The Zionist Federation of Australia has withdrawn its case of “racial hatred” against Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis, who called it a victory for free speech, reports Consortium News.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Joe Lauria

After a two-year legal battle to punish a prominent Australian journalist for her public criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) has withdrawn its case.

“This is a win for every Australian who values our democratic right to freedom of political expression,” Kostakidis said on X. “Zionist zealotry has had to beat a retreat from what was going to be a highly damaging trial.

“The purpose of journalism is to get to the truth — fearlessly — and to hold power to account. This is a win for press freedom, which has prevailed.“

Kostakidis, who anchored the SBS national news for nearly 20 years, was a high-profile target for the Zionist Federation in its quest to silence outrage over Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Alon Cassuto, the ZFA chief executive who brought the case against Kostakidis, claimed on X that he withdrew it on Thursday to deprive her of a platform. He wrote:

“I do not intend to spend another year taking Ms Kostakidis’ repugnant commentary from the dark corners of the internet and giving it a Federal Court platform in her pursuit of martyrdom. My job here is done.”

The majority of his statement was a continued attack on the journalist. He claimed that the action he brought against Kostakidis was satisfied by an apology she had issued. But that was two years ago and he pursued his case against her nonetheless.

What he did not mention is a recent series of court decisions in Australia by judges who upheld the right to criticise Zionism, which appears to have weakened his chances of winning.

Kostakidis had also won approval for full discovery of ZFA communications.

In claiming victory, Kostakidis wrote:

“Watching a people live stream their own genocide while the international community responsible for creating this mess offers the victims sympathy and the perpetrators bombs, diplomatic cover and impunity, has been disgusting.

“Thank you to the Jewish and Israeli people all over the world raging against this in recognition our common humanity trumps any form of tribalism.

“Australia must stop disregarding the Orders of the International Court of Justice which were clear: we are obliged under international law to take meaningful action to prevent genocide in Palestine and to do all in our power to bring about an end to apartheid.

“Hypocrisy, double standards and a lack of courage are aiding the destruction of a framework intended to protect against the worst excesses of state power.”

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London.

Breaking: Zionists legal proceedings against me have been withdrawn after a 2 year battle.

This is a win for every Australian who values our democratic right to freedom of political expression. Zionist zealotry has had to beat a retreat from what was going to be a highly…

— Mary Kostakidis (@MaryKostakidis) September 10, 2026

In citizen responses to this article published by Consortium News:

The post Australian Zionists drop case against ‘truth’ journalist Mary Kostakidis appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/11/australian-zionists-drop-case-against-truth-journalist-mary-kostakidis/

COMMENTARY: By Martyn Bradbury, editor and publisher of The Daily Blog

This New Zealand general election on November 7 has an enormous amount at stake.

If this hard-right coalition government gets re-elected to cement into place 19th Century Settler White Privilege using an anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-beneficiary, anti-worker, anti-renter and anti-environment agenda for their donors interests, NZ society will be irreparably damaged.

So who do you watch for Fourth Estate Journalism for your election coverage matters this year?

If you give a damn about NZ politics, here are The Daily Blog’s picks of best NZ media and journalists to follow as we face the most consequential election of our generation:

1: Barbara Dreaver – TVNZ

There’s a bloody good reason she was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities in 2024.

Bab’s is a national cultural treasure.

Her body of work every single year marks her journalism and her ability to pull NZ’s attention towards the current affairs of the Pacific as the benchmark for Fourth Estate values in this country.

The range of issues Barbara Dreaver covers from natural disasters to geopolitical machinations to domestic internal dynamics, her spectrum and skill as a journalist is true dedication to the craft.

She is such a humble person and her stories are always focused on the ignored voices.

We need her quality of journalism more than ever before.

Standing ovation for the Queen!

Her journalism is the benchmark for Fourth Estate accountability.

2: A View From Afar Podcast – Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan

Honestly the best critique of foreign policy in New Zealand. You can watch the podcast here live when it goes out or find them on Evening Report. You learn more in 30 minutes with them than you will ever glean from the mainstream media.

Why the hell NZ on Air is not sponsoring this astounds me, they do more explanation of what’s actually going on than any other NZ media network.

3: Werewolf Blog – Gordon Campbell 

Gordon remains the best political Blogger in New Zealand. His Werewolf blog is a weekly must read and he does more independent researched journalism than anyone else in the game. If you are not reading Gordon Campbell each week, you shouldn’t be commenting on politics.

4: Bryan Bruce Investigate Substack

Bryan Bruce is an investigative reporter who works tirelessly for a civil debate on the issues of inequality and poverty. His documentaries remain some of the most important popular critiques of neoliberalism and capitalism in NZ.

