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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Silence is not an option,” it added.

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

The International Press Institute (IPI) has joined calls for urgent action to halt the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Gaza as global news organisations warn that their journalists there are experiencing starvation.

Israel must immediately allow life-saving food aid to reach journalists and other civilians in Gaza, IPI said in a statement today.

“The international community must also put effective pressure on Israel to allow all journalists to enter and exit the territory and to document the ongoing catastrophe,”it said.

• READ MORE: BBC, AFP and other news outlets warn journalists in Gaza at risk of starvation
• ‘We are dying’: Palestinians slam world’s inaction as hunger ravages Gaza
• Al Jazeera condemns Israeli incitement against Gaza reporter Anas al-Sharif
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

In an unprecedented joint statement this week, the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, BBC News, and Reuters — four of the world’s leading news agencies — said their journalists on the ground “are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families”.

The news outlets added: “Journalists endure many deprivations and hardships in warzones. We are deeply alarmed that the threat of starvation is now one of them.”

Separately, Al Jazeera Media Network said in a statement that journalists on the ground “now find themselves fighting for their own survival” due to mass starvation.

Harrowing accounts
AFP and Al Jazeera journalists shared harrowing accounts of conditions on the ground.

One AFP photographer was quoted as saying, “I no longer have the strength to work for the media. My body is thin and I can’t work anymore.”

Al Jazeera Arabic’s Gaza correspondent said he was “drowning in hunger”.

In an interview with NPR, AFP global news director Phil Chetwynd said that the news agency had been working to evacuate its remaining contributors from Gaza, which requires Israeli permission.

The dramatic warnings come as more than 100 international humanitarian organisations said that mass starvation in Gaza was now threatening the lives of humanitarian aid workers themselves, while the civilian death toll continues to rise.

Gaza under siege — a journalist reports on daily survival   Video: Al Jazeera

Meanwhile, Israel continues to refuse to allow international reporters into Gaza to report and cover the war and humanitarian situation independently, obstructing the free flow of news and limiting coverage of the humanitarian crisis.

The ongoing conflict has taken a devastating toll on journalists and media outlets in Gaza.

Highest media death toll
Since October 2023, at least 186 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza — Al Jazeera puts the figure as at least 230 — the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon, according to monitoring by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

This is the largest number of journalists to be killed in any armed conflict in this span of time.

Independent investigations such as those conducted by Forbidden Stories have found more than a dozen cases in which journalists were intentionally targeted and killed by the Israeli military — which constitutes a war crime under international law.

IPI has made repeated calls, in conjunction with its partners, urging the international community to take immediate measures to protect journalists and allow unimpeded access to the strip from international media.

Today, IPI has strongly and urgently reiterated these calls, as humanitarian conditions in Gaza rapidly deteriorate and as journalists and other civilians face man-made starvation.

The international community must use all diplomatic means at its disposal to pressure Israel to ensure the safe flow of food aid to journalists and other civilians, said IPI in a statement.

“The response by the international community in this critical moment could be the difference between life and death. There is no more time to lose,” IPI said.

RSF warnings over Gaza
In Paris, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reports that for nearly two years it has warned about the precarious conditions faced by journalists in Gaza — which are deteriorating day by day.

Over the past 20 months in Gaza, more than 200 journalists have been killed by the Israeli army, including at least 46 slain while doing their job,” RSF said today in a statement.

“In addition to bombs, forced displacement, and dire humanitarian conditions, Gaza’s journalists, who are the only ones able to document what is happening in the besieged and closed-off enclave, can no longer find food,” the statement said.

“In response to this catastrophe, RSF reiterates its call to open up Gaza to foreign journalists and lift the blockade, in a joint appeal with over 200 media outlets and organisations from around the world.”

Jamie Wiseman is a journalist of the Vienna-based International Press Institute.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has called on the New Zealand government to immediately condemn Israel’s weaponisation of starvation and demand an end to the siege of Gaza.

It has also called for a permanent ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access to the besieged enclave.

“All political parties and elected officials must break their silence and act with urgency to prevent further loss of life,” said PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal in a statement.

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The Gaza Health Ministry reports that 18 people have died of hunger in a 24 hour period due to the blockade as aid officials report a catastrophic situation in the enclave.

“Hospitals and emergency clinics in Gaza are overwhelmed. Unprecedented numbers of Palestinians, children, women, and the elderly, are collapsing from hunger and exhaustion,” said Nazzal.

“Medical professionals warn that hundreds face imminent death, their bodies unable to survive the severe famine conditions created by Israel’s ongoing siege and deliberate starvation tactics.

“This is not a natural disaster. This is the result of a man-made blockade, a deliberate policy of collective punishment, and it constitutes a grave violation of international law.”

This was an urgent last-minute appeal, Nazzal said.

“The people of Aotearoa must stand up and speak out. Protest. Write. Donate. Mobilise.

“The media need to stop turning away, to report on the famine and the mass suffering of civilians in Gaza with the urgency and humanity it demands.”

Starvation is an Israeli weapon of mass destruction (WMD) in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/xs2TAKNvWF

— Dr. Mads Gilbert (@DrMadsGilbert) July 20, 2025

Nazzal said that New Zealanders had a proud tradition of standing against injustice and apartheid.

“Now is the time to uphold that legacy — not with words, but with action,” he said.

“Gaza is starving. We cannot delay. We must not look away.”

Reading an NBC News report a couple of days ago about a Trump administration plan to relocate 1 million Gazans to Libya reminded me of a conversation between the legendary Warsaw Ghetto leader Marek Edelman and fellow fighter and survivor Simcha Rotem that took place more than quarter of a century ago.

In the conversation, first reported in Ha’aretz in 2023, Rotem said the Jews who walked into the gas chambers without a fight did so only because they were hungry.

Edelman disagreed, but Rotem insisted. “Listen, man. Marek, I’m surprised by your attitude. They only went because they were hungry. Even if they’d known what awaited them they would have walked into the gas chambers. You and I would have done the same.”

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Edelman cut him off. “You would never have gone” [to the gas chamber.] Rotem replied, “I’m not so sure. I was never that hungry.”

Edelman agreed, saying: “I also wasn’t that hungry,” to which Rotem said, “That’s why you didn’t go.”

The NBC report claims that Israeli officials are aware of the plan and talks have been held with the Libyan leadership about taking in 1 million ethnically cleansed Palestinians.. The carrot being offered is the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Libya’s own money seized by the US more than a decade ago.

The Arabic word Sumud — or steadfastness — is synonymous with the Palestinian people. The idea that 1 million Gazans would agree to walk off the 1.4 percent of historic Palestine that is Gaza is inconceivable.

Equally incomprehensible
But then the idea that my great grandmother and other relatives walked into the gas chambers is equally incomprehensible. But we’ve never been that hungry.

The people of Gaza are. No food has entered Gaza for 80 days. Half a million Gazans are facing starvation and the rest of the population (more than 1.5 million people) are suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, according to the UN.

Last year, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was widely condemned when he suggested starving Gaza might be “justified and moral”.

The lack of outrage and urgency being expressed by world leaders — particularly Western leaders — after nearly 11 weeks of Israel actually starving the inhabitants of what retired IDF general Giora Eiland has called a giant concentration camp — is an outrage.

