Settler colonialism – Asia Pacific Report

Saige England: if we want to save the planet we need a massive game change

APR editor — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 23:00:16 +0000

As the world contemplates action over climate crisis at COP30 in Brazil, author Saige England writes that we need to recognise that we don’t need to prop up a dying economic system that flourishes on making some weak and others stronger.

COMMENTARY: By Saige England

I sat in a cafe listening to one man telling another how to get more out of his workers — “his team”, kind of the way people talked about workhorses until some of us read Black Beauty and learned that sentient creatures have feelings, both animals and people.

I hope that people will wake up to the need to unite, to pull together. The best decluttering is decolonising.

Maybe Zohran Mamdani’s win is a sign that will herald a new era, an era when socialists can beat “the money men”. Maybe it’s time when we will all wake up to a different possibility. Maybe other values will be recognised.

READ MORE: Other Saige England reports

COP30 BRAZIL 2025

Virtues do not come from wealth. Capital, capitalism (the key is in the word) is a system of exploitation. It was designed by merchants to make some rich and keep others poor. That’s the system.

Maybe you were not taught that? Of course you were not taught that. Think about it.

I listened to William Dalrymple being interviewed by Jack Tame last Sunday and I thought Jack — who I used to respect a lot before he failed to tackle genocide with Israel’s representative for genocide here in Aotearoa — I thought he, Jack, looked like a possum in the headlights when Dalrymple said that Donald Trump had a precursor in Benjamin Netanyahu and called genocide a genocide.

I like to think Jack and others like him (because I have been like them too) will learn to learn about the history of all people and not view history as an inevitable story of winners and losers.

Winners are exploiters
The winners are exploiters and if we want to save the planet we need a massive game change.

The legacy of colonisation. Video: TVNZ Q&A

Look at the stats of the land that was taken for expansion and how that expansion was used to justify the extermination of one people to prop another people up. The stats, the real statistics show who was there before, show people lived on the land with the land and the waters.

Capitalism is a system of expansion and exploitation. It flourished for a while on slavery and it flourished for a while on settler colonialism, and it flourished for a while on keeping workers believing the story that they were working for greater glory when their take home pay did not equal the value of their labour.

And there is a difference between guilt and remorse. We can learn from the latter. The former, guilt, stagnates, it leads to defence and offence.

We need to recognise that we don’t need to prop up a dying system that flourishes on making some weak and others stronger.

We need to learn to change — those of us who were wrong can admit it and go forward differently. We can realise that the system was designed to make us fail to see the threads that connect all people. We can wake up now and smell the manure among the roses.

Good shit helps things grow, bad shit is toxic contaminated waste that turns things inwards, makes them gnarly.

Monsters are connected
Unfortunately, those who behave like monsters are connected not just to some of us but all of us.

We need to open our minds and our hearts to a different value system. We need to decolonise our senses.

If you defend a bad system because right now you are one of the few on a decent pay scale then you are part of the problem. You are the problem. You have been conned. A system is only fair if it is fair for all people.

Learning history gives us a map said Dalrymple (author of The Golden Road which tells the story of how great India was BEFORE it was stolen by Britain — how that country gave the world numbers and so much more) and we need to learn how the map was drawn.

As someone who reads history to write history, I encourage us all to read widely and deeply and to research so that we do not stop thinking and analysing, and so we can tell wrong from right.

Do not be neutral about wrongs as some historians would suggest. It is more than OK to call a wrong a wrong. In fact it is vital. Take a new lens into viewing history, not the one the masters have given you.

We miss seeing the world if we fail to think about who drew the map, how it was drawn up by men who carved up the world for the Empires intent on creating a golden age by enslaving most of the people to prop up those at the top.

World map’s curling edges
We need to look under the curling edges of the world map drawn up by the exploiter. We need to find the stories of those who were exploited and who had been part of the creation story of this planet before they were exploited.

Those of us who are descendants of colonisers also — many of us — descend from those who were exploited.

The stories of British workhouses, of the system of exile via banishment, of the theft of women’s rights, of the extreme brutal forms of punishment, the stories of the way the top class pushed down and down on the people of the fields and forests and forced them to serve and serve, these real stories are less well known than the myths.

Myths like the story of King Arthur are better known.

Some myths have been created as a form of propaganda. We need to unpick the stories that were told to keep us stupid, to keep us ignorant.

It is time to stop following the trail of crumbs to Buckingham Palace, or at least to see where the trail really leads — to pedophiles who preyed on others, to predators — not just one but many, to people brilliant at reconstructing themselves — creating some fall guys and some good guys and making some people villains.

That story is a lie that protects and processes dysfunction.

Acting on the truth
Blaming one part of the system prevents us from realising and acting on the truth that the whole system is one of exploitation.

This was always a horror story disguised as a fairy story. One crown could save so many poor. The monarchy is not a family that produced one disfunctional person it is the disfunction.

It promotes the lie that one group of people deserve wealth because they are better than another. What a sick joke.

So let’s back away from societies made by men who want to profit from others and get back to nature.

Let’s look on nature as a sister or mother — a sister or mother you love.

Let’s look at the so called natural disasters like climate change. Look at how they have been created by “noble men” and “noble women” and ignoble ones as well. Disasters that can be averted, prevented.

Who suffers the most in a natural disaster? Not the rich.

How do we heal?
So how do we hope and how do we heal? We see the change. We be the change.

I like listening to intelligent insightful people like Richard D Wolff and Yanis Varoufakis:

Mamdani beats the money men. Video: Diem TV

Personally, for my mental and physical health I’ve been sea bathing, dipping in the sea. I join a group of mainly women who all have stories, and who plunge into nature for release and relief, to relieve ourselves from the debris. Uniting in nature.

I’ve learned that every day is different. The sea is always changing. No two waves are the same and they all pull in the same direction.

We are part moon, part wave, part light, part darkness. We are the bounty and the beauty.
I do have hope that we will all unite for common good. Sharing on common ground. The word Common is so much better than Capital.

If you are working for the kind of people that are discussing how to get more out of you for less, then unite.

And if you know people who are being exploited in any way at all unite with them not the exploiter. Be the change.

By helping each other we save each other. And that includes helping our friend and exploited lover: Nature.

Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Britain’s act of ‘colonial arrogance’ created living injustice for Palestinians, says PSNA

APR editor — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 22:50:49 +0000

Asia Pacific Report

Today marks 108 years since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and New Zealand pro-Palestinian protest groups have condemned this infamous date in rallies across the country.

“Britain promised a land that wasn’t theirs to give,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair Maher Nazzal.

“That single act of colonial arrogance set in motion more than a century of displacement, occupation, and suffering for the Palestinian people.

“For Palestinians, the Balfour Declaration is not history; it’s a living injustice that continues today.

“It’s time for truth and accountability,” Nazzal declared in a post today.

“It’s time for the world, including Aotearoa New Zealand, to stand firmly for justice, equality, and the right of Palestinians to live free on their land.”

Reporting on the Auckland rally and march yesterday, Bruce King said Janfrie Wakim, a longtime stalwart of pro-Palestine activism in Aotearoa New Zealand, had criticised the Balfour Declaration that had promised Palestine as a Jewish state.

‘Mendacious, deceitful’
She quoted the late British journalist and Middle East expert Robert Fisk calling it “the most mendacious, deceitful and hypocritical document in British history”.

Opposition Labour MP and shadow attorney-general Vanushi Walters outlined discussions over sanctions legislation against Israel in preparation for the party winning next year’s general election.

The opposition Labour Party currently leads in most opinion polls.

The infamous Balfour Declaration by Britain’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in a letter to Lord Rothschild on 2 November 1917. Image: MN screenshot APR

Greens MP Ricardo Menéndez protested against the NZ government having signed a free trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) earlier this year.

This week, the rebel RSF (Rapid Support Forces) fighters that the UAE is accused of backing overran the city of El Fasher, capital of Darfur in Sudan, and carried out massacres of civilians, reports the United Nations.

Al Jazeera reports the Balfour Declaration (Balfour’s “promise” in Arabic) turned the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine into a reality when Britain publicly pledged to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” there.

The pledge is generally viewed as one of the main catalysts of the Nakba — the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 – and the brutality that the emerging Zionist state of Israel inflicted on the Palestinian people.

It is regarded as one of the most controversial and criticised documents in the modern history of the Arab world and has puzzled historians for decades.

