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so why the reticence over the Middle East?

NZ’s selective morality
Our embarrassing history is one of selective morality. In 2014 when Israel launched a war on Gaza with similar mass killing of Palestinians, the John Key government called in the Israeli ambassador and made clear New Zealand’s expectations. The Christopher Luxon-led government has failed to take even this most rudimentary measure.

The time for doing that is well past. We must indicate to Israel that its behaviour is morally and ethically reprehensible.

The government should immediately close the Israeli embassy until Israel is in full compliance with the ICJ decision as well as the broader provisions of international law such as allowing Palestinian refugees the right to return to their land and homes in Palestine, ending the military occupation and ending Israel’s apartheid policies against Palestinians.

Wringing our hands is not an option. It might be acceptable for the comfort of the Minister of Foreign Affairs but for Palestinians it means ongoing death and destruction.

John Minto is the national chairman of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and contributes to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with the author’s permission.

New Zealand would likely continue funding the United Nations agency delivering aid in Palestine if concerns about its staff were dealt with, the Foreign Affairs Minister says.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Tuesday confirmed New Zealand was reviewing future payments to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

It follows accusations by Israel that 12 agency staff were involved in the Hamas’ attacks on October 7, which left about 1140 dead and about 250 taken as hostages.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘What is the critical issue here, it is the humanitarian crisis that we face and war in Gaza’ – Foreign Affairs Minister Peters
• Defunding UNRWA will cause Gazans ‘more misery and suffering’, warns former PM Clark
• Which countries have cut funding to UNRWA, and why?
• Other UNRWA reports

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Morning Report the allegations warranted a proper investigation.

But he said the critical issue was the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

According to the Palestine Health Ministry more than 26,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched a war on the besieged enclave in response to October 7.

Awaiting UN investigation
Peters said it was possible there were a few “rotten apples” within UNRWA.

“If the matter has been dealt with, and with assurances that it does not happen in the future, then the crisis is of a level, we must, I believe, and I think the New Zealand people would want us to respond to the crisis rather than to react in that way and punish a whole lot of innocent people because of the actions of a few.” he said.

Peters said it would be premature to make a decision before the UN finished its investigation.

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