As far as I’m aware there’s been no talk of cutting off diplomatic relations, trade embargos or even cultural boycotts.

Israel — which last time I looked wasn’t in Europe — just placed second in Eurovision. “I’m happy,” an Israeli friend messaged me, “that my old genocidal homeland (Austria) won and not my current genocidal nation.”

A third generation Israeli, she’s one of a tiny minority protesting the war crimes being committed less than 100km from her apartment.

Honourable exceptions
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Irish President Michael Higgins are honourable exceptions to the muted criticism being expressed by Western leaders, although this criticism has finally been stepped up with the threatened “concrete actions” by the UK, France and Canada, and the condemnation of Israel by 22 other countries — including New Zealand.

Sanchez had declared Israel a genocidal state and said Spain won’t do business with such a nation.

And peaking at a national famine commemoration held over the weekend Higgens said the UN Security Council had failed again and again by not dealing with famines and the current “forced starvation of the people of Gaza”.

He cited UN Secretary-General António Guterres saying “as aid dries up, the floodgates of horror have re-opened. Gaza is a killing field — and civilians are in an endless death loop.”

Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen argued in his 1981 book Poverty and Famines that famines are man-made and not natural disasters.

Unlike Gaza, the famines he wrote about were caused by either callous disregard by the ruling elites for the populations left to starve or the disastrous results of following the whims of an all-powerful leader like Chairman Mao.

He argued that a famine had never occurred in a functioning democracy.

A horrifying fact
It’s a horrifying fact that a self-described democracy, funded and abetted by the world’s most powerful democracy, has been allowed by the international community to starve two million people with no let-up in its bombing of barely functioning hospitals and killing of more than 2000 Gazans since the ban on food entering the strip was put in place. (Many more will have died due to a lack of medicine, food, and access to clean water.)

After more than two months of denying any food or medicine to enter Gaza Israel is now saying it will allow limited amounts of food in to avoid a full-scale famine.

“Due to the need to expand the fighting, we will introduce a basic amount of food to the residents of Gaza to ensure no famine occurs,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained.

“A famine might jeopardise the continuation of Operation Gideon’s Chariots aimed at eliminating Hamas.”

If 19-months of indiscriminate bombardment, the razing to the ground of whole cities, the displacement of virtually the entire population, and more than 50,000 recorded deaths (the Lancet estimated the true figure is likely to be four times that) hasn’t destroyed Hamas to Israel’s satisfaction it’s hard to conceive of what will.

But accepting that that is the real aim of the ongoing genocide would be naïve.

Shamefully indifferent Western world
In the first cabinet meeting following the Six Day War, long before Hamas came into existence, ridding Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants was top of the agenda.

“If we can evict 300,000 refugees from Gaza to other places . . .  we can annex Gaza without a problem,” Defence Minister Moshe Dayan said.

The population of Gaza was 400,000 at the time.

“We should take them to the East Bank [Jordan] by the scruff of their necks and throw them there,” Minister Yosef Sapir said.

Fifty-eight years later the possible destinations may have changed but the aim remains the same. And a shamefully indifferent Western world combined with a malnourished and desperate population may be paving the way to a mass expulsion.

If the US, Europe and their allies demanded that Israel stop, the killing would end tomorrow.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and his Towards Democracy blog is at Substack.

The New Zealand Māori Council and Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa made a high profile appeal to Foreign Minister Winston Peters over Gaza today, calling for urgent action over humanitarian supplies for the besieged Palestinian enclave.

“Starving a civilian population is a clear breach of international humanitarian law and a war crime under the Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court,” said the open letter published by the two organisations as full page advertisements in three leading daily newspapers.

Noting that New Zealand has not joined the International Court of Justice for standing up to “condemn the use of starvation as a weapon of war”, the groups still called on the government to use its “internationally respected voice” to express solidarity for humanitarian aid.

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The plea comes amid Israel’s increased attacks on Gaza which have killed at least 61 people since dawn, targeting civilians in crowded places and a Gaza City market.

The more than two-month blockade by the the enclave by Israel has caused acute food shortages, accelerating the starvation of the Palestinian population.

Israel has blocked all aid into Gaza — food, water, fuel and medical supplies — while more than 3000 trucks laden with supplies are stranded on the Egyptian border blocked from entry into Gaza.

At least 57 Palestinians have starved to death in Gaza as a result of Israel’s punishing blockade. The overall death toll, revised in view of bodies buried under the rubble, stands at 62,614 Palestinians and 1139 people killed in Israel.

The open letter, publlshed by three Stuff-owned titles — Waikato Times in Hamilton, The Post in the capital Wellington, and The Press in Christchurch, said:

Rt Hon Winston Peters
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Winston.Peters@parliament.govt.nz

Open letter requesting government action on the future of Gaza

Kia ora Mr Peters,

The situation in Occupied Gaza has reached another crisis point.

We urge our country to speak out and join other nations demanding humanitarian supplies into Gaza.

For more than two months, Israel has blocked all aid into Gaza — food, water, fuel and medical supplies. The World Food Programme says food stocks in Gaza are fully depleted. UNICEF says children face “growing risk of starvation, illness and death”. The International Committee of the Red Cross says “the humanitarian response in Gaza is on the verge of total collapse”.

Meanwhile, 3000 trucks laden with desperately needed aid are lined up at the Occupied Gaza border. Israeli occupation forces are refusing to allow them in.

Starving a civilian population is a clear breach of International Humanitarian Law and a War Crime under the Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court.

At the International Court of Justice many countries have stood up to condemn the use of starvation as a weapon of war and to demand accountability for Israel to end its industrial-scale killing of Palestinians in Gaza.

New Zealand has not joined that group. Our government has been silent to date.

After 18 months facing what the International Court of Justice has described as a “plausible genocide”, it is grievous that New Zealand does not speak out and act clearly against this ongoing humanitarian outrage.

Minister Peters, as Minister of Foreign Affairs you are in a position of leadership to carry New Zealand’s collective voice in support of humanitarian aid to Gaza to the world. We are asking you to speak on behalf of New Zealand to support the urgent international plea for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza and to initiate calls for a no-fly zone to be established over the region to prevent further mass killing of civilians.

We believe the way forward for peace and security for everyone in the region is for all parties to follow international law and United Nations resolutions, going back to UNGA 194 in 1948, so that a lasting peace can be established based on justice and equal rights for everyone.

New Zealand has an internationally respected voice — please use it to express solidarity for humanitarian aid to Gaza, today.

Nā

Ann Kendall QSM, Co-chair
Tā Taihākurei Durie, Pou [cultural leader]
NZ Māori Council

Maher Nazzal and John Minto, National Co-chairs
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA)

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has launched an open letter calling on the Aotearoa New Zealand government to take action on the future of the besieged enclave of Gaza.

The network is asking Foreign Minister Winston Peters to speak up for the people of New Zealand to at least condemn Israel’s use of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war.

It also wants the government to call for international humanitarian and human rights law to be applied.