Israel has waged a two-year war on the besieged enclave of Gaza killing more than 68,000 people, including 20,000 children. Israel has killed more than 200 Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire began on October 10.

Saige England: Why I have spent a decade proudly standing with Palestinians and I will never stop

APR editor — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 22:31:02 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Saige England

I unequivocally support Irish author Sally Rooney with all my heart and soul. The author risks imprisonment for donating funds from her books and the TV series based on Normal People to a Palestinian group.

Once again the United Kingdom tells Palestinians who they should support. Go figure.
In her opinion piece in The Irish Times last Saturday she said that:

“Activists who disrupt the flow of weapons to a genocidal regime may violate petty criminal statutes, but they uphold a far greater law and a more profound human imperative: to protect a people and culture from annihilation.”

Whenever the people resist or rebel they are deemed terrorists. That has been the case for indigenous people around the world from indigenous Americans to Indians in India to Aborigine and Māori, the Irish and the Scots, and the Welsh.

I went from being a “born-again” starry-eyed kibbutznik who believed in Zionism to a journalist who researched the facts and the hidden truths.

Those facts are revolting. Settler colonialism is revolting. Stealing homes is theft.

I kept in touch with some of my US-based Zionist kibbutznik mates. When I asked them to stop calling Palestinians animals, when I asked them not to say they had tails, when I asked them to stop the de-humanisation — the same de-humanisation that happened during the Nazi regime, they dumped me.

Zionism based on a myth
Jews who support genocide are antisemitic. They are also selfish and greedy. Zionists are the bully kids at school who take other kids toys and don’t want to share. They don’t play fair.

The notion of Zionism is based on a myth of the superiority of one group over another. It is religious nutterism and it is racism.

Empire is greed. Capitalism is greed. Settler colonialism involves extermination for those who resist giving up their land. Would you or I accept someone taking our homes, forcing us to leave our uneaten dinner on the table? Would you or I accept our kids being stolen, put in jail, raped, tortured.

Irish author Sally Rooney on why she supports Palestine Action and rejects the UK law banning this, and she argues that nation states have a duty not only to punish but also to prevent the commission of this “incomparably horrifying crime of genocide”. Image: Irish Times screenshot APR

The country was weird when I visited in 1982. It had just invaded Lebanon. Later that year it committed a genocide.

The Sabra and Shatila massacre was a mass murder of up to 3500 Palestinian refugees by Israel’s proxy militia, the Phalange, during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The horrific slaughter prompted outrage and condemnation around the world, with the UN General Assembly condemning it as “an act of genocide”.

I had been primed for sunshine and olives, but the country gave me a chill. The toymaker I worked with was a socialist and he told me I should feel sorry for the Palestinians.

It isn’t normal for a country to be ruled by the militia. Gun-toting soldiers roamed the streets. But you need to defend yourself when you steal.

Paranoia from guilt
Paranoia is a consequence of a persecutor who fails to recognise their guilt. It happens when you steal. The paranoia happens when you close doors. When you don’t welcome the other — whose home you stole.

In 2014, soldiers of the IDF — a mercenary macho army — were charged with raping their own colleagues. Now footage of the rape of Palestinian men are celebrated on national television in Israel in front of live audiences. Any decent person would be disgusted by this.

The army under this Zionist madness has committed — and continues to commit — the crimes it lied about Palestinians committing. And yes, the big fat liar has even admitted its own lies. The bully in the playground really doesn’t care now, it does not have to persuade the world it is right, because it is supported, it has the power.

This isn’t the warped Wild West where puritans invented the scalping of women and children — the sins of colonisers are many — this is happening now. We can stand for the might of racism or we can stand against racist policies and regimes. We can stand against apartheid and genocide.

Indigenous people must have the right to live in their homeland. Casting them onto designated land then invading that land is wrong.

When Israelis are kidnapped they are called hostages. When Palestinians are kidnapped they are called prisoners. It’s racist. It’s cruel. It’s revolting that anyone would support this travesty.

Far far more Palestinians were killed in the year leading up to October 7, 2023, than Israelis killed that day (and we know now that some of those Israelis were killed by their own army, Israel has admitted it lied over and again about the murder of babies and rapes).

Ōtautahi author and journalist Saige England . . . “It isn’t normal for a country to be ruled by the militia. Gun-toting soldiers roamed the streets.” Image: Saige England

Mercenary macho army
So who does murder and rape? The IDF. The proud mercenary macho army.

Once upon a time, a Palestinian kid who threw a stone got a bullet between the eyes. Now they get a bullet for carrying water, for going back to the homeground that has been bombed to smithereens. Snipers enjoy taking them down.

Drones operated by human beings who have no conscience follow children, follow journalists, follow nurses, follow someone in a wheelchair, and blow them to dust.

This is a game for the IDF. I’m sure some feel bad about it but they have to go along with it because they lose privileges if they do not. This sick army run by a sick state includes soldiers who hold dual US and Israeli citizenship.

Earlier this year I met a couple of IDF soldiers on holidays from genocide, breezily ordering their lattes in a local cafe. I tried to engage with them, to garner some sense of compassion but they used “them” and “they” to talk about Palestinians.

They lumped all Palestinians into a de-humanised mass worth killing. They blamed indigenous people who lived under a regime of apartheid and who are now being exterminated, for the genocide.

The woman was even worse than the man. She loathed me the minute she saw my badge supporting the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aoteara. Hate spat from her eyes.

Madness.

De-brainwashing
I saw that the only prospect for them to change might be a de-brainwashing programme. Show them the real facts they were never given, show them real Palestinians instead of figments of their imagination.

It occurred to me that it really was very tempting to take them home and offer them a different narrative. I asked them if they would listen, and they said no. If I had forced them to come with me I would have been, you know, a hostage-taker.

Israel is evidence that the victim can become the persecutor when they scapegoat indigenous people as the villain, when they hound them for crime of a holocaust they did not commit.

And I get it, a little. My Irish and French Huguenot ancestors were persecuted. I have to face the sad horrid fact that those persecuted people took other people’s land in New Zealand. The victims became the persecutor.

Oh they can say they did not know but they did know. They just did not look too hard at the dispossession of indigenous people.

I wrote my book The Seasonwife at the ripe young age of 63 to reveal some of the suppressed truths about colonisation and about the greed of Empire — a system where the rich exploit the poor to help themselves. I will continue to write novels about suppressed truths.

And I call down my Jewish ancestors who hid their Jewishness to avoid persecution. I have experienced antisemitism.

Experienced cancelling
But I have experienced cancelling, not by my publisher I hasten to add, but I know agencies and publishers in my country who tell authors to shut up about this genocide, who call those who speak up anti-semitic.

I have been cancelled by Zionist authors. I don’t have a publisher like that but I know those who do, I know agencies who pressure authors to be silent.

I call on other authors to follow Rooney’s example and for pity’s sake stop referencing Hamas. Learn the truth.

Benjamin Netanyahu refused to deal with any other Palestinian representative. Palestinians have the right to choose their own representatives but they were denied that right.

What is a terrorist army? The IDF which has created killing field after killing field. Not just this genocide, but the genocide in Lebanon in 1982.

I have been protesting against the massacre of Palestinians since 2014 and I wish I had been more vocal earlier. I wish I had left the country when the Phalangists were killed. I did go back and report from the West Bank but I feel now, that I did not do enough. I was pressured — as Western writers are — to support the wrongdoer, the persecutor, not the victim.

I will never do that again.

Change with learning
I do believe that with learning we can change, we can work towards a different, fairer system — a system based on fairness not exploitation.

I stand alongside indigenous people everywhere.

So I say again, that I support Sally Rooney and any author who has the guts to stand up to the pressure of oppressive regimes that deny the rights of people to resist oppression.

I have spent a decade proudly standing with Palestinians and I will never stop. I believe they will be granted the right to return to their land. It is not anyone else’s right to grant that, really, the right of return for those who were forced out, and their descendants, is long overdue.

And their forced exile is recent. Biblical myths don’t stack up. Far too often they are stacked to make other people fall down.

Perhaps if we had all stood up more than 100,000 Palestinians would still be alive, a third of those children, would still be running around, their voices like bells instead of death calls.

I support Palestinians with all my heart and soul.

Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Rewarding knowingly illegal conduct – some might say, Israeli terrorism

APR editor — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 10:04:00 +0000

Why the recognition of the State of Palestine by Australia is an important development. Meanwhile, New Zealand still dithers. This article unpacks the hypocrisy in the debate.