5: Ben Morgan Substack 

Our very own military strategist Ben Morgan has his own Substack account. He has been blogging for TDB for over 2 years, updating strategic movements in the Pacific and the Ukraine/Russia conflict. He is readable and gives a far better regular insight to what is happening than any other mainstream media commentator.

6: Nick’s Kōrero – Nick Rockel Substack 

Nick offers a wicked and sharp critique of the Political right. His skill and fluidity of writing marks him as an artisan blogger who is an important artist and underrated blogger who deserves far greater recognition.

7: Waatea Digital 

During an emergency, the Marae always becomes one of the central points of the community response; the same is happening in media. As the media emergency occurs, it is the Māori media that step up and become the central point of journalism.

Waatea Radio has recently expanded into digital journalism and the new power of that journalism is providing a real alternative to the dying mainstream media monoliths. Waatea is the ONLY media company that is growing!

8: Against the Current blog 

Our comrades over at the Against the Current blog offer weekly insights and criticism into the weeks events from a staunch socialist perspective. It is always well researched and well reasoned.

9: No Right Turn Blog – Idiot Savant

Idiot Savant is one of the OGs of NZ blogging. They are a must read weekly blogger with some of the best criticisms of government policy with a deep focus on policy and the counter productive outcomes of that policy. Fearless with the strongest values in NZ Blogging, the NZ Blogosphere would be a lesser place without No Right Turn.

10: RNZ Politics 

You cannot deny that the RNZ Politics team have been producing some of the best journalism this year. They have become the benchmark and the record of choice for NZ journalism. Sure there are constant screw ups (Mick Hall should never have been sacked), but that’s management issues from people who are never held accountable, but the journalism they have been producing this year has been mana enhancing for the profession.

11: Guyon 30 Podcast 

I’m not a personal fan of Espiner, but you can’t question the journalism he provides. His relatively new Podcast does hold the powerful to account and it’s probably the sharpest political interview in NZ. You can’t ignore his intelligence or how well researched he is.

12: Chris Lynch Christchurch’s Newsroom – blog

No one is going to pretend Chris Lynch is left-wing, but this isn’t a list of left-wing media to follow, this is a list of good journalism regardless of political persuasion. Lynch has a deep entry to Christchurch and is the first person to turn to when an issue hits NZ’s second largest city.

13: Te Ao with Moana – Māori TV

It’s simply the best current affairs show on NZ Television. Week after week they produce the most insightful and interesting content and I honestly believe that if this show was prime time TVNZ, our country would actually be a smarter place to love.  This amazing piece on Willie’s Oxford Speech is the best thing you will see on TV this year…

14: The Bradbury Group podcast

Our first episode was name checked in Parliament! Who else has the Speaker of the House and a Knight of the Realm appearing as guests?

15: The Kaka with Bernard Hickey Substack

He is simply the best economist in NZ. If there are only 3 NZ news organisations you can fund, he is one of them. He brings new facts and critiques to government policy that is actually the best in the game. You have to follow him daily or you have no place thinking you know anything. If there is a debate on economics and Bernard Hickey isn’t here, it isn’t worth engaging with.

16: Newsroom 

Newsroom, without a doubt, now generates the best daily journalism in NZ. Their critique of the economy and politics is probably the best in the country. It is super intelligent and presents coherent well thought out and reasoned counter points to government babble. If there is a news source worth supporting, it is Newsroom.

17: The Knightly Views – Gavin Ellis blog 

Gavin is an old school editor and his arguments are always focused on a better public broadcasting model. His observations on where the media landscape is going are some of the best in NZ. He is a weekly must read to understand what is happening in the media eco-system.

18: Mountain Tui Substack 

Finally a reason to read The Standard. The Left have lacked any true muscular champions and Mountain Tui is finally that voice. Excellent political criticism and insight all from behind an anonymous veil that allows for honesty. Widely rumoured to be Shane Te Pou.

19: SpiderHoof Twitter 

Part of a new class of left-wing commentator who has sprung up on the social media platforms, Spider Hoof is funny, clever and always worth checking out on Twitter.

20: Mata with Mihingarangi Forbes podcast 

One of the best political podcasts in the country, Mihi is one of our political journalist treasures and her team bring the best criticisms. They were the first media outlet to really expose the Atlas Network and its influence on our political system, no one else had the courage to do that.

21: Gerard Otto Facebook 

Parts of the new wave of commentators who use social media platforms to communicate with, he is another incredibly sharp critic of the government and well worth reading.

22: Scott Hamilton Twitter

Very talented historian who has the ability to connect the past with what is happening in the present. One of the few people you genuinely learn something new everytime you read them. Incredible knowledge of NZ’s hidden history.