• READ MORE: Israel steps up attacks on Gaza, killing 8, as truce talks continue
• Hamas accuses Israel of ‘cheap blackmail’ as Gaza electricity cut-off widely condemned
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• The full PSNA letter

The PSNA says New Zealand has an internationally respected voice, and “we are asking the government to use this voice” for a lasting peace.

The letter says:

Kia ora Mr Peters,

The situation in Occupied Gaza has reached another crisis point.

Last Sunday [March 2], Israel announced it was ending its January ceasefire agreement with Palestinian groups resisting the occupation and was once more imposing a total ban on humanitarian aid entering Gaza.

Israel says this is because it wants to extend the first phase of the ceasefire agreement rather than negotiate phase two which would see the agreed withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. The renewed blockade on food, water, fuel and medical supplies has been widely condemned as a breach of the ceasefire agreement and the use of “starvation as a weapon of war” by Palestinian groups, international aid organisations and many governments.

The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has called for “humanitarian aid to flow back into Gaza immediately”. Israel has refused this request.

Compounding the crisis is US President Donald Trump’s recently declared intention to permanently remove all the Palestinian people of Gaza and send them to other countries such as Egypt and Jordan so Gaza can be rebuilt as a US territory in the Middle East — in his words “the riviera of the Middle East”.

Israel has accepted this US proposal but Palestinians and the vast majority of governments and civil society groups around the world are appalled at the scheme.

To this point our government has not commented on either Israel’s new blockade of humanitarian supplies into Gaza or the US President’s plan for ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territory.

Back in December 2023, when the government was commenting, the Prime Minister stated “…Israel must respect international humanitarian law. Civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected…Safe and unimpeded humanitarian access must be increased and sustained.”

None of this has happened in the more than 14 months since.

We are asking our government to speak out once more on behalf of the people of New Zealand to, at the very least, condemn Israel’s use of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war and to call for international humanitarian and human rights law to be applied.

We believe the way forward for peace and security for everyone who calls the Middle East home is for all parties to follow international law and United Nations resolutions so that a lasting peace can be established based on justice and equal rights for everyone in the region.

New Zealand has an internationally respected voice which can make a strong contribution to this end. We are asking the government to use this voice.

Labour supports sanctions against Israel
Meanwhile, the opposition Labour Party said it would support Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick’s member’s bill calling for sanctions against Israel for its illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

“The International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared the decades-long occupation illegal and called for Israel’s withdrawal, and for countries like New Zealand to take action,” Labour associate foreign affairs spokesperson Phil Twyford said in a statement.

“The New Zealand government recently voted at the UN General Assembly for a resolution calling for sanctions against Israel on this issue.

“Labour has been calling for stronger action from the government on Israel’s invasion of Gaza, including intervening in South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, creation of a special visa for family members of New Zealanders fleeing Gaza, and ending government procurement from companies operating illegally in the Occupied Territories.”

Twyford said New Zealand had long recognised Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as illegal.

In 2016, the then National government co-sponsored a successful Security Council resolution that Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Territories were illegal.

Hamas has accused Israel of “cheap and unacceptable blackmail” over its decision to halt the electricity supply to war-ravaged Palestinian enclave of Gaza to pressure the group into releasing the captives.

“We strongly condemn the occupation’s decision to cut off electricity to Gaza, after depriving it of food, medicine, and water,” Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement.

He said it was “a desperate attempt to pressure our people and their resistance through cheap and unacceptable blackmail tactics”.

• READ MORE: Israel cuts off Gaza electricity supply ahead of truce talks
• International Women’s Day activists protest in solidarity with Palestinians
• Israel cuts off electricity supply to Gaza as new truce talks set to resume
• Other Gaza genocide reports

“Cutting off electricity, closing the crossings, stopping aid, relief and fuel, and starving our people, constitutes collective punishment and a full-fledged war crime,” al-Risheq said.

He accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of attempting “to impose a new roadmap” that prioritised his personal interests.

Israel has been widely condemned for violating the terms of the three-phased ceasefire agreement signed on January 19. It has been trying force “renegotiation” of the terms on Hamas by cutting off food supplies and now electricity.

Albanese slams ‘clean water’ cut off
Francesa Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, said Israel’s decision to cut off electricity to Gaza meant “no functioning desalination stations, ergo: no clean water”.

She added that countries that were yet to impose sanctions or an arms embargo on Israel were “AIDING AND ASSISTING Israel in the commission of one of the most preventable genocides of our history”.

According to Human Rights Watch, Israel had already intentionally cut off most ways that Palestinians in Gaza could access water, including by blocking pipelines to Gaza and destroying solar panels used to try to keep some water pumps and desalination and waste management plants running during power outages.

GENOCIDE ALERT!Israel cutting off electricity supplies to Gaza means, among others, no functioning desalination stations, ergo: no clean water.
STILL NO SANCTION/NO ARMS EMBARGO against Israel means, among others, AIDING AND ASSISTING Israel in the commission of one of the… https://t.co/x2cX4MuP0K

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) March 9, 2025

In a December report, the organisation noted that Palestinians in many areas of Gaza had access to 2 to 9 litres (0.5 to 2 gallons) of water for drinking and washing per day, per person, far below the 15-litre (3.3 gallons) per person threshold for survival.

“At this point in the war, I do not believe that Israel, Hamas and America are far apart. I want to see our people home. All of them, not just the Americans,” he added.

Boehler praises Qatar’s role
US President Donald Trump’s envoy on captives, Adam Boehler, said face-to-face talks with Hamas representatives — the first such discussions between the US and the organisation in 28 years — had been “very useful”.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 13, the envoy dismissed a question by the channel’s reporter, who asked if the US had been “tricked” by Qatar into holding talks with Hamas.

“I don’t think it was a trick by the Qataris at all. It was something we asked for,” he said, reports Al Jazeera.

“They facilitated it. I think the Qataris have been great in this, quite frankly, in a number of different regards. They’ve done a very good job.

“Sometimes, it’s very very hard when you’re talking through intermediaries to understand what people actually want.”

Boehler added that his first question to Hamas was what the movement wanted.

“To me, they said they wanted it [the war] to end. They wanted to give all the prisoners back. They wanted prisoners on the other side. Eventually, we will rebuild Gaza,” he said.

Hamas also knew they would not be in charge of Gaza when the war ended, the US envoy said.

“At this point in the war, I do not believe that Israel, Hamas and America are far apart. I want to see our people home. All of them, not just the Americans,” he added.

Speaking about the frail, disoriented appearance of the three freed Israeli captives yesterday, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said: “People are starving in Gaza.

“Children are dying of malnutrition because Netanyahu has weaponised hunger and famine.”

“Incidentally”, Bishara told Al Jazeera, “that’s why Netanyahu is sought [on a war crimes warrant] by the ICC [International Criminal Court].

• READ MORE: Israeli army completes withdrawal from Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor after fifth captives exchange
• NZ must take robust Gaza stance – ‘stop tip-toeing’ around Trump, warns academic
• Other Israel’s war on Palestine reports

Bishara condemned the Israeli prime minister’s “crocodile tears” over the freeing of hostages Eli Sharabi, Ohad Ben Ami and Ori Levy in exchange for 183 Palestinian captives.