ANALYSIS: By Paul Heywood-Smith

The recognition of the State of Palestine by Australia, leading, it is hoped, to full UN member state status, is an important development.

What has followed is a remarkable demonstration of ignorance and/or submission to the Zionist lobby.

Rewarding Hamas
Let us consider aspects of the response. One aspect is that recognising Palestine is rewarding the resistance organisation Hamas.

There are a number of issues involved here. The first issue is that Hamas is branded as a “terrorist organisation”. So much is said, apparently, by eight nations compared to the overwhelming majority of UN recognised states which do not so regard it.

May I suggest that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation: refer P&I, October 23, 2022, Australia must overturn its listing of Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist political party which chose to fight apartheid by calling for one state.

That was Hamas’s objective when it fought the election against Fatah in 2006.

As an aside, it now results in the lie that it is ridiculous that the Albanese government would recognise Palestine as part of a two-state solution when Hamas rejects a two-state solution. This is just yet another attempt to demonise Hamas.

Hamas leaders have repeatedly said they would accept a two-state solution. It has only recently done so again.

On 23 July last, when Hamas responded to a US draft ceasefire framework the Hamas official, Basem Naim, affirmed Hamas’s publicly stated pledge that it would give up power in Gaza and support a two-state solution on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestine.

These are the very borders stipulated by international law — see hereunder.

The Palestinians constituting Hamas are residents of an illegally occupied territory. International law affords to them the right to resist: Geneva Conventions I-IV, 1949.

The hypocrisy associated with the demonisation of Hamas is massive. Much is made of hostages having been taken on 7 October 2023 — a war crime according to international law. Those militants who took the hostages might be forgiven for thinking that it was minimal compared with the seven years of non-compliance with Security Council Resolution (SCR) 2334 calling for the end of occupation and removal of settlements.

The second issue is that Hamas commenced the events in Gaza by its horrific, unprovoked, attack on 7 October 2023. As to October 7 being unprovoked, see P&I, October 9, 2023 Palestinians, pushed beyond endurance, defend their homeland against violent apartheid.

The events of October 7 are, in any event, shrouded in doubt. This follows from Israel’s suppression of evidence concerning what happened. What we do know is that the Israel Defence Force (IDF) received orders to shell Israeli homes and even their own bases on October 7.

In addition, the Hannibal Directive justified IDF slaughter of Israelis potentially being taken as hostages. It is also accepted that allegations of rape and beheading of babies by Hamas militants were false. The disinformation put out by Israel, and Israel’s refusal to allow journalists on site, or to interview participants, make it impossible to form any clear or credible understanding of what happened on October 7.

It is accepted that Hamas militants attacked three Israeli military bases, no doubt with the intention that those bases should withdraw from their positions relative to Gazan territory. Such action can be understood as consistent with an occupied citizenry resisting such illegal occupation.

Compounding the uncertainty over October 7 is the continuing conjecture, leakage, of information suggesting that the IDF had advance warning of the proposed Hamas attack but chose, for other purposes, to take no action. These uncertainties are never adverted to by our press which repeatedly attributes responsibility for all Israeli deaths on the day to the actions of Hamas militants, which actions are presented as an “abomination, barbarity”. Refer generally to P&I, November 5, 2023 (Stuart Rees) Expose and dismiss the domination Israeli narrative; P&I, January 4, 2024 Israeli general killed Israelis on 7 October and then lied about it.

The third issue, the major hypocrisy, is that Hamas is being rewarded. Consider the position of Israel. Israel is, and has been, illegally occupying Palestinian territory since 1967. This is undisputed according to international law as articulated in the following instruments:

1967 – SCR 242;
2004 – the ICJ decision concerning The Wall;
Dec. 2016 – SCR 2334, not vetoed by Obama, recognising the illegal occupation and calling for its end; and
2024 – the Advisory Opinion of the ICJ of 19 July.

Israel has done nothing to comply with any of these instruments. It is set on a programme of gradual acquisition.

The result is that now there are illegal settlements all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. When Israel is told: the West Bank and East Jerusalem are to be part of a Palestinian state, it will scream, “But large parts are occupied by Jewish Israelis!” These are “facts on the ground”.

Supporters of Israel ignore the fact that occupation by settlers occurred in the full knowledge that international law branded such occupation as illegal. If the settlements are considered as a “done deal”, that would be rewarding knowingly illegal conduct — some might say, Israeli terrorism.

So that there can be no doubt about the import of the position it is appropriate to specify the critical parts of SCR 2334:

The Security Council

Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;
Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and that it fully respect all of its legal obligations in this regard;
Underlines that it will not recognise any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations;
Stresses that the cessation of all Israeli settlement activities is essential for salvaging the two-State solution, and calls for affirmative steps to be taken immediately to reverse the negative trends on the ground that are imperilling the two-State solution;.

Following the ICJ Advisory Opinion of July 19, the UN General Assembly in adopting the same set 17 September 2025 as the deadline for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territory.

Negotiated settlement
And when Israel now says, “Recognition now is going to prevent a negotiated settlement”, it is ignoring the fact that in the six, 12, 20 months, two, three, four years until such negotiated settlement occurs, many more settlements would have been commenced, which of course, are more “facts on the ground”.

Then we have the response of the Coalition, which demonstrates how irrelevant the Opposition is in today’s Australia. That response is that the recognition will inhibit a negotiated settlement between Israel and Palestinians.

The Coalition, however, says nothing about the fact that the Israeli government has repeatedly stated that there will never be a Palestinian State. Indeed, Israel has legislated to that effect and is moreover periodically purporting to annex Palestinian land.

So how does the Coalition believe that a negotiated settlement will come about? Well, one way, over which Israel may have no say, is for Palestine to become a full member State of the UN. One UN member state cannot occupy the land of another.

Failure of our press to ask any question of pro-Israel interviewees about the end of occupation is a disgrace.

Next challenge
Now for the next challenge — to bring about the end of occupation. Israel will not accede readily. Sanctions must be the first step. Such sanctions must be immediate, concrete and crippling.

They must result in the immediate suspension of trade. That can be the first step.

Watch this space.

Paul Heywood-Smith is an Adelaide SC (senior counsel) of some 20 years. He was the initial chairperson of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, an incorporated association registered in South Australia in 2004. He is the author of The Case for Palestine, The Perspective of an Australian Observer (Wakefield Press, 2014). This article was first published by Pearls & Irritations and is republished with permission.

The West is in panic as Israel’s plan for ‘full control’ of Gaza heralds a new Nakba

APR editor — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 11:19:34 +0000

Netanyahu’s mass ethnic cleansing strategy pulls the rug out from under the West’s cherished pretext for supporting Israeli criminality: the fabled two-state solution.

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

If you thought Western capitals were finally losing patience with Israel’s engineering of a famine in Gaza nearly two years into the genocide, you may be disappointed.

As ever, events have moved on — even if the extreme hunger and malnourishment of the two million people of Gaza have not abated.

Western leaders are now expressing “outrage”, as the media call it, at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to “take full control” of Gaza and “occupy” it.

At some point in the future, Israel is apparently ready to hand the enclave over to outside forces unconnected to the Palestinian people.

The Israeli cabinet agreed last Friday on the first step: a takeover of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are huddled in the ruins, being starved to death. The city will be encircled, systematically depopulated and destroyed, with survivors presumably herded southwards to a “humanitarian city” — Israel’s new term for a concentration camp — where they will be penned up, awaiting death or expulsion.

At the weekend, foreign ministers from the UK, Germany, Italy, Australia and other Western nations issued a joint statement decrying the move, warning it would “aggravate the catastrophic humanitarian situation, endanger the lives of the hostages, and further risk the mass displacement of civilians”.

Germany, Israel’s most fervent backer in Europe and its second-biggest arms supplier, is apparently so dismayed that it has vowed to “suspend” — that is, delay — weapons shipments that have helped Israel to murder and maim hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the past 22 months.

Netanyahu is not likely to be too perturbed. Doubtless, Washington will step in and pick up any slack for its main client state in the oil-rich Middle East.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has once again shifted the West’s all-too-belated focus on the indisputable proof of Israel’s ongoing genocidal actions — evidenced by Gaza’s skeletal children — to an entirely different story.