23: Clint Smith Twitter 

Clint is one of the best political twitter accounts you can follow. Up to the minute critiques on government policy, he is one of the few whose hot takes are 99 percent right. He is an excellent starting position for anyone wanting to keep up with the news cycle.

24: Verity Johnson – Stuff columnist

She articulates liberal Auckland better than anyone else in the game. Her insights into the largest city are always politically relevant!

25: Simon Wilson – Listener columnist

Ever since Mayor Wayne Brown tried to shut down having to do any interviews with Simon, he has become a must read to understand what is happening in Auckland City. He is a talented writer with a real ability to move the dial on Auckland politics. He’s the reason you get a Listener subscription.

26: John Campbell – RNZ

The public broadcaster is free of the commercial and political constraints other broadcasters face, the public broadcaster can speak truth to power and has the obligation to do so!

John Campbell is not writing opinion pieces, he’s writing analysis and thinking deeper than the current shallow mainstream media allows for.

Attacking his journalism and his analysis under the guise of balance is a false narrative designed to strangle his voice off.

If people of insight and oversight can see the looming social carnage this hard-right racist climate-denying government is manufacturing, they have an obligation to speak out.

John speaks out.

27: Andrea Vance – Stuff senior journalist

She’s just so good and a weekly must read. Probably the best political journalist in front at the moment, her critique of ACT this year has been next level.

28: BHN – Youtube

The BHN boys, Pat and Chewie, have created a whole new late night online news audience and are the masters of this new medium. Always interesting, always challenging, they are the future of media in this country.

29: Café Pacific – David Robie

Dr David Robie is one the great Pacific journalists and provides a news source focused on the Pacific and what is happening in our geopolitical neighbourhood. We are fortunate to have him guest blog on TDB regularly and he also publishes Asia Pacific Report.

30: Mick Hall – Consortium journalist

Forced out by RNZ for telling the truth, Mick Hall was pushed into the spotlight after he correctly inserted context to international wire stories. He should never have been forced out, and now writes at the very excellent Consortium News.

Sean Ackland, Brie Elliot, Dr Harpreet Singh, Samual Hudson

All left-wing commentators you should be following this election.

Media to Avoid:

Not all media are created equally. There is some media you just want to avoid.

1: ZB 
If you want to be a rich prick with rich prick attitudes that make you a dickhead, ZB is for you. The ZB Troll Farm are always malicious and frustrated, like a parking warden who hasn’t had an orgasm for a month.

These are literally people you would not piss on if they were on fire. With Alt-Right Culture War Billionaire Jim Grenon taking over NZME, it’s only a matter of time before Cameron Slater gets appointed editor of the Herald.

2: The Platform vs Reality Check Radio Schism
On one side you have a cross burning, redneck banjo twanging witch hunter who believes in science and on the other side you have a cross burning, redneck banjo twanging witch hunter who doesn’t believe in science. The great schism of contrarian media between The Platform and Reality Check Radio is more akin to twins trying to eat each other in the womb. It’s like watching a death cage match between Voldemort and Trump in that you aren’t sure who to cheer for, you just want them to both kill each other.

3: Seven Sharp 
There is a reason this nation is as thick as pig shit, and it’s 7 Sharp. The manner in which TVNZ have bastardised the 7pm current affairs slot into a lightweight infotainment project is why we can’t have nice things.

Oh we all love Hill’s and her latest battle with what some male viewer thinks she would wear, but it’s dross fronted by private school kids who have never gone without. It’s as intellectually anaemic as it is banal. How does this stay on while actual current affairs gets cancelled?

4: The Centrist – Alt Right Culture War Malice 
Nothing screams “bad faith” quite like the new “unauthorised” book about Jacinda by David Cohen…

Media Insider: Unauthorised Jacinda Ardern book – the journalists behind it and the prominent broadcasters who have been interviewed

…I had originally agreed to being interviewed but pulled out after I got a weird vibe from him, I’m bloody glad I did because it turns out that the book is being supported by alt-Right hate blog The Centrist…

Du Plessis-Allan asked Cohen about the Centrist link and whether he was worried that “would possibly lend your book to becoming a bit fringe?”.

…The Centrist, as TDB has pointed out, is the new alt-Right hate blog started by alt-Right culture War Canadian Billionaire Jim Grenon, the same alt-right Billionaire who just took over NZME.

The Centrist was behind the insinuation Benjamin Doyle was a sex fiend, they publish anti-Trans hate, anti-Māori hate, anti-Treaty hate, anti-vaccine hate, and are climate deniers.