Netanyahu’s ‘weaponised hunger’ in Gaza.      Video: Al Jazeera

“Netanyahu is complaining that three individuals lost weight when the entire Gaza Strip was ‘put on a diet’, as the racists in the Israeli government said.

“It’s beyond absurd. It’s beyond racist. The real issue is that thousands of Palestinian prisoners have been tortured in Israel’s jails.”

Hamas ‘theatrical scenes’
Bishara also suggested that today’s “theatrical scenes of Hamas during the exchanges would rub Netanyahu the wrong way, by proving once again that Hamas is not defeated.”

On the other hand, Bishara said that Netanyahu “has succeeded” with the undeclared objective of the total destruction of Gaza.

“[But] I don’t think the Israeli establishment really cares about Gaza.

“It wishes to cut it off and push it into the sea. What it really cares about is the West Bank and the Golan Heights — they think that would secure the [Israeli] settlement for future generations.”

He added: “Zionism is responsible for turning Israelis into occupiers, the torturers, the racists.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In The Hague, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during Israel’s assault on Gaza.

In a statement, the ICC said the Israeli leaders had, “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity.”

The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, although Israel’s military claims it killed Deif in a July airstrike.

• READ MORE: World reacts to ICC arrest warrants for Israel’s Netanyahu and Gallant
• ‘Psychopath’ Netanyahu is ‘poisoning’ the country: Israeli lawmaker to Mehdi
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

The ICC arrest warrants come a week after a UN special committee found Israel’s actions in Gaza since October 2023 are, “consistent with genocide,” including using starvation as a weapon of war and recklessly inflicting civilian casualties.

AMY GOODMAN: In related news, on Wednesday, the United States vetoed a Gaza ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council for the fourth time, and the US Senate rejected a resolution brought by Senator Bernie Sanders that sought to block the sale of US tank rounds, bomb kits and other lethal weapons to Israel. Nineteen senators supported blocking the arms.

For more on all of this, we’re joined by Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. His latest piece is “Exclusive: White House Says Democrats Who Oppose Weapons to Israel Are Aiding Hamas.”

Ahmed, thank you so much for being with us. As you write your book on the Biden administration in Gaza called Crossing the Red Line, clearly the ICC has ruled that today by issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Can you talk about the significance of this move?

“A Great Day for Justice”: Palestinian Lawyer Raji Sourani on ICC Warrants for Netanyahu & Gallant https://t.co/TEb1VwShfn

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) November 21, 2024

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Yeah, Amy. This is just an absolutely huge development, and it’s significant for a number of reasons. It’s significant because the ICC has come out and amplified and affirmed the allegations of crimes against humanity, of war crimes. This is one more international body.

These are . . . international charges with a great deal of respect. This is a court that most of the world is a member of. And they’re coming out and saying, “Look, we think there are reasonable grounds to believe that these major international red lines have been crossed by the Israelis.”

What’s really important to remember is that this isn’t just a decision about Israel. By extension, it fundamentally is a decision about the United States, which has been the ultimate enabler of Israel’s offensives in Gaza and Lebanon, which are under consideration by the ICC.

And even in this ICC statement today, they point out that in the situations where Israel has addressed concerns over what it describes as starvation as a method of warfare — right? — depriving civilians, Palestinians, of food, water and medical equipment, Israel has really only done so in an extremely arbitrary and, what the ICC judges call, conditional way in response to the US. So, fundamentally, Amy, what we’re seeing is the ICC is saying yet again that Israel and the US, as its major enabler and backer, are in the dark and will continue to be in the dark for years to come.

This kind of adds to a broader picture in which there are now ICC warrants for the sitting Israeli prime minister and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who remains a significant politician in Israel. Simultaneously, there’s the genocide case at the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, which is ongoing and will be ongoing for years to come.

And there’s the Geneva Conventions conference underway next year regarding kind of similar issues — right? — violations of international law, laws of war and the Israeli grave abuses that are alleged. So, the US and Israel will be kind of on trial on the international stage for years to come.

‘Wanted for war crimes in Gaza.’        Video: Democracy Now!

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Akbar, would you say that this move is mostly a symbolic one? Because, as you pointed out, of course, most countries are members of the International Criminal Court, but in this instance, perhaps most importantly, neither Israel nor the US are.

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Right, Nermeen. And that’s something that the ICC judges did get into today — right? — because Israel said, “Look, the International Criminal Court doesn’t have jurisdiction over us.” That said, the state of Palestine is a member of the court, and that’s why this becomes a relevant and interesting thing, because you’ve seen European nations recognise Palestine as a state. You’ve seen Palestine join the United Nations General Assembly over just last year.

So, yes, while the US and Israel continue to reject international scrutiny by the ICC, by the ICJ, of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, there’s a growing international push to kind of challenge that, right?

And I think you will see the Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration assertively push back against the ICC. The Trump administration did actually target the ICC directly when President Trump was last in office, threatening to put sanctions on ICC officials. And we also know from reporting that the Israelis have spied on and threatened the ICC themselves, according to reporting by The Guardian. So, yes, there will be increased pressure.

But I think we’re really in a place that no one thought we would be even a few months ago, right? I think even the prospect of the ICC prosecutor successfully getting these warrants issued, it was initially thought that would be quite quick. It’s taken a long time. The fact that judges were able to issue those warrants suggests that even though it’s an uphill battle to get this international scrutiny, there’s a real determination and clear will.

And we’ve seen a lot of states turn around and say over 13 months, right? Since the October 7 attack by Hamas within Israel that did spark this current round of fighting, there have been calls to say, “We don’t want this to escalate,” right?

The US’s allies, Western countries have said, “We want to resolve this. We don’t want you on trial. Can the US and Israel please change course?” And what you’ve seen is a defiance from Tel Aviv and from Washington to say, “Actually, no, we’re continuing these wars.”

So, that does take it to a different forum to kind of change the policy.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Akbar, could you also — while we’re looking at the way in which international organisations, multilateral ones, are responding to this, what about the latest vote at the Security Council and the fact that the US blocked it for the fourth time, a ceasefire vote?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: It’s really striking at this point — right? — to see the Biden administration totally alone. And you see how this develops over the course of the war. Initially, the US was able to get Britain, even France, kind of abstaining, standing with them.

And now, 13 months in, where conduct hasn’t changed, and you still have daily strikes that are killing dozens, sometimes over a hundred civilians, you have a mounting death toll of mostly women and children, the US is totally alone, where it’s shielding Israel on the world stage diplomatically.

And this is really important to see in the context of the Biden administration as an outlier even among American presidents and administrations. When President Barack Obama was in office, after he was in the lame-duck period that Biden is in now, he actually did abstain at the UN Security Council and said, “You know what? Go ahead and pass a resolution that Israel doesn’t like,” because tacitly the US acknowledged there was a basis, there were credible grounds for that resolution, which in that instance was about Israeli settlement activity.

Here, what you’re seeing from the Biden administration, even in their dying days — right? — two months to go, there’s an obstinacy, a defiance, and a real commitment to shielding Israel, even if they are totally alone against now their closest allies — Britain, France and everyone else on the Security Council.

So, I think the context of that veto kind of presages whatever may come in the next two months in terms of the Biden administration allowing any UN scrutiny of the wars.