Now, the front pages are all about the Israeli prime minister’s strategy in launching another “ground operation”, how much pushback he is getting from his military commanders, what the implications will be for the Israelis still held captive in the enclave, whether the Israeli army is now overstretched, and whether Hamas can ever be “defeated” and the enclave “demilitarised”.

We are returning once again to logistical analyses of the genocide — analyses whose premises ignore the genocide itself. Might that not be integral to Netanyahu’s strategy?

Life and death
It ought to be shocking that Germany has been provoked into stopping its arming of Israel — assuming it follows through — not because of months of images of Gaza’s skin-and-bones children that echo those from Auschwitz, but only because Israel has declared that it wants to “take control” of Gaza.

It should be noted, of course, that Israel never stopped controlling Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territories — in contravention of the fundamentals of international law, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled last year. Israel has had absolute control over the lives and deaths of Gaza’s people every day — bar one — since its occupation of the tiny coastal enclave many decades ago.

On 7 October 2023, thousands of Palestinian fighters briefly broke out of the besieged prison camp they and their families had endured after Israel momentarily dropped its guard.

Gaza has long been a prison that the Israeli military illegally controlled by land, sea and air, determining who could enter and leave. It kept Gaza’s economy throttled, and put the enclave’s population “on a diet” that saw rocketing malnourishment among its children long before the current starvation campaign.

Trapped behind a highly militarised fence since the early 1990s, unable to access their own coastal waters, and with Israeli drones constantly surveilling them and raining down death from the air, the people of Gaza viewed it more as a modernised concentration camp.

But Germany and the rest of the West were fine supporting all that. They have continued selling Israel arms, providing it with special trading status, and offering diplomatic cover.

Only as Israel carries through to a logical conclusion its settler-colonial agenda of replacing the native Palestinian people with Jews, is it apparently time for the West to vent its rhetorical “outrage”.

Two-state trickery
Why the pushback now? In part, it is because Netanyahu is pulling the rug out from under their cherished, decades-long pretext for supporting Israel’s ever-greater criminality: the fabled two-state solution.

Israel conspired in that trickery with the signing of the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s.

The goal was never the realisation of a two-state solution. Rather, Oslo created a “diplomatic horizon” for “final status issues” — which, like the physical horizon, always remained equally distant, however much ostensible movement there was on the ground.

Lisa Nandy, Britain’s Culture Secretary, peddled precisely this same deceit last week as she extolled the virtues of the two-state solution. She told Sky News: “Our message to the Palestinian people is very, very clear: There is hope on the horizon.”

UK Government Minister Lisa Nandy:

‘Our message to the Palestinian people is very clear. There is hope on the horizon.’

Palestinians are expected to believe words of ‘hope’ from a Minister of a government that has aided and supported Israel’s genocide against them pic.twitter.com/appizVm0QY

— Going Underground (@GUnderground_TV) August 6, 2025

Every Palestinian understood her real message, which could be paraphrased as: “We’ve lied to you about a Palestinian state for decades, and we’ve allowed a genocide to unfold before the world’s eyes for the past two years. But hey, trust us this time. We’re on your side.”

In truth, the promise of Palestinian statehood was always treated by the West as little more than a threat — and one directed at Palestinian leaders. Palestinian officials must be more obedient, quieter. They had to first prove their willingness to police Israel’s occupation on Israel’s behalf by repressing their own people.

Hamas, of course, failed that test in Gaza. But Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank, bent over backwards to reassure his examiners, casting as “sacred” his lightly armed security forces’ so-called “cooperation” with Israel. In reality, they are there to do its dirty work.

Nonetheless, despite the PA’s endless good behaviour, Israel has continued to expel ordinary Palestinians from their land, then steal that land — which was supposed to form the basis of a Palestinian state — and hand it over to extremist Jewish settlers backed by the Israeli army.

Former US President Barack Obama briefly and feebly tried to halt what the West misleadingly calls Jewish “settlement expansion” — in reality, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians — but rolled over at the first sign of intransigence from Netanyahu.

Israel has stepped up the process of ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank even more aggressively over the past two years, while global attention has been on Gaza — with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz warning this week that settlers have been given “free rein”.

A small window into the impunity granted to settlers as they wage their campaign of violence to depopulate Palestinian communities was highlighted at the weekend, when B’Tselem released footage of a Palestinian activist, Awdah Hathaleen, inadvertently filming his own killing.

Extremist settler Yinon Levi was released on grounds of self-defence, even though the video shows him singling out Hathaleen from afar, taking aim and shooting.

Alibi gone
It is noticeable that, having stopped making reference to Palestinian statehood for many years, Western leaders have revived their interest only now — as Israel is making a two-state solution unrealisable.

That was graphically illustrated by footage broadcast this month by ITV. Shot from an aid plane, it showed the wholesale destruction of Gaza — its homes, schools, hospitals, universities, bakeries, shops, mosques and churches gone.

Apocalyptic scenes in Gaza Video: ITV News

Gaza is in ruins. Its reconstruction will take decades. Occupied East Jerusalem and its holy sites were long ago seized and Judaised by Israel, with Western assent.

Suddenly, Western capitals are noticing that the last remnants of the proposed Palestinian state are about to be swallowed whole by Israel, too. Germany recently warned Israel that it must not take “any further steps toward annexing the West Bank”.

US President Donald Trump is on his own path. But this is the moment when other major Western powers — led by France, Britain and Canada — have started threatening to recognise a Palestinian state, even as the possibility of such a state has been obliterated by Israel.

Australia announced it would join them this week after its foreign minister, a few days earlier, said the quiet part out loud, warning: “There is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise if the international community don’t move to create that pathway to a two-state solution.”

That is something they dare not countenance, because with it goes their alibi for supporting all these years the apartheid state of Israel, now deep into the final stages of a genocide in Gaza.

That was why British Prime Minister Keir Starmer desperately switched tack recently. Instead of dangling recognition of Palestinian statehood as a carrot encouraging Palestinians to be more obedient — British policy for decades — he wielded it as a threat, and a largely hollow one, against Israel.

He would recognise a Palestinian state if Israel refused to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and proceeded with the West Bank’s annexation. In other words, Starmer backed recognising a state of Palestine – after Israel has gone ahead with its complete erasure.

Extracting concessions
Still, France and Britain’s recognition threat is not simply too late. It serves two other purposes.

Firstly, it provides a new alibi for inaction. There are plenty of far more effective ways for the West to halt Israel’s genocide. Western capitals could embargo arms sales, stop intelligence sharing, impose economic sanctions, sever ties with Israeli institutions, expel Israeli ambassadors, and downgrade diplomatic relations. They are choosing to do none of those things.

And secondly, recognition is designed to extract from the Palestinians “concessions” that will make them even more vulnerable to Israeli violence.

According to France’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Jean-Noel Barrot: “Recognising a State of Palestine today means standing with the Palestinians who have chosen non-violence, who have renounced terrorism, and are prepared to recognise Israel.”

In other words, in the West’s view, the “good Palestinians” are those who recognise and lay down before the state committing genocide against them.

Western leaders have long envisioned a Palestinian state only on condition that it is demilitarised. Recognition this time is premised on Hamas agreeing to disarm and its departure from Gaza, leaving Abbas to take on the enclave and presumably continue the “sacred” mission of “cooperating” with a genocidal Israeli army.

As part of the price for recognition, all 22 members of the Arab League publicly condemned Hamas and demanded its removal from Gaza.

Boot on Gaza’s neck
How does all of this fit with Netanyahu’s “ground offensive”? Israel isn’t “taking over” Gaza, as he claims. Its boot has been on the enclave’s neck for decades.

While Western capitals contemplate a two-state solution, Israel is preparing a final mass ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza.

Starmer’s government, for one, knew this was coming. Flight data shows that the UK has been constantly operating surveillance missions over Gaza on Israel’s behalf from the Royal Air Force base Akrotiri on Cyprus. Downing Street has been following the enclave’s erasure step by step.

Netanyahu’s plan is to encircle, besiege and bomb the last remaining populated areas in northern and central Gaza, and drive Palestinians towards a giant holding pen — misnamed a “humanitarian city” — alongside the enclave’s short border with Egypt. Israel will then probably employ the same contractors it has been using elsewhere in Gaza to go street to street to bulldoze or blow up any surviving buildings.