That they are behind Cohen’s Jacinda smear book is like finding out your local kindergarten is run by the Nazgul.

5: Bluesky
If you are woke and pay a subscription to The Spinoff, you are on Bluesky, and that is where you should stay! The woke are great for mummy blogger free the nipple vegan cycling protests, not so good at the neoliberal economic hegemonic structure. The woke are great at chasing voters all the way into our enemies arms. If you are on Bluesky – STAY ON BLUESKY

You are what you read
The truth is paywalled, but the lies are free

We need to think of the media not as another commodity, but as “the commons” and a de-commercialised structure demands we see journalism as a common good.

I love how it’s always a great time to buy a house according to the NZ Herald because the Herald’s advertising is so dependent on real estate. There is NEVER a genuine attempt to challenge what a class of Landlords forever screwing renters will actually create in this country, because, according to the NZ Herald, it’s never been a better time to buy a house.

Trust in news has dropped to 33 percent in 2024 from 53 percent in 2020.

From the social contract theory, trust has fallen because people don’t believe the media are upholding their end of that contract.

Part of this is driven by the politicians themselves. Winston’s attack on the media is unhinged madness which works because he is so reliant on low news engaged voters who get their news off Facebook.

This ocean of criticism against the media goes beyond fair criticism to open hostility and abuse.

There is a correlation between distrust and unfair criticism but I also want to see the correlation between loneliness and believing bat shit crazy stuff you’ve read on Facebook.

The social contract of the Fourth Estate has been sold off in favour of a consumer media network.

They examine the way the Public Journalism Fund has been twisted into state propaganda by Winston’s lies.

Our drop in trust has been more extreme than many other countries.

It’s an interesting argument but my sense is that the reason this attack on the media has been so successful is because the mainstream corporate media had been screwing the interests of working people for many years. The first editorial the NZ Herald ever ran was begging white New Zealander’s to go to war against Māori.

Trump’s use of “fake news” was popular because the mainstream media had been selling capitalist values, not Fourth Estate journalism, to Americans for decades.

Social media allowed the legacy media gatekeepers to be overthrown and the resulting anarchy has led to a world of fractured realities.

Winston’s big lie that the entire mainstream media were bought off because of the Public Journalism Fund appeals to the conspiracy electorate New Zealand First need to stay over 5 percent now.

I wrote many bogs critical of the funding notes that NZ on Air put forward that stipulated that if you wanted public funding for Māori media that you couldn’t breach basic tenants of Treaty value because it created the impression of an editorial direction that wasn’t there, but to conflate what were funding notes to mean the entire media had been bribed is Winstonian in its deceitful manipulation.

What Winston chooses to miss is that there was a follow up response by NZ on Air on those funding notes stating that ultimately editorial control was with the content producer.

So yes, there were stupidly woke Wellington guidelines but those notes were superseded by the reminder of editorial independence.

What he also failed to acknowledge is that a large chunk of that Public Journalism money was for positions and training.

By claiming that amounts to the entire media being bribed is not disingenuous or just false, it is malicious.

Winston is channeling Trump with his “Big Lie”.

The “Big Lie” by Winston is that the entire media were bribed.

This has caused enormous damage which he has benefited from.

But again, I think it’s deeper than just Winston AND the righteous cynicism many have towards mainstream media.

Covid was a universal experience, we all sacrificed equally in an unequal world, it has had enormous impacts on us and one of those enormous impacts has been crippling loneliness.

More and more of us are lonely and it was kicked off by being forced to stay home during the pandemic.

That loneliness is desperately corrosive to the spirit and to the person, and the dichotomy of intense loneliness combined with mass 24/7 social media connectivity has made many of us insane with a level of anger and feral hate that is the call signs of a terribly tortured individual.

We have been brainwashed by hate algorithms for the profit margins of vast Tech Gods.

The media you consume ultimately changes the way you think.

Be selective this election.

Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury is a New Zealand media commentator, former radio and TV host, and former executive producer of Alt TV. He edits and publishes The Daily Blog, the largest and leading left-wing political commentary and analysis website. He was given the nickname “Bomber” by a former Craccum editor, reputedly to describe his bombastic personality.

The post Top 30 NZ news media you should follow this election and the Top 5 you should ignore – The Daily Blog appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/02/top-30-nz-news-media-you-should-follow-this-election-and-the-top-5-you-should-ignore-the-daily-blog/

Rick Sahar, a former board member of the New Zealand Holocaust Centre, soldier in the IDF, and son of concentration camp survivors had me on his Alternative Jewish Voices radio show to talk about last week’s decision to include the Holocaust in the New Zealand school curriculum. The op ed that follows grew out of the conversation.