AMY GOODMAN: Akbar, I want to play Palestine’s envoy to the United Nations, Majed Bamya, speaking yesterday.

MAJED BAMYA: There is no right to mass killing of civilians. There is no right to starve an entire civilian population. There is no right to forcibly displace a people. And there is no right to annexation. This is what Israel is doing in Gaza. …

Maybe for some, we have the wrong nationality, the wrong faith, the wrong skin color. But we are humans! And we should be treated as such. Is there a UN Charter for Israel that is different from the charter we all have? Tell us. Is there an international law for them, an international law for us? Do they have the right to kill, and the only right we have is to die?

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

On my office wall hangs a framed portrait of Shireen Abu Akleh, the inspiring and celebrated American-Palestinian journalist known across the Middle East to watchers of Al Jazeera Arabic, who was assassinated by an Israeli military sniper with impunity.

State murder.

She was gunned down in full blue “press” kit almost two years ago while reporting on a raid in the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp, clearly targeted for her influence as a media witness to Israeli atrocities.

• READ MORE: The plan is to turn Palestine into a historical footnote so it’s too late to save it

As in the case of all 22 journalists who had been killed by Israeli military until that day, 11 May 2022, nobody was charged.

Now, six months into the catastrophic and genocidal Israeli War on Gaza, some 137 Palestinian journalists have been killed — murdered – by Israeli snipers, or targeted bombs demolishing their homes, and even their families.

Also in my office is pasted a red poster with a bird-of-paradise shaped pen in chains and the legend “Open access for journalists – Free press in West Papua.”

The poster was from a 2017 World Media Freedom Day conference in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, which I attended as a speaker and wrote about. Until this day, there is still no open door for international journalists

Harassed, beaten
Although only one killing of a Papuan journalist is recorded, there have been many instances when local news reporters have been harassed, beaten and threatened – beyond the reach of international media.

Ardiansyah Matra was savagely beaten and his body dumped in the Maro River, Merauke. A spokesperson for the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), Victor Mambor, said at the time: “‘It’s highly likely that his murder is connected with the terror situation for journalists which was occurring at the time of Ardiansyah’s death.”

Frequently harassed himself, Mambor, founder and publisher of Jubi Media, was apparently the target of a suspected bomb attack, or warning, on 23 January 2023, when Jayapura police investigated a blast outside his home in Angkasapura Village.

At first glance, it may seem strange that comparisons are being made between the War on Gaza in the Middle East and the long-smouldering West Papuan human rights crisis in the Asia-Pacific region almost 11,000 km away. But there are several factors at play.

Melanesian and Pacific activists frequently mention both the Palestinian and West Papuan struggles in the same breath. A figure of up to 500,000 deaths among Papuans is often cited as the toll from 1969 when Indonesia annexed the formerly Dutch colony in controversial circumstances under the flawed Act of Free Choice, characterised by critics as the Act of “No” Choice.

The death toll in Gaza after the six-month war on the besieged enclave by Israel is already almost 33,000 (in reality far higher if the unknown number of casualties buried under the rubble is added). Most of the deaths are women and children.

At least 27 children have died of malnutrition so far with numbers expected to rise sharply.

Ethnic cleansing
But there are mounting fears that Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Gazans has no end in sight and the lives of 2.3 million people are at stake.

Both Palestinians and West Papuans see themselves as the victims of violent settler colonial projects that have been stealing their land and destroying their culture under the world’s noses — in the case of Palestine since the Nakba of 1948, and in West Papua since Indonesian paratroopers landed in a botched invasion in 1963.

They see themselves as both confronting genocidal leaders; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose popularity at home sinks by the day with growing protests, and Indonesia’s new President-elect Prabowo Subianto who has an atrocious human rights reputation in both Timor-Leste and West Papua.

And both peoples feel betrayed by a world that has stood by as genocides have been taking place — in the case of Palestine in real time on social media and television screens, and in the case of West Papua slowly over six decades.

Last November, outgoing Indonesian President Joko Widodo confronted US President Joe Biden on his policies over Gaza, and appealed for Washington to do more to prevent atrocities in Palestine.

Indonesian politicians such as Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi have been quick to condemn Israel, including at the International Court of Justice, but Papuan independence leaders find this hypocritical.

“We have full sympathy for the struggle for justice in Palestine and call for the restoration of peace,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda.

‘Where’s Indonesian outrage?’
“But what about West Papua? Where was Indonesia’s outrage after Bloody Paniai [2014], or the Wamena massacre in February?

“Indonesia is claiming to oppose genocide in Gaza while committing their own genocide in West Papua.”

“Over 60 years of genocidal colonial rule, over 500,000 West Papuans have been killed by Indonesian forces.”

Wenda said genocide in West Papua was implemented slowly and steadily through a series of massacres, assassinations and policies, such as the killings of the chair of the Papuan Council Theys Eluay in 2001; Mako Tabuni (2012); and cultural curator and artist Arnold Ap (1984).

He cited many independent international and legal expert reports for his “considered position”, such as Yale University Law School, University of Wollongong, and the Asian Human Rights Commission – The Neglected Genocide.

In the South Pacific, Indonesia is widely seen among civil society, university and community groups as a ruthless aggressor with little or no respect for the Papuan culture.

Jakarta is engaged in an intensive diplomacy campaign in an attempt to counter this perception.

Unarmed Palestinians killed in Gaza – revealing Israel’s “kill zones”.  Video: Al Jazeera

Israel’s ‘rogue’ status
But if Indonesia is unpopular in the Pacific over its brutal colonial policies, it is nothing compared to the global “rogue” status of Israel.

In the past few weeks, as atrocity after atrocity pile up and the country’s disregard for international law and United Nations resolutions increasingly shock, supporters appear to be shrinking to its long-term ally the United States and its Five Eyes partners with New Zealand’s coalition government failing to condemn Israel’s war crimes.

On Good Friday — Day 174 of the war – Israel bombed Gaza, Syria and Lebanon on the same day, killing civilians in all three countries.

In the past week, the Israeli military ratcheted up its attacks on the Gaza Strip in defiance of the UN Security Council’s order for an immediate ceasefire, expanded its savage attacks on neighbouring states, and finally withdrew from Al-Shifa Hospital after a bloody two-week siege, leaving it totally destroyed with at least 350 patients, staff and displaced people dead.

Fourteen votes against the lone US abstention after Washington had earlier vetoed three previous resolutions produced the decisive ceasefire vote, but the Israeli objective is clearly to raze Gaza and make it uninhabitable.

As The Guardian described the vote, “When Gilad Erdan, the Israeli envoy to the UN, sat before the Security Council to rail against the ceasefire resolution it had just passed, he cut a lonelier figure than ever in the cavernous chamber.”

The newspaper added that the message was clear.

‘Time was up’
“Time was up on the Israeli offensive, and the Biden administration was no longer prepared to let the US’s credibility on the world stage bleed away by defending an Israeli government which paid little, if any, heed to its appeals to stop the bombing of civilian areas and open the gates to substantial food deliveries.”

Al Jazeera interviewed Norwegian physician Dr Mads Gilbert, who has spent long periods working in Gaza, including at al-Shifa Hospital. He was visibly distressed in his reaction, lamenting that the Israeli attack had “destroyed” the 78-year legacy of the Strip’s largest and flagship hospital.