The next stage, given the trajectory of the last two years, is not difficult to predict. Locked up in their dystopian “humanitarian city”, the people of Gaza will continue to be starved and bombed whenever Israel claims it has identified a Hamas fighter in their midst, until Egypt or other Arab states can be persuaded to take them in, as a further “humanitarian” gesture.

Then, the only matter to be settled will be what happens to the real estate: build some version of Trump’s gleaming “Riviera” scheme, or construct another tawdry patchwork of Jewish settlements of the kind envisioned by Netanyahu’s openly fascist allies, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.

There is a well-established template to be drawn on, one that was used in 1948 during Israel’s violent creation. Palestinians were driven from their cities and villages, in what was then called Palestine, across the borders into neighbouring states. The new state of Israel, backed by Western powers, then set about methodically destroying every home in those hundreds of villages.

Over subsequent years, they were landscaped either with forests or exclusive Jewish communities, often engaged in farming, to make Palestinian return impossible and stifle any memory of Israel’s crimes. Generations of Western politicians, intellectuals and cultural figures have celebrated all of this.

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Austrian President Heinz Fischer are among those who went to Israel in their youth to work on these farming communities. Most came back as emissaries for a Jewish state built on the ruins of a Palestinian homeland.

An emptied Gaza can be similarly re-landscaped. But it is much harder to imagine that this time the world will forget or forgive the crimes committed by Israel — or those who enabled them.

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

Israel-Iran war ‘more dangerous than we imagine’, says Middle East Eye editor

Pacific Media Watch — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 05:53:34 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

The Big Picture Podcast host, New Zealand-Egyptian journalist and author Mohamed Hassan, interviews Middle East Eye editor-in-chief David Hearst about the rapidly unfolding war between Israel and Iran, why the West supports it, and what it threatens to unleash on the global order.

What does Israel really want to achieve, what options does Iran have to deescalate, and will the United States stop the war, or join it as is being hinted?

Hearst says the war is “more dangerous than we imagine” and notes that while most Western leadership still backs Israel, there has been a strong shift in world public opinion against Tel Aviv.

He says Israel has lost most of the world’s support, most of the Global South, most African states, Brazil, South Africa, China and Russia.

Hearst says the world is witnessing the “cynical tailend of the colonial era” among Western states.

The era of peace is over. Video: Middle East Eye

Iran ‘unlikely to surrender’
Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, says Iran is unlikely to “surrender to American terms” and that there is a risk the war on Iran could “bring the entire region down”.

Vaez told Al Jazeera in an interview that US President Donald Trump “provided the green light for Israel to attack Iran” just two days before the president’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, was due to meet with the Iranians in the Oman capital of Muscat.

Imagine viewing, from the Iranian perspective, Trump giving the go-ahead for the attack while at the same time saying that diplomacy with Tehran was still ongoing, Vaez said.

Now Trump “is asking for Iranian surrender” on his Truth Social platform, he said.

“I think the only thing that is more dangerous than suffering from Israeli and American bombs is actually surrendering to American terms,” Vaez said.

“Because if Iran surrenders on the nuclear issue and on the demands of President Trump, there is no end to the slippery slope, which would eventually result in regime collapse and capitulation anyway.”

pic.twitter.com/QcySkOWWGN

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 17, 2025

Most Americans oppose US involvement
Meanwhile, a new survey has reported that most Americans oppose US military involvement in the conflict.

The survey by YouGov showed that some 60 percent of Americans surveyed thought the US military should not get involved in the ongoing hostilities between Israel and Iran.

Only 16 percent favoured US involvement, while 24 percent said they were not sure.

Among the Democrats, those who opposed US intervention were at 65 percent, and among the Republicans, it was 53 percent. Some 61 percent of independents opposed the move.

The survey also showed that half of Americans viewed Iran as an enemy of the US, while 25 percent said it was “unfriendly”.

Fiji solidarity group condemns Rabuka plans for embassy in Jerusalem

APR editor — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 17:00:02 +0000

Asia Pacific Report

A Fiji-based Pacific solidarity group supporting the indigenous Palestine struggle for survival against the Israeli settler colonial state has today issued a statement condemning Fiji backing for Israel.

In an open letter to the “people of Fiji”, the Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network (F4P) has warned “your government openly supports Israel despite its genocidal campaign against Palestinians”.

“It is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and history will not forgive their inaction.”

The group said the struggle resonated with all who believed in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.

Fijians for Palestine has condemned Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition government plans to open a Fijian embassy in Jerusalem with Israeli backing and has launched a “No embassy on occupied land” campaign.

The group likened the Palestine liberation struggle to Pacific self-determination campaigns in Bougainville, “French” Polynesia, Kanaky and West Papua.

Global voices for end to violence
The open letter on social media said:

“Our solidarity with the Palestinian people is a testament to our shared humanity. We believe in a world where diversity, is treated with dignity and respect.

“We dream of a future where children in Gaza can play without fear, where families can live without the shadow of war, and where the Palestinian people can finally enjoy the peace and freedom they so rightly deserve.

“We join the global voices demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end to the violence. We express our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people.

“The Palestinian struggle is not just a regional issue; it is a testament to the resilience of a people who, despite facing impossible odds, continue to fight for their right to exist, freedom, and dignity. Their struggle resonates with all who believe in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.

“The images of destruction, the stories of families torn apart, and the cries of children caught in the crossfire are heart-wrenching. These are not mere statistics or distant news stories; these are real people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, much like us.

“As Fijians, we have always prided ourselves on our commitment to peace, unity, and humanity. Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.

“We call on you to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people this Thursday with us, not out of political allegiance but out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.

“There can be no peace without justice, and we stand in unity with all people and territories struggling for self-determination and freedom from occupation. The Pacific cannot be an Ocean of Peace without freedom and self determination in Palestine, West Papua, Kanaky and all oppressed territories.

“To the Fijian people, please know that your government openly supports Israel despite its genocidal campaign against Palestinians. It is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and history will not forgive their inaction.”

West and media are ‘erasing’ Palestinian history, say critics

APR editor — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 07:00:16 +0000

Asia Pacific Report

Palestinian history is “deliberately ignored” and is being effectively “erased” as part of Western news media narratives, while establishment forces work to shut down anyone speaking out against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, academics have told a university conference of legal and Middle East experts.

A two-day online summit Erasure and Defiance: the Politics of Silence and Voice on Palestine, hosted by the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Diversities and Social Inclusion Research Centre, also heard the type of reporting in the mainstream media “normalised violence” against Palestinians, reports the UTS Central News.

Also, the murder of Palestinians and resistance by them had been routinely mischaracterised as “loss and failure” on their part as though it was their own fault.

Although the conference took place over one and-a-half days in July and brought together Arab, Muslim, Jewish and Indigenous speakers from Palestine, Australia, Germany, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom, details have only just been released.

The release of the conference proceedings comes more than one year on from the start of the Israeli War on Gaza, now extended into Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, with arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and an Amnesty International investigation concluding Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

The western media has ranged from selective reporting of facts… and publishing outright lies that justify the murder of Palestinians.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) at least 45,097 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including over 17,492 children, with more than 107,244 people injured and in excess of 10,000 people missing under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Israeli forces, meanwhile, have killed journalists at a faster rate than any conflict on record, with estimates varying between 137, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 188 documented by Turkish news agency Anadolu Ajansi, and the 196 killed as reported by the Gaza Government Media Office.

By comparison 63 journalists were killed in 20 years of the Vietnam War.

Posed war crime questions
The conference posed major questions regarding the erasing of Palestinian history, how it enables present-day war crimes and how defiance has resonated and inspired ongoing resistance by:

Palestinians fighting to defend their lives and their land, or as seen around the world, in civic protests;
the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement;
human rights advocacy;
alternative social media production; and
legal challenges in the highest of our international institutions, the ICC and the International Court of Justice.

The conference was officially opened with the Welcome to Country, from Uncle Greg Simms, Gadigal elder of the Dharug Nation.

Uncle Greg spoke about the importance of land and country to the survival of Australia’s Indigenous people, the role of ancestral ties and connections, the importance of history and allies in the face of genocide, and the need to empathise with the people of Palestine at this time.

Dr Janine Hourani’s address. Video: UTS

Janine Hourani from the University of Exeter and Palestinian Youth Movement, in her keynote speech detailed the history of Palestinian resistance to Zionist occupation, addressing how the recording of history, privileged by a select few, served to stifle narratives, as well as erase key figures and moments in time, “reproducing a particular version of Palestinian history that focuses on defeat and loss, rather than resistance and rebellion”.