COMMENTARY: By Jeremy Rose and Rick Sahar

Professor of Holocaust studies at the Hebrew University Amos Goldberg, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, a former deputy director of Mossad, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Israel’s leading human rights group B’Tselem, a UN commission of inquiry and UN special rapporteurs have all described Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

One of the panel of experts advising the ICC was Theodor Meron, an Israeli survivor of a Nazi labour camp and leading international jurist.

• READ MORE: Comedian’s Australian visa sabotaged, war crimes suspects cheered through
• Genocide training for NZ teachers by Israel a ludicrous idea — Tracy-Moana Campbell
• Other Gaza genocide reports

And yet the New Zealand Holocaust Centre — an organisation set to play a leading role in developing a new year 10 Holocaust curriculum — remains shtum.

This week the centre was to have hosted a talk by Israel’s former honorary consul to New Zealand, David Zwartz, on “Hitler and the Arab Connection.”

Thankfully the talk was cancelled. It was an offensive choice of topic on many levels.

That there were some Arab leaders who supported the Nazis is uncontroversial; as is the fact that there were many prominent Arab leaders who opposed fascism, some of whom, at great personal risk, saved Jewish families from the Nazis during the occupation of North Africa.

Sadly an outrage
That the Holocaust Centre chose to highlight the former during an ongoing genocide being committed by Israel is an outrage that sadly doesn’t come as a surprise to us.

On its webpage the Holocaust Centre says its work “bridges history with the present day, inspiring New Zealanders to stand against prejudice, discrimination, and apathy”.

The centre can’t be accused of apathy, but by promoting talks like the one mentioned while Israel is committing war crimes against Arabs, it is stoking prejudice and engaging in genocide denial.

The Jewish world is currently divided between those who believe “never again” means never again to anyone and those willing to either turn a blind eye or actively support Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza and pogroms and ethnic cleansing of those in the illegally occupied territories.

The Holocaust Centre is firmly in the latter group and has a track record of supporting Israel no matter what crimes are being committed by it.

The idea that the centre is to play a pivotal role in writing a new Holocaust curriculum and that New Zealand teachers will travel to Israel to learn about genocide is as ironic as it is offensive.

It will also feed into the antisemitic trope that Jews control the narrative.

Horrified by Gaza crimes
Kiwi teenagers aren’t empty vessels waiting to be filled with one-sided stories of good versus evil. Like young people the world over, many of them will be aware of and horrified by Israel’s crimes in Gaza, the occupied territories and Lebanon.

There’s a very real risk that a curriculum that turns a blind eye to an ongoing genocide will be dismissed in its entirety by many of our most politically engaged rangatahi as propaganda and lies.

The Holocaust and its place in the history of genocides is far too important to be used as a geopolitical football.

Israel’s former foreign minister Abba Eban — who quipped “there’s no business like Shoah business” — said: “One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is no distinction at all.”

That’s nonsense of course but it’s been a high effective strategy.

For decades the Holocaust — one of history’s most horrific crimes — and accusations of antisemitism have been weaponised to shut down voices supporting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and basic human rights.

Israel has gone into overdrive with its hasbara — literally explaining but more accurately propaganda — campaign, spending US$1 billion since 2023.

A meaningful genocide curriculum
There are many Jewish thinkers, writers, activists and jurists who would be included in any meaningful genocide curriculum.

First and foremost, Raphael Lemkin, who created the word to describe both the Shoah and the Armenian genocide.

The great polymath and orthodox Jew, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who declined the Israel Prize after calling on young Israelis to refuse to serve in the IDF.

He warned the occupation would lead to fascism and the birth of a “Judeo-Nazi” mindset. A prophetic warning if there ever was one.

And Andrew Feinstein, a former anti-Apartheid activist, ANC MP and son of an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, who has lectured widely on the topic.

He recently tweeted: “Between October 7, 2023, and August 2026 Israel killed: 73,387 Palestinians; 21,700+ children; 11,200+ women; 5,200+ elderly; 35,000+ men; 260+ journalists; injured 174,250+, and thousands still remain under the rubble. Call it by its name: genocide.”

Holocaust denial is a terrible thing; denying an ongoing genocide that can and must be stopped is far worse.

Rick Sahar is a former board member of the Holocaust Centre, served in the IDF, and is the son of concentration camp survivors. Jeremy Rose is a Wellington journalist whose grandparents fled Nazi Austria with his enfant mother in 1939. Both are members of Alternative Jewish Voices. This article is republished from Jeremy’s substack Towards Democracy with permission.