Speaking from Tromso, Norway, he said: “This is such a sad day, I’ve been weeping all morning.”

Dr Gilbert said he did not know the fate of the 107 critical patients who had been moved two days earlier to an older building in the complex.

“The maggots that are creeping out of the corpses in al-Shifa Hospital now,” he said, “are really maggots coming out of the eyes of President Biden and the European Union leaders doing nothing to stop this horrible, horrible genocide.”

Australia-based Antony Loewenstein, the author of The Palestine Laboratory, who has been reporting on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories for two decades, described Israel’s attack on the hospital as the “actions of a rogue state”.

Gaza health officials said Israel was targeting all the hospitals and systematically destroying the medical infrastructure. Only five out of a total of 37 hospitals still had some limited services operating.

Strike on journalists’ tent
Yesterday, four people were killed and journalists were wounded in an Israeli air strike on a tent in the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

The Israeli military claimed the strike was aimed at a “command centre” operated by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad armed group, but footage screened by Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary clearly showed it was a tent where displaced people were sheltering and journalists and photographers were working.

The Israeli military have killed another photojournalist and editor, Abdel Wahab Awni, when they bombed his home in the Maghazi refugee camp. This took the number of journalists killed since the start of the war to 137, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.

Al Jazeera has revealed that Israel was using “kill zones” for certain combat areas in Gaza. Anybody crossing the “invisible” lines into these zones was shot on sight as a “terrorist”, even if they were unarmed civilians.

The chilling practice was exposed when footage was screened of two unarmed civilians carrying white flags being apparently gunned down and then buried by bulldozer under rubble. A US-based civil rights group described the killings as a “heinous crime”.

The kill zones were confirmed at the weekend by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which said the military had claimed to have killed 9000 “terrorists”, but officials admitted that many of the dead were often civilians who had “crossed the line” of fire.

Call for sanctions
The Israeli peace advocacy group Gush Shalom sent an open letter to all the embassies credited to Israel calling for immediate sanctions against the Israeli government, saying Netanyahu was “flagrantly refusing” to comply with the ceasefire resolution.

“We, citizens of Israel,” said the letter, “are calling on your government to initiate a further meeting of the Security Council, aiming to pass a resolution which would set effective sanctions on Israel — in order to bring about an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip until the end of Ramadan and beyond it.”

A Palestinian-American professor of law Dr Noura Erakat, of Rutgers University, recently told a BBC interviewer that Israel had made its end game very clear from the beginning of the war.

“Israel has made its intent clear. Its war cabinet had made its intent clear. From the very beginning, in the first week of October 7, it told us its goal was to depopulate Gaza.

“They have equated the decimation of Hamas, which they cannot achieve militarily, with the depopulation of the entire Gaza strip.”

A parallel with Indonesia’s fundamentally flawed policies in West Papua. Failing violent settler colonialism.

A New Zealand charity providing humanitarian aid for Gaza today revealed more details of the international Freedom Flotilla’s bid to break the Israeli siege of the enclave as mass starvation looms closer.

Latest reports say 27 children have died from malnutrition so far and the death toll is expected to rise in the coming days from Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

About 1000 protesters in an Auckland’s Aotea Square rally today waved empty dinner plates, some with messages such as “Gaza is being starved”, “Free Palestine” and “Starve Israeli weapons”.

• READ MORE: ‘Empty plate’ protesters call on NZ govt to demand Gaza ceasefire
• Next Freedom Flotilla nearly ready to sail for Gaza with NZ medics
• Two killed in Is­raeli strike on Gaza jour­nal­ists’ tent at Al-Aqsa Hos­pi­tal

They then marched in a silent vigil around central Auckland streets.

Among the speakers was Kia Ora Gaza coordinator Roger Fowler, who introduced one of the doctors that will be joining the charity’s medical team on the siege-breaking humanitarian voyage.

Twenty seven Gazan children die from malnutrition.  Video: Al Jazeera

“We’ve got a fundraising campaign, obviously we’ll be sending a flotilla of ships to Gaza,” he said.

Fowler introduced Dr Adnan Ali, an Auckland GP and surgeon who is a member of Medics International.

“We hope another doctor we are talking with will be able to join him,” Fowler told Asia Pacific Report.

Israel defies ceasefire order
Israel has defied a near unanimous UN Security Council — the US abstained — demand last week for an immediate Ramadan ceasefire with just 10 days left of the Muslim religious fasting period.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also so far ignored further orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which is investigating Israel over South Africa’s allegations of genocide.

The court ruled on Thursday that “in view of the worsening conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza, in particular the spread of famine and starvation”, Israel must take “all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians throughout Gaza”.

The measures outlined includes food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care.

Israel was also ordered to open more of the seven land crossings into Gaza.

On Friday, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, told the UN Human Rights Council that Israel was committing acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip.

She said that countries should impose an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel.

Luxon government condemned
Speakers at today’s Aotea Square rally — including Labour’s List MP Shanan Halbert and the Greens’ Ricardo Menéndez March — criticised Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his coalition government for refusing to condemn Israel’s atrocities against and failing to make any “meaningful” humanitarian response to the war.

During his speech about Kia Ora Gaza and the Freedom Flotilla, Roger Fowler reminded the crowd about Israel’s brutal response to the 2010 flotilla.

The flotilla, led by the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara was intercepted by the Israeli navy, and commandos shot nine Turkish and one Turkish-American pro-Palestinian activists. A 10th who was in a coma died six years later.

This attack led to a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Israel.

Israeli forces have destroyed the memorial memorial erected in Gaza to honour those killed during the current war.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! — The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We turn to Gaza, where aid groups say famine is imminent after five months of US-backed attacks by Israel.

This is in spite of the historic UN Security Council resolution yesterday demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Fourteen countries voted in favour of the resolution — while the US, Israel’s main ally, abstained.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: World welcomes UN ceasefire resolution
• UN Security Council demands immediate Gaza ceasefire as US abstains
• Other War on Gaza reports

The head of the UN Palestinian aid agency, UNRWA, says Israel is now denying access to all UNRWA food convoys to northern Gaza, even though the region is on the brink of famine.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X, quote, “This man-made starvation under our watch is a stain on our collective humanity.”

On Saturday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres travelled to the Rafah border crossing.

SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: A long line of blocked relief trucks on one side of the gates, the long shadow of starvation on the other. That is more than tragic. It is a moral outrage. …

It’s time to truly flood Gaza with lifesaving aid. The choice is clear: either surge or starvation.

Let’s choose the side of help, the side of hope and the right side of history.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined by Alex de Waal, the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. His new piece for The Guardian, “We are about to witness in Gaza the most intense famine since the Second World War.”

Alex, welcome back to Democracy Now! Describe what’s happening, at a time when Israel is now preventing the largest aid umbrella in Gaza, UNRWA, from delivering aid to northern Gaza, where famine is the most intense.