“The Western media has ranged from selective reporting of facts, reporting Palestinians as ‘died’ and Israeli settlers as ‘murdered’ and publishing outright lies that justify the murder of Palestinians,” said Hourani.

“Since October we’ve heard multiple political interventions being made about the Western media’s complicity in the current genocide in Palestine.”

Souheir Edalbi, a law lecturer at Western Sydney University, convened the session that followed, featuring four speakers.

Anti-Palestinian racism
Randa Abdelfattah, an author, lawyer and academic, addressed anti-Palestinian racism which serves to disarm criticism of Israel and Zionism.

Udi Raz, an academic and activist based in Germany, presented a case study of Mizrahi or Arab Jews in Germany, interrogating the definition of semitism and otherness in that context, the culturally pervasive racism towards Arabs, and German anxieties about what constitutes a non-European identity.

Annie Pfingst, an author and academic, listed 11 different types of “erasure” by Israel, from the confiscation, possession and renaming of Palestinian villages through to the holding of Palestinian bodies killed by the Israeli forces, not returned to their families, or buried in the “cemetery of numbers”.

She described a “necrological regime” that turns dead bodies into prisoners of the state, penalising and torturing the community, serving “to further evict the native in line with the structure of the settler colonial imperative of elimination”.

We have seen many instances of pro-Palestinian voices who have been sacked from their work places.

Jessica Holland, a researcher, curator and archivist, discussed how the history of archiving of Palestinian material is “deeply embedded within a legacy of coloniality”, and the importance of Palestinian social history and archiving projects, in redressing and countering hegemonic understandings and organisation of materials.

“Journalists, teachers, doctors, health care workers, public servants, lawyers, artists, food hospitality workers. Across every profession and industry [showing] solidarity with Palestine has been met with a repertoire of repressive tactics, disciplinary employment processes, cancelled contracts, lawfare, police brutality, parliamentary scrutiny, coordinated complaints and harassment campaigns, media coverage, doxxing, harassment, attempts at law reform and policy amendments,” said Abdelfattah.

“We have seen in the past few days the treatment of [Senator] Fatima Payman and the intimidation, bullying and silencing she has endured.

“We have also seen many instances of pro-Palestinian voices who have been sacked from their work places.”

On day two of the conference Aunty Glendra Stubbs gave the Acknowledgement of Country, which was followed by the keynote speaker Jeff Halper, anthropologist, author, lecturer, political activist and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.

Normalising violence
Halper addressed how Israel as a Zionist settler colonial state normalises violence, erasure and apartheid against Palestinians, where physical and cultural genocide are built in, necessitating indigenous resistance.

A second panel, “Social Movements, in Defiance”, convened by Alison Harwood, a social change practitioner, included speakers Nasser Mashni from the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), Sarah Schwartz from the Jewish Council of Australia, and Latoya Rule from UTS Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research.

Speakers shared insights on how social movements mobilise from within their diverse communities, to reach and potentially impact the Australian and international social and political stage.

Interdisciplinary storyteller and media producer Daz Chandler presented a series of pre-recorded interviews and a live discussion with participants involved in University campus encampments from around the world including activists from Birzeit University in the Occupied West Bank, Mexico, Trinity College in Dublin, UCLA, the University of Melbourne, University of Tokyo, University of Sydney and Monash University.

Two further sessions focused on responses “From the Field”, with a third panel convened by Paula Abboud, a cultural worker, educator, writer and creative producer, featuring The Age journalist Maher Moghrabi, author and human rights lawyer Sara Saleh, Lena Mozayani from NSW Teachers for Palestine, and Dr Sana Pathan from ANZ Doctors for Palestine.

Each reflected on their work and the challenges they encountered in their respective professional fields. Obstructions they faced ranged from hindering and silencing the expression of ideas, through to the prevention of carrying out critical on-the-ground work to save lives.

Hometown of Nablus
The final panel of the conference was moderated by Derek Halawa, a Palestinian living in the diaspora, who shared his experience of travelling to his hometown of Nablus.

He followed virtual footsteps from his cousin’s video, through the alley ways, to reach the home of his great grandfather, a journey which culminated in reaching the steps of Al Aqsa Mosque, with both spaces symbolising belonging and hope.

Cathy Peters, media worker and co-founder of BDS Australia described a diverse range of disruption movements calling for the end of ties with Israeli companies, since the war on Gaza.

This was followed by RIta Jabri Markwell, solicitor and adviser to the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network, addressing specific points of Australian law dealing with terrorism, freedom of speech, and racial discrimination.

The conference, which was was co-convened by Barbara Bloch, Wafa Chafic, James Goodman, Derek Halawa and Christina Ho, concluded with UTS Sociology Professor James Goodman giving an overview of the proceedings and potential actions post-conference.

One post-conference outcome is an additional series of interviews produced by Daz Chandler exploring the power of creative practices utilised within the Palestinian resistance movement.

It features renowned Palestinian contemporary artist Khaled Hourani, Ben Rivers: co-founder of the Palestinian Freedom Bus, Yazan al-Saadi: co-founder of Cartoonists for Palestine, Taouba Yacoubi: Sew 4 Palestine, Birkbeck University of London; and artist and activist from Naarm Melbourne, Margaret Mayhew.

Republished from the UTS Central News.

West Papua: Once was Papuan Independence Day, now facing ‘ecocide’, transmigration

APR editor — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 07:34:16 +0000

On Papuan Independence Day, the focus is on discussing protests against Indonesia’s transmigration programme, environmental destruction, militarisation, and the struggle for self-determination. Te Ao Māori News reports.

By Te Aniwaniwa Paterson

On 1 December 1961, West Papua’s national flag, known as the Morning Star, was raised for the first time as a declaration of West Papua’s independence from the Netherlands.

Sixty-three years later, West Papua is claimed by and occupied by Indonesia, which has banned the flag, which still carries aspirations for self-determination and liberation.

The flag continues to be raised globally on December 1 each year on what is still called “Papuan Independence Day”.

Region-wide protests
Protests have been building in West Papua since the new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto announced the revival of the Transmigration Programme to West Papua.

This was declared a day after he came to power on October 21 and confirmed fears from West Papuans about Prabowo’s rise to power.

This is because Prabowo is a former general known for a trail of allegations of war crimes and human rights abuses in West Papua and East Timor to his name.

Transmigration’s role
The transmigration programme began before Indonesia gained independence from the Dutch colonial government, intended to reduce “overcrowding” in Java and to provide a workforce for plantations in Sumatra.

After independence ended and under Indonesian rule, the programme expanded and in 1969 transmigration to West Papua was started.

This was also the year of the controversial “Act of Free Choice” where a small group of Papuans were coerced by Indonesia into a unanimous vote against their independence.

In 2001 the state-backed transmigration programme ended but, by then, over three-quarters of a million Indonesians had been relocated to West Papua. Although the official transmigration stopped, migration of Indonesians continued via agriculture and development projects.

Indonesia has also said transmigration helps with cultural exchange to unite the West Papuans so they are one nation — “Indonesian”.

West Papuan human rights activist Rosa Moiwend said in the 1980s that Indonesians used the language of “humanising West Papuans” through erasing their indigenous identity.

“It’s a racist kind of thing because they think West Papuans were not fully human,” Moiwend said.

Pathway to environmental destruction
Papuans believe this was to dilute the Indigenous Melanesian population, and to secure the control of their natural resources, to conduct mining, oil and gas extraction and deforestation.

This is because in the past the transmigration programme was tied to agricultural settlements where, following the deforestation of conservation forests, Indonesian migrants worked on agricultural projects such as rice fields and palm oil plantations.

Octo Mote is the vice-president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP). Earlier this year Te Ao Māori News interviewed Mote on the “ecocide and genocide” and the history of how Indonesia gained power over West Papua.

The ecology in West Papua was being damaged by mining, deforestation, and oil and gas extraction, he said. Mote said Indonesia wanted to “wipe them from the land and control their natural resources”.

He emphasised that defending West Papua meant defending the world, because New Guinea had the third-largest rainforest after the Amazon and Congo and was crucial for climate change mitigation as they sequester and store carbon.

Concerns grow over militarisation
Moiwend said the other concern right now was the National Strategic Project which developed projects to focus on Indonesian self-sufficiency in food and energy.

Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) started in 2011, so isn’t a new project, but it has failed to deliver many times and was described by Global Atlas of Environmental Justice as a “textbook land grab”.

The mega-project includes the deforestation of a million hectares for rice fields and an additional 600,000 hectares for sugar cane plantations that will be used to make bioethanol.

The project is managed by the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Agriculture, and the private company, Jhonlin Group, owned by Haji Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad. Ironically, given the project has been promoted to address climate issues, Arsyad is a coal magnate, a primary industry responsible for man-made climate change.

Recently, the Indonesian government announced the deployment of five military battalions to the project site.

Conservation news website Mongabay reported that the villages in the project site had a population of 3000 people whereas a battalion consisted of usually 1000 soldiers, which meant there would be more soldiers than locals and the villagers said it felt as if their home would be turned into a “war zone”.

Merauke is where Moiwend’s village is and many of her cousins and family are protesting and, although there haven’t been any incidents yet, with increased militarisation she feared for the lives of her family as the Indonesian military had killed civilians in the past.

Destruction of spiritual ancestors
The destruction of the environment was also the killing of their dema (spiritual ancestors), she said.

The dema represented and protected different components of nature, with a dema for fish, the sago palm, and the coconut tree.

Traditionally when planting taro, kumara or yam, they chanted and sang for the dema of those plants to ensure an abundant harvest.

Moiwend said they connected to their identity through calling on the name of the dema that was their totem.

She said her totem was the coconut and when she needed healing she would find a coconut tree, drink coconut water, and call to the dema for help.

There were places where the dema lived that humans were not meant to enter but many sacred forests had been deforested.

She said the Indonesians had destroyed their food sources, their connection to their spirituality as well destroying their humanity.

“Anim Ha means the great human being,” she said, “to become a great human being you have to have a certain quality of life, and one quality of life is the connection to your dema, your spiritual realm.”

Te Aniwaniwa Paterson is a digital producer for Te Ao Māori News. Republished with permission.

Raising the West Papuan Morning Star flag in Tāmaki Makaurau in 2023. Image: Te Ao Māori News

From Papua to Gaza, military occupation leads to ‘ecocide’ – climate catastrophe

APR editor — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 07:08:40 +0000

Environmental destruction is not an unintended side effect, but a primary objective in colonial wars of occupation.

By David Whyte and Samira Homerang Saunders

Many in the international community are finally coming to accept that the earth’s ecosystem can no longer bear the weight of military occupation.

Most have reached this inevitable conclusion, clearly articulated in the environmental movement’s latest slogan “No Climate Justice on Occupied Land”, in light of the horrors we have witnessed in Gaza since October 7.

While the correlation between military occupation and climate sustainability may be a recent discovery for those living their lives in relative peace and security, people living under occupation, and thus constant threat of military violence, have always known any guided missile strike or aerial bombardment campaign by an occupying military is not only an attack on those being targeted but also their land’s ability to sustain life.

A recent hearing on “State and Environmental Violence in West Papua” under the jurisdiction of the Rome-based Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), for example, heard that Indonesia’s military occupation, spanning more than seven decades, has facilitated a “slow genocide” of the Papuan people through not only political repression and violence, but also the gradual decimation of the forest area — one of the largest and most biodiverse on the planet — that sustains them.

West Papua hosts one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, is the site of a major BP liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, and is the fastest-expanding area of palm oil and biofuel plantation in Indonesia.

All of these industries leave ecological dead zones in their wake, and every single one of them is secured by military occupation.

At the PPT hearing, prominent Papuan lawyer Yan Christian Warinussy spoke of the connection between human suffering in West Papua and the exploitation of the region’s natural resources.

Shot and wounded
Just one week later, he was shot and wounded by an unknown assailant. The PPT Secretariat noted that the attack came after the lawyer depicted “the past and current violence committed against the defenceless civil population and the environment in the region”.

What happened to Warinussy reinforced yet again the indivisibility of military occupation and environmental violence.

I’m stand in solidarity with West Papuans rising up against colonialism, racism, state violence, sexual violence, and environmental destruction.

West Papua’s “special autonomy” is another euphemism for control and exploitation pic.twitter.com/cvP7fp2Ml0

— K.Diallo ☭ (@nyeusi_waasi) May 19, 2021

In total, militaries around the world account for almost 5.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions annually — more than the aviation and shipping industries combined.

Our colleagues at Queen Mary University of London recently concluded that emissions from the first 120 days of this latest round of slaughter in Gaza alone were greater than the annual emissions of 26 individual countries; emissions from rebuilding Gaza will be higher than the annual emissions of more than 135 countries, equating them to those of Sweden and Portugal.

But even these shocking statistics fail to shed sufficient light on the deep connection between military violence and environmental violence. War and occupation’s impact on the climate is not merely a side effect or unfortunate consequence.

We must not reduce our analysis of what is going on in Gaza, for example, to a dualism of consequences: the killing of people on one side and the effect on “the environment” on the other.

Inseparable from impact on nature
In reality, the impact on the people is inseparable from the impact on nature. The genocide in Gaza is also an ecocide — as is almost always the case with military campaigns.

In the Vietnam War, the use of toxic chemicals, including Agent Orange, was part of a deliberate strategy to eliminate any capacity for agricultural production, and thus force the people off their land and into “strategic hamlets”.

Forests, used by the Vietcong as cover, were also cut by the US military to reduce the population’s capacity for resistance. The anti-war activist and international lawyer Richard Falk coined the phrase “ecocide” to describe this.

In different ways, this is what all military operations do: they tactically reduce or completely eliminate the capacity of the “enemy” population to live sustainably and to retain autonomy over its own water and food supplies.

Since 2014, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes and other essential infrastructure by the Israeli occupation forces has been complemented by chemical warfare, with herbicides aerially sprayed by the Israeli military destroying entire swaths of arable land in Gaza.

In other words, Gaza has been subjected to an “ecocide” strategy almost identical to the one used in Vietnam since long before October 7.

The occupying military force has been working to reduce, and eventually completely eliminate, the Palestinian population’s capacity to live sustainably in Gaza for many years. Since October 7, it has been waging a war to make Gaza completely unliveable.

50% of Gaza farms wiped out
As researchers at Forensic Architecture have concluded, at least 50 percent of farmland and orchards in Gaza are now completely wiped out. Many ancient olive groves have also been destroyed. Fields of crops have been uprooted using tanks, tractors and other vehicles.

Widespread aerial bombardment reduced the Gaza Strip’s greenhouse production facilities to rubble. All this was done not by mistake, but in a deliberate effort to leave the land unable to sustain life.

The wholesale destruction of the water supply and sanitation facilities and the ongoing threat of starvation across the Gaza Strip are also not unwanted consequences, but deliberate tactics of war. The Israeli military has weaponised food and water access in its unrelenting assault on the population of Gaza.

Of course, none of this is new to Palestinians there, or indeed in the West Bank. Israel has been using these same tactics to sustain its occupation, pressure Palestinians into leaving their lands, and expand its illegal settlement enterprise for many years.

Since October 7, it has merely intensified its efforts. It is now working with unprecedented urgency to eradicate the little capacity the occupied Palestinian territory has left in it to sustain Palestinian life.

Just as is the case with the occupation of Papua, environmental destruction is not an unintended side effect but a primary objective of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The immediate damage military occupation inflicts on the affected population is never separate from the long-term damage it inflicts on the planet.

For this reason, it would be a mistake to try and separate the genocide from the ecocide in Gaza, or anywhere else for that matter.

Anyone interested in putting an end to human suffering now, and preventing climate catastrophe in the future, should oppose all wars of occupation, and all forms of militarism that help fuel them.

David Whyte is professor of climate justice at Queen Mary University of London and director of the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice. Samira Homerang Saunders is research officer at the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, Queen Mary University.

Palestine solidarity group condemns ‘colonial violence’ in Rafah, Kanaky

APR editor — Wed, 29 May 2024 01:39:27 +0000

Asia Pacific Report

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.

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.”

Gordon Campbell: Israel’s political split, and the New Caledonia crisis

APR editor — Tue, 21 May 2024 10:02:41 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Gordon Campbell

The split opening up in Israel’s “War Cabinet” is not just between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his long-term rival Benny Gantz. It is actually a three-way split, set in motion by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

It was Gallant’s open criticism of Netanyahu that finally flushed Gantz out into the open.