The post Never again for anyone: Why the NZ Holocaust Centre shouldn’t be involved in developing a new curriculum appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/08/27/never-again-for-anyone-why-the-nz-holocaust-centre-shouldnt-be-involved-in-developing-a-new-curriculum/

ANALYSIS: By Peter Greste

One of the oldest tropes in journalism is that it should be balanced; that journalists have a responsibility to present all sides of a given issue with equal weight. This view also holds that appearing to be critical of one side and sympathetic to another amounts to “bias”.

That notion of balance sounds ideal. After all, journalists should be neutral observers who favour nobody, so if anybody feels as though their side is not presented with equal measure, the journalist has somehow failed.

That failure was what Jillian Segal accused the ABC of in her evidence to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion last week. In her evidence, the antisemitism envoy lamented that the ABC’s reporting on Gaza “created an impression of great negativity about Israel”.

• READ MORE: Antisemitism envoy Segal slams ABC, SBS ‘Israel bias’, wants to vet media
• The problem of false balance when reporting on science
• Other Gaza media coverage reports

“It’s the perception of the Jewish community feeling constantly that they are being faced with reporting about the Middle East, about Gaza, and about Israel in a way that paints Israel constantly in a negative light,” she said.

For the country’s supporters, that is understandable. As Segal went on to point out, there has been a “disproportionate” number of stories critical of Israel.

And Liberal MP and prominent member of the Jewish community Julian Leeser told ABC Radio National:

I think the public broadcasters actually have to be prepared to address systemic bias against Israel in their reporting, and I think they need to subject themselves to greater transparency mechanisms as outlined by the envoy.

But the term “balance” implies finding equivalence between the two competing positions. Sometimes journalists cover stories where achieving balance amounts to a serious distortion of what is actually taking place.

Jillian Segal wants ‘independent group’ to examine ABC’s Israel coverage  Video: Guardian Australia

The pitfalls of both-sideism
A standard, if lazy, tactic for avoiding accusations of bias is to give equal space to opponents in an issue, presenting them as equally valid.

If you give five minutes to a vaccine researcher, you must give the same time to a sceptic. It is something journalists sometimes dub “both-sideism”.

The media grappled with that challenge in covering climate change. In the early heated stages of the debate, news organisations would often place a climate sceptic next to a climate scientist in the name of “balance”.

By 2018, the BBC’s news director Fran Unsworth had had enough. She circulated a briefing note that acknowledged, “Climate change has been a difficult subject for the BBC, and we get coverage of it wrong too often”.

The briefing went on to say, “Manmade climate change exists: if the science proves it we should report it.” And in a section on balance, the note said:

to achieve impartiality, you do not need to include outright deniers of climate change in BBC coverage, in the same way you would not have someone denying that Manchester United won 2-0 last Saturday. The referee has spoken.“

As journalism academic Jonathan Foster of Sheffield University used to tell his students, “If someone tells you it’s raining and another tells you it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. It’s your job to look out the f—ing window and find out which is true.”

Who has the power?
The conflicts between Israel and its neighbours (in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran) are not football matches, and journalists are not referees.

But any journalist thinking about how to fairly cover the crises is likely to spend far more time looking at the human cost of Israeli bombs and tanks, than the impact on Israeli civilians.

That is simply because the greater impact of the conflict is felt outside Israel’s borders.

Any reporting that suggests an equivalence of experience between Israelis suffering Hamas rockets, and the Palestinians in Gaza bearing the weight of the Israeli military assault would be plainly disingenuous. Hardliners on both sides are calling for annihilation of the other, but only one side has tanks, fighter jets and control of food, water and medical supplies over the border.

That raises another journalistic cliche: “holding power to account”. It is rooted in the idea that the media’s job is to expose the impact of power on those who have none.

Israel has indisputably been projecting its might well beyond its borders, and correspondents in the region who failed to cover the consequences on ordinary civilians would be rightly criticised.

None of this is to suggest the experience of Israelis or the government’s arguments should be ignored.

But in a world of competing perspectives, the job of journalists is not to make everyone happy. Their job is to accurately and fairly represent the views of everyone involved and on that score, the ABC has been succeeding.

Imperfect, but largely accurate
The national broadcaster has not been perfect of course. The ombudsman found five breaches of editorial standards (out of more than seven thousand complaints).

Its own editorial director Gavin Fang acknowledged they were far too slow to correct a United Nations report that falsely claimed 14,000 children could die of starvation in Gaza within two days.

In her testimony to the Royal Commission, Jillian Segal conceded the government’s broadcast regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, had not “found a great deal of inaccuracy” in the ABC’s reporting.

But she argued she’s trying to achieve “the more complex, nuanced issues of prioritisation, impartiality and objectivity and balance”.