As Israel blocks more aid, protests mount for a free independent state. Video: Gaza famine

ALEX DE WAAL: Let’s make no mistake: We talk about imminent famine or being at the brink of famine. When a population is in this extreme cataclysmic food emergency, already children are dying in significant numbers of hunger and needless disease, the two interacting in a vicious spiral that is killing them, likely in thousands already. It’s very arbitrary to say we’re at the brink of famine. It is a particular measure of the utter extremity of threat to human survival.

And we have never actually — since the metrics for measuring acute food crisis were developed some 20 years ago, we have never seen a situation either in which an entire population, the entire population of Gaza, is in food crisis, food emergency or famine, or such simple large numbers of people descending into starvation simply hasn’t happened before in our lifetimes.

AMY GOODMAN: How can it be prevented?

ALEX DE WAAL: Well, it’s been very clear. Back in December, the Famine Review Committee of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system — and that is the sort of the ultimate arbiter, the high court, if you like, of humanitarian assessments — made it absolutely clear — and I can quote — “The cessation of hostilities in conjunction with the sustained restoration of humanitarian access to the entire Gaza Strip remain the essential prerequisites for preventing famine.”

It said that in December. It reiterated it again last week. There is no way that this disaster can be prevented without a ceasefire and without a full spectrum of humanitarian relief and restoring essential services.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what the IPC is? And also talk about the effects of famine for the rest of the lives of those who survive, of children.

ALEX DE WAAL: So, the IPC, which is short for the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system, is the system that the international humanitarian agencies adopted some 20 years ago to try and come to a standardised metric. And it uses a five fold classification of food insecurity.

And it comes out in very clearly colour-coded maps, which are very easy to understand. So, green is phase one, which is normal. Yellow is phase two, which is stressed. Orangey brown is phase three, that is crisis.

Red is four, that is emergency.

And in the very first prototype, actually, of the IPC, this was called famine, but they reclassified it as emergency. And dark blood red is catastrophe or famine. And this measures the intensity.

There’s also the question of the magnitude, the sheer numbers involved, which in the case of Gaza means, essentially, the entire population of more than 2 million.

Now, starvation is not just something that is experienced and from which people can recover. We have long-standing evidence — and the best evidence, actually, is from Holland, where the Dutch population suffered what they called the Hunger Winter back in 1944 at the end of the Second World War.

And the Dutch have been able to track the lifelong effects of starvation of young children and children who were not yet born, in utero. And they find that those children, when they grow up, are shorter. They are stunted.

And they have lower cognitive capacities than their elder or younger siblings. And this actually even goes on to the next generation, so that when little girls who are exposed to this grow and become mothers, their own children also suffer those effects, albeit at a lesser scale. So, this will be a calamity that will be felt for generations.

Today I saw long lines of blocked relief trucks waiting to be let into Gaza.

It’s time to truly flood Gaza with life-saving aid.

The choice is clear: surge or starvation.

Let’s choose the side of help, the side of hope & the right side of history.

I will not give up. pic.twitter.com/TTTcnR01bU

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) March 23, 2024

AMY GOODMAN: What are you calling for, Alex de Waal? I mean, in a moment we’re going to talk about what’s happening in Sudan. It’s horrifying to go from one famine to another. But the idea that we’re talking about a completely man-made situation here.

ALEX DE WAAL: Indeed. It is not only man-made, and therefore, it is men who will stop it. And sadly, of course, even if [with a] ceasefire and humanitarian assistance, it will be too late to save the lives of hundreds, probably thousands, of children who are at the brink now and are living in these terrible, overcrowded situations without basic water, sanitation and services.

A crisis like this cannot be stopped overnight. And it is a crisis that is not just a humanitarian crisis. It is fundamentally a political crisis, a crisis of an abrogation of essentially agreed international humanitarian law, and indeed international criminal law.

There is overwhelming evidence that this is the war crime of starvation being perpetrated at scale.

AMY GOODMAN: Alex de Waal, we’re going to turn now from what’s happening in Gaza. We’ll link to your piece, “We are about to witness in Gaza the most intense famine since the Second World War.”

The original content of this programme is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

Editorial staff at Australia’s public broadcaster ABC have again registered a vote of no confidence in managing director David Anderson and senior managers over the handling of complaints by Israeli lobbyists.

At a national meeting of members of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance this week, staff passed a resolution of no confidence in Anderson and all ABC managers involved in the decision to unfairly dismiss freelance broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf, MEAA said in a statement.

The meeting was held in response to the Fair Work Commission hearings to determine Lattouf’s unfair dismissal claim after she had been sacked from her temporary job as host of ABC Sydney radio’s morning show in December.

• READ MORE: Other reports on ABC and media bias over Israel’s war on Gaza

Staff have also called for ABC’s head of content, Chris Oliver-Taylor, to step down immediately for his role as the ultimate decisionmaker in the dismissal of Lattouf.

“The mishandling of Antoinette Lattouf’s employment has done enormous damage to the integrity and reputation of the ABC,” said MEAA media director Cassie Derrick.

“Evidence provided in the Fair Work Commission hearing about the involvement of David Anderson and Chris Oliver-Taylor in her dismissal has further undermined the confidence of staff in the managing director and his senior managers to be able to protect the independence of the ABC.

“The Lattouf case continues a pattern of ABC journalists, particularly those from culturally diverse backgrounds, lacking support from management when they face criticism from lobby groups, business organisations and politicians.

“For these reasons, Chris Oliver-Taylor should be stood down immediately, while Mr Anderson must demonstrate he is taking the concerns of staff seriously to begin to restore confidence in his leadership.”

Lattouf co-founded Media Diversity Australia (MDA) in 2017, a nonprofit agency which seeks to increase cultural and linguistic diversity in Australia’s news media.

Her parents arrived in Australia as refugees from Lebanon in the 1970s.

Lattouf was born in 1983 in Auburn, New South Wales. She attended various public schools in Western Sydney and studied communications (social inquiry) at the University of Technology Sydney.

Union-led ABC staff call for the resignation of the Australian @ABCNews chief content officer after court documents revealed his role in journalist Antoinette Lattouf’s dismissal for an accurate social media post about Israel’s starvation strategy.https://t.co/eQ8fLBiQL6

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) March 21, 2024

The full motion passed by ABC MEAA members on Wednesday:

“We, MEAA members at the ABC, are outraged by the revelations of how ABC executives have disregarded the independence of the ABC, damaged the public’s trust in our capacity to report without fear or favour, and mistreated our colleague Antoinette Lattouf.

“Staff reaffirm our lack of confidence in managing director David Anderson, and in all ABC managers involved in the decision to unfairly dismiss Antoinette Lattouf.

“Chris Oliver-Taylor has undermined the integrity of the entire ABC through his mismanagement, and should step down from his role as Head of the Content Division immediately.

“We call on ABC management to stop wasting public funds on defending the unfair dismissal case against Antoinette Lattouf, provide her and the public a full apology and reinstate her to ABC airwaves.

“We demand that ABC management implement staff calls for a fair and clear social media policy, robust and transparent complaints process and an audit to address the gender and race pay gap.”

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.

Twenty-four weeks of city marches and a five-week vigil outside the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s electoral office in Marrickville have taken pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war on Gaza to an unprecedented level.

In a new development, hundreds of protesters joined in a street theatre performance outside Albanese’s electorate office on Friday evening to highlight their horror at massacres of Palestinian citizens by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in Gaza.