What Gallant wanted from Netanyahu was a plan for how Gaza is to be governed once the fighting ends and an assurance that the Israel Defence Force will not end up being Gaza’s de facto civil administrator.

LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: ‘Liberation for New Cal’s Kanak people must come now’ – educator – Interview with Dr David Robie
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To that end, Gallant wanted to know what Palestinian entity (presumably the Palestinian Authority) would be part of that future governing arrangement, and on what terms.

To Gallant, that is essential information to ensure that the IDF (for which he is ultimately responsible) will not be bogged down in Gaza for the duration of a forever war. By voicing his concerns out loud, Gallant pushed Gantz into stating publicly what his position is on the same issues.

What Gantz came up with was a set of six strategic “goals” on which Netanyahu has to provide sufficient signs of progress by June 8, or else Gantz will resign from the war Cabinet.

Maybe, perhaps. Gantz could still find wiggle room for himself to stay on, depending on the state of the political/military climate in three weeks time.

The Gantz list
For what they’re worth, Gantz’s six points are:

The return of the hostages from Gaza;
The overthrow of Hamas rule, and de-militarisation in Gaza;
The establishment of a joint US, European, Arab, and Palestinian administration that will manage Gaza’s civilian affairs, and form the basis for a future alternative governing authority;
The repatriation of residents of north Israel who were evacuated from their homes, as well as the rehabilitation of Gaza border communities;
The promotion of normalisation with Saudi Arabia; and
The adoption of an outline for military service for all Israeli citizens. [Gantz has already tabled a bill to end the current exemption of Hadadim (i.e. conservative Jews) from the draft. This issue is a tool to split Netanyahu away from his extremist allies. One of the ironies of the Gaza conflict is that the religious extremists egging it on have ensured that their own sons and daughters aren’t doing any of the fighting.]

Almost instantly, this list drew a harsh response from Netanyahu’s’ office:

“The conditions set by Benny Gantz are laundered words whose meaning is clear: the end of the war and a defeat for Israel, the abandonment of most of the hostages, leaving Hamas-rule intact and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“Our soldiers did not fall in vain and certainly not for the sake of replacing Hamastan with Fatahstan,” the PM’s Office added.

In reality, Netanyahu has little or no interest in what a post-war governing arrangement in Gaza might look like. His grip on power — and his immunity from criminal prosecution — depends on a forever war, in which any surviving Palestinians will have no option but to submit to Gaza being re-settled by Israeli extremists. (Editor: ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has today filed an application for arrest warrants for crimes against humanity by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders for war crimes.)

Statement of #ICC Prosecutor @KarimKhanQC: Applications for arrest warrants in the situation in the State of #Palestine https://t.co/WqDZecXFZq

— Int’l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) May 20, 2024

Gantz, no respite
Palestinians have no reason to hope a Gantz-led government would offer them any respite. Gantz was the IDF chief of staff during two previous military assaults on Gaza in 2012 and 2014 that triggered accusations of war crimes.

While Gantz may be open to some minor role for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in helping to run Gaza in future, this would require the PA to be willing to duplicate in Gaza the same abjectly compliant security role it currently performs on behalf of Israel on the West Bank.

So far, the PA has shown no enthusiasm for helping to run Gaza, given that any collaborators would be sitting ducks for Palestinian retribution.

In sum, Gantz is a centrist only when compared to the wingnut extremists (e.g. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich) with whom Netanyahu currently consorts. In any normal democracy, such public dissent by two senior Cabinet Ministers crucial to government stability would have led directly to new elections being called.

Not so in Israel, at least not yet.

Counting the cost in Nouméa
A few days ago, the Chamber of commerce in Noumea estimated the economic cost of the ongoing unrest in New Caledonia — both directly and to rebuild the country’s trashed infrastructure — will be in excess of 200 million euros (NZ$356 million).

Fixing the physical infrastructure though, may be the least of it.

The rioting was triggered by the French authorities preparing to sign off on an expansion of the eligibility criteria for taking part in decisive votes on the territory’s future. Among other things, this measure would have diluted the Kanak vote, by extending the franchise to French citizens who had been resident in New Caledonia for ten years.

This thorny issue of voter eligibility has been central to disputes in the territory for at least three decades.

This time around, the voting roll change being mooted came hard on the heels of a third independence referendum in 2021 that had been boycotted by Kanaks, who objected to it being held while the country was still recovering from the covid pandemic.

With good reason, the Kanak parties linked the boycotted 2021 referendum — which delivered a 96 percent vote against independence — to the proposed voting changes. Both are being taken as evidence of a hard rightwards shift by local authorities and their political patrons in France.

An inelegant inégalité
On paper, New Caledonia looks like a relatively wealthy country, with an annual per capita income of US$33,000 __ $34,000 estimated for 2024. That’s not all that far behind New Zealand’s $US42,329 figure, and well in excess of neighbours in Oceania like Fiji ($6,143) Vanuatu $3,187) and even French Polynesia ($21,615).

In fact, the GDP per capita figures serve to mask the extremes of inequality wrought since 1853 by French colonialism. The country’s apparent prosperity has been reliant on the mining of nickel, and on transfer payments from mainland France, and both these sources of wealth are largely sealed off from the indigenous population;

The New Caledonian economy suffers from a lack of productivity gains, insufficient competitiveness and strong income inequalities… Since 2011, economic growth has slowed down due to the fall in nickel prices… The extractive sector developed relatively autonomously with regard to the rest of the economy, absorbing most of the technical capabilities. Apart from nickel, few export activities managed to develop, particularly because of high costs..[associated with] the narrowness of the local market, and with [the territory’s] geographic remoteness.

No doubt, tourism will be hammered by the latest unrest. Yet even before the riots, annual tourism visits to New Caledonia had always lagged well behind the likes of Fiji, and French Polynesia.

Over the past 50 years, the country’s steeply unequal economic base has been directly manipulated by successive French governments, who have been more intent on maintaining the status quo than on establishing a sustainable re-balance of power.

History repeats
The violent unrest that broke out between 1976-1989 culminated in the killing by French military forces of several Kanak leaders (including the prominent activist Eloï Machoro) while a hostage-taking incident on Ouvea in 1988 directly resulted in the deaths of 19 Kanaks and two French soldiers.

Tragically in 1989, internal rifts within the Kanak leadership cost the lives of the pre-eminent pro-independence politician Jean-Marie Tjibaou and his deputy.

Eventually, the Matignon Accords that Tjibaou had signed a year before his death ushered in a decade of relative stability. Subsequently, the Noumea Accords a decade later created a blueprint for a 20-year transition to a more equitable outcome for the country’s various racial and political factions.

Of the 270,000 people who comprise the country’s population, some 41 percent belong to the Kanak community.

About 24 percent identify as European. This category includes (a) relatively recent arrivals from mainland France employed in the public service or on private sector contracts, and (b) the politically conservative “caldoches” whose forebears have kept arriving as settlers since the 19th century, including an influx of settlers from Algeria after France lost that colony in 1962, after a war of independence.

A further 7.5 percent identify as “Caledonian” but again, these people are largely of European origin. Some 11.3% of the population are of mixed race. Under the census rules, people can self-identify with multiple ethnic groups.

In sum, the fracture lines of race, culture, economic wealth and deprivation crisscross the country, with the Kanak community being those most in need, and with Kanak youth in particular suffering from limited access to jobs and opportunity.

Restoring whose ‘order’?
The riots have been the product of the recent economic downturn, ethnic tensions and widely-held Kanak opposition to French rule. French troops have now been sent into the territory in force, initially to re-open the international airport.

It is still a volatile situation. As Le Monde noted in its coverage of the recent rioting, New Caledonia is known for its very high number of firearms in relation to the size of the population.

If illegal weapons are counted, some 100,000 weapons are said to be circulating in a territory of 270,000 inhabitants.

Even allowing for some people having multiple weapons, New Caledonia has, on average, a gun for every three or four people. France by contrast (according to Franceinfo in 2021) had only 5.4 million weapons within a population of more than 67 million, or one gun for every 12 people.

The restoration of “order” in New Caledonia has the potential for extensive armed violence. After the dust settles, the divisive issue of who should be allowed to vote in New Caledonia, and under what conditions, will remain.

Forging on with the voting reforms regardless, is now surely no longer an option.

Republished with permission from Gordon Campbell’s column in partnership with Scoop.