“They could run positive stories about other things Israel is doing,” she said. “The amazing startup nation, things like that. They very rarely do that. There is no attempt at that part of the agenda.”

Perhaps she is right. But positive stories explicitly designed to cancel out the negative start to look like propaganda. And that is something journalists should never accept.

Peter Greste is professor of journalism at Macquarie University and the executive director for the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom. He also serves as an independent journalist on the Australian Press Council. This article was first published by The Conversation and is republished under Creative Commons.

The post It’s the ABC’s job to be accurate and fair, not to chase the dangerous fallacy of ‘balance’ appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/17/its-the-abcs-job-to-be-accurate-and-fair-not-to-chase-the-dangerous-fallacy-of-balance-2/

Mānawatia a Matariki!

Flashback 41 years on: One year ago marking the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, Te Aniwaniwa Paterson wrote this article. Further reading: David Robie’s book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior (Little Island Press). The late investigative journalist John Pilger wrote: “Eyes of Fire is a beautiful book and an anger-making book, a testament to the finest activism and the need always to ‘bear witness’ and stand up to criminal state power, as you did. I was reminded how pleased I was to use the rescue of the people of Rongelap in The Coming War on China [2016 documentary]. Reading your account moved me all over again.”

SPECIAL REPORT: By Te Aniwaniwa Paterson of Te Ao Māori News

Forty years ago today [10 July 1985], French secret agents bombed the Greenpeace campaign flagship  Rainbow Warrior in an attempt to stop the environmental organisation’s protest against nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll in Mā’ohi Nui.

People gathered on board Rainbow Warrior III to remember photographer Fernando Pereira, who was killed in the attack, and to honour the legacy of those who stood up to nuclear testing in the Pacific.

The Rainbow Warrior’s final voyage before the bombing was Operation Exodus, a humanitarian mission to the Marshall Islands. There, Greenpeace helped relocate more than 320 residents of Rongelap Atoll, who had been exposed to radiation from US nuclear testing.

• READ MORE: David Robie: New Zealand must do more for Pacific and confront nuclear powers
• Review of David Robie’s Eyes of Fire: Nuclear – now climate change: New book on how great powers have plagued the Pacific — Lee Duffield
• Operation Exodus: The Rainbow Warrior’s last Pacific mission — E-Tangata
• Eyes of Fire: 30 Years On — Little Island Press microsite on the Rainbow Warrior
• Other Rainbow Warrior reports

The dawn ceremony was hosted by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and attended by more than 150 people. Speeches were followed by the laying of a wreath and a moment of silence.

Tui Warmenhoven (Ngāti Porou), the chair of the Greenpeace Aotearoa board, said it was a day to remember for the harm caused by the French state against the people of Mā’ohi Nui.

Warmenhoven worked for 20 years in iwi research and is a grassroots, Ruatoria-based community leader who works to integrate mātauranga Māori with science to address climate change in Te Tai Rāwhiti.

She encouraged Māori to stand united with Greenpeace.

“Ko te mea nui ki a mātou, a Greenpeace Aotearoa, ko te whawhai i ngā mahi tūkino a rātou, te kāwanatanga, ngā rangatōpū, me ngā tāngata whai rawa, e patu ana i a mātou, te iwi Māori, ngā iwi o te ao, me ō mātou mātua, a Ranginui rāua ko Papatūānuku,” e ai ki a Warmenhoven.

A defining moment in Aotearoa’s nuclear-free stand
“The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was a defining moment for Greenpeace in its willingness to fight for a nuclear-free world,” said Dr Russel Norman, the executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa.

He noted it was also a defining moment for Aotearoa in the country’s stand against the United States and France, who conducted nuclear tests in the region.

In 1987, the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act officially declared the country a nuclear-free zone.

This move angered the United States, especially due to the ban on nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships entering New Zealand ports.

Because the US followed a policy of neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons, it saw the ban as breaching the ANZUS Treaty and suspended its security commitments to New Zealand.

The Rainbow Warrior’s final voyage before it was bombed was Operation Exodus, during which the crew helped relocate more than 320 residents of Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands, who had been exposed to radiation from US nuclear testing between 1946 and 1958.

The legacy of Operation Exodus
Between 1946 and 1958, the United States carried out 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands.

For decades, it denied the long-term health impacts, even as cancer rates rose and children were born with severe deformities.

Despite repeated pleas from the people of Rongelap to be evacuated, the US government failed to act until Greenpeace stepped in to help.

“The United States government effectively used them as guinea pigs for nuclear testing and radiation to see what would happen to people, which is obviously outrageous and disgusting,” Dr Norman said.

He said it was important not to see Pacific peoples as victims, as they were powerful campaigners who played a leading role in ending nuclear testing in the region.