Over 31,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, including many shot by the IDF while seeking care in hospitals, food from aid trucks or fleeing IDF bombing.

• READ MORE: More and more new­borns dy­ing in Gaza as hunger cri­sis wors­ens, WHO says
• Israeli troops seize, blindfold naked journalists in bid to ‘silence’ Gaza
• NZ protests: NZ Palestine protesters praise Irish solidarity over Gaza on St Patrick’s Day

The street theatre protest was part of an ongoing 24-hours-a-day peaceful vigil that has been going now for five weeks. There is no shortage of volunteers.  A minimum of 6 people are present at any one time with around 200 people visiting each day.

When City Hub attended twice last week, frequent toots from passing cars indicated plenty of public support.

At 6.30 pm on Friday, sirens and rumblings could be heard along Marrickville Road sending a signal to scores of protesters dressed in white to lie down on the pavement. They were then sprinkled with red liquid.

As the sirens quietened, a woman’s voice rang out: “War criminals, that is what our government is. They are not representing the people . . . We will not stop until our government ends every single tie with Israeli apartheid.

‘We’ll not stop . . .’
“We will not stop until the ethnic cleansing has ended. Palestinian voices need to be heard. Palestinian voices must be amplified.”

Greens Deputy Leader Senator Mehreen Faruqi attended the action. Before the “die-in”, she responded to Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s announcement earlier in the day that Australia will resume funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

Last week, Senator Faruqi called on Wong urgently to restore the funding. “It has been 43 days since the morally corrupt government made the inexcusable decision to suspend aid funding to UNRWA despite the minister admitting she hadn’t seen a shred of evidence,” she tweeted.

Along with some other Western governments, the Albanese government suspended UNRWA funding when Israel circulated a reportedly “explosive” but secret dossier outlining alleged links between Hamas and UNRWA staff. This happened shortly after the International Court of Justice found that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide.

The dossier alleged that UNRWA members were involved in the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.  After analysing the documents, Britain’s Channel 4 concluded that the dossier provided “no evidence to support the explosive claim that UN staff were involved in terror attacks”.

Recently, UNRWA accused Israel of torturing UNRWA staff to get admissions. On Friday, the European Union’s top humanitarian official Janez Lenarcic said that neither he nor anyone at the EU had been shown any evidence.

In “unpausing” the aid, Wong provided no evidence about what the government knew when it suspended aid and what it now claims to know about the allegations. Speaking at Friday’s protest, Senator Faruqi said she welcomed the restoration of  funding but, “just as they restored the funding, they paused the visas of Palestinians en route to Australia while they were mid-air. How cruel and how inhumane can this Labor government get? Just as you think that there are no further depths that they can get to, they show us that they can.” (Late on Sunday, there were reports that the visa decision may be reversed.)

Unprecedented protest
While protests outside Prime Minister’s offices are not unusual, a 24-hour protest for more than a month has never happened before.

Given the length of the protest, it is remarkable that there has been almost no media mainstream coverage. City Hub conducted a Dow Jones Factiva search which revealed one report on SBS and a mention in The Guardian. (The search engine does not cover commercial radio.)

The weeks long, 24 x 7 protest in the heart of the Prime Minister’s own electorate has remained hidden from most of the Australian public and international audiences.

Prime Minister Albanese has not responded to requests for meetings with organisers who include Palestinian families who have been his constituents for many years. City Hub has spoken to protest organisers who say that despite repeated requests, they have received no response from the Prime Minister. The office is now closed to the public which means people are unable to deliver letters or make inquiries.

Protesters sit down in Market Street

The ongoing 24-hour sit-down Marrickville protest is an extension of the broader protest movement in which thousands of protesters marched on Sunday for the 24th week in a row. Similar protests have been happening in Melbourne and other cities. Again, although there have been bigger protests at times, the regularity of protests attended by thousands each week is unprecedented in Australian history.

Protests on this scale did not happen even during the Vietnam War era in the 1970s.

Last week, protesters marched from Hyde Park down Market Street completely filling several blocks of Sydney’s busiest shopping area. Their chant “Ceasefire Now’ reverberated around the streets. It was accompanied by drummers, some of them children.

Some protesters briefly took their demonstration to a new level by staging a brief sit-down in Market Street. The area was filled with Sunday shoppers who watched as protesters chanted, “While you’re shopping, bombs are dropping.”

The Prime Minister’s office has been contacted for comment. When a response is received, this article will be updated.

Wendy Bacon was previously professor of journalism at the University of Technology (UTS). She spoke at the rally about the lack of media coverage of pro Palestinian protests. She will write about this in a future article. Republished with the author’s permission.

The United States’ airdrops of aid into Gaza are a textbook case of cognitive dissonance on the part of the US administration — dropping food while continuing to send Israel bombs with which to pulverise Gaza, reports Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post.

And, says the media watch programme presenter Richard Gizbert, the gulf between what is happening on the ground and the mainstream media’s reportage continues to widen.

Gizbert criticises the airdrops, what he calls the “optics of urgency, the illusions of aid”.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: Nearly 100 people killed in last 24 hours
• Other Listening Post items

“An absurd spectacle as the US drops aid into Gaza while also arming Israel,” he says.

Gizbert critically examines the Israeli disinformation strategy over atrocities such as the gunning down of at least 116 starving Gazans in the so-called “flour massacre” of 29 February 2024 — first denial, then blame the Palestinians, and finally accept only limited responsibility.

“The US air drops into the Gaza Strip are pure theatre. The US has been supplying thousands of tonnes into the Gaza Strip — but those have been high explosives,” says Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya.

“And then to claim that somehow it is ameliorated by 38,000 meals ready to eat is quite obscene to put it politely.

“People have compared these scenes to The Hunger Games and for good reason.”

‘Who is the superpower?’
Australian author Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, says: “When I saw the US drop food, my first response was really anger; it was horror that this is apparently the best the US can do.

Absurd Aid Air Drops in Gaza.   Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post, 9 March 2024

“Who is the superpower here? Is it the US or Israel? There is no place that is safe. There is no place where you can find reliable food, where people can get shelter.

“Gazans are exhausted, angry and scared, and do not buy this argument that the US is suddenly caring about them by airdropping a handful of food.”

“People have compared these scenes to The Hunger Games and for good reason.

Contributors:
Laura Albast — Fellow, Institute for Palestine Studies
Mohamad Bazzi — Director of NYU’s Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies
Antony Loewenstein — Author, The Palestine Laboratory
Mouin Rabbani — Co-editor, Jadaliyya

On Our Radar:
Since Israel launched its assault on Gaza, the war has been a delicate subject for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The war has led to censorship of news coverage and suppression of public protest. Meenakshi Ravi reports.

Israel’s cultural annihilation in Gaza
The Listening Post has covered Israel’s war on Gaza through the prism of the media, including the unprecedented killing of Palestinian journalists. But there is another level to what is unfolding in Gaza: the genocidal assault on Palestinian history, existence and culture.

Featuring:
Jehad Abusalim – Executive director, The Jerusalem Fund

• The Listening Post is a weekly media watchdog programme at Al Jazeera

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