Between March and April this year, Rainbow Warrior III returned to the Marshall Islands to conduct independent research into the radiation levels across the islands to see whether it’s safe for the people of Rongelap to return.

What advice do you give to this generation about nuclear issues?
“Kia kotahi ai koutou ki te whai i ngā mahi uaua i mua i a mātou ki te whawhai i a rātou mā, e mahi tūkino ana ki tō mātou ao, ki tō mātou kōkā a Papatūānuku, ki tō mātou taiao,” hei tā Tui Warmenhoven.

A reminder to stay united in the difficult world ahead in the fight against threats to the environment.

Warmenhoven also encouraged Māori to support Greenpeace Aotearoa.

Dr Norman believed the younger generations should be inspired to activism by the bravery of those from the Pacific and Greenpeace who campaigned for a nuclear-free world 40 years ago.

“They were willing to take very significant risks, they sailed their boats into the nuclear test zone to stop those nuclear tests, they were arrested by the French, beaten up by French commandos,” he said.

This article was first published on 10 July 2025 to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. Republished from Te Ao Māori News with permission.

The post Rainbow Warrior bombing by French secret agents remembered 41 years on appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/09/rainbow-warrior-bombing-by-french-secret-agents-remembered-41-years-on/

PROFILE: By Mong Palatino

Global Voices has interviewed veteran Aotearoa New Zealand writer and educator David Robie who discussed the state of Pacific media, journalism education, and the role of the press in addressing decolonisation and the climate crisis.
Professor Robie was among the 2024 New Zealand Order of Merit awardees and on the inaugural King’s Birthday Honours list for his “services to journalism and Asia-Pacific media education”.
His career in journalism has spanned six decades. He was the founding editor of the Pacific Journalism Review journal in 1994 and in 1996 he established the Pacific Media Watch, a media rights watchdog group. He was head of the journalism department at the University of Papua New Guinea from 1993–1997 and at the University of the South Pacific from 1998–2002. While teaching at the Auckland University of Technology, he founded the Pacific Media Centre in 2007.

READ MORE: Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face – book review and interview with David Robie by David Blackall

Dr Robie has authored more than 10 books on Asia-Pacific media and politics, including Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific. He received the 1985 Media Peace Prize for his coverage of the Rainbow Warrior bombing and of French and American nuclear testing. In 2015, he was given the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) Asian Communication Award in Dubai.
Global Voices interviewed him in June 2024 about the challenges faced by journalists in the Pacific and his illustrious career. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Mong Palatino (MP): What are the main challenges faced by the media in the region?
David Robie (DR): Corruption, viability, and credibility — the corruption among politicians and influence on journalists, the viability of weak business models and small media enterprises, and weakening credibility. After many years of developing a reasonably independent Pacific media in many countries in the region with courageous and independent journalists in leadership roles, many media groups are becoming susceptible to growing geopolitical rivalry between powerful players in the region, particularly China, which is steadily increasing its influence on the region’s media — especially in Solomon Islands — not just in development aid.
However, the United States, Australia and France are also stepping up their Pacific media and journalism training influences in the region as part of “Indo-Pacific” strategies that are really all about countering Chinese influence.
Indonesia is also becoming an influence in the media in the region, for other reasons. Jakarta is in the middle of a massive “hearts and minds” strategy in the Pacific, mainly through the media and diplomacy, in an attempt to blunt the widespread “people’s” sentiment in support of West Papuan aspirations for self-determination and eventual independence.

David Robie talks to the Fabian Society about the Rainbow Warrior, the bombing and French colonial culture in the Pacific                                           Video: Fabian Society
MP: What should be prioritised in improving journalism education in the region?
DR: The university-based journalism schools, such as at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, are best placed to improve foundation journalism skills and education, and also to encourage life-long learning for journalists. More funding would be more beneficial channelled through the universities for more advanced courses, and not just through short-course industry training. I can say that because I have been through the mill both ways — 50 years as a journalist starting off in the “school of hard knocks” in many countries, including almost 30 years running journalism courses and pioneering several award-winning student journalist publications. However, it is important to retain media independence and not allow funding NGOs to dictate policies.
MP: How can Pacific journalists best fulfill their role in highlighting Pacific stories, especially the impact of the climate crisis?
DR: The best strategy is collaboration with international partners that have resources and expertise in climate crisis, such as the Earth Journalism Network to give a global stage for their issues and concerns. When I was still running the Pacific Media Centre, we had a high profile Pacific climate journalism Bearing Witness project where students made many successful multimedia reports and award-winning commentaries. An example is this one on YouTube: Banabans of Rabi: A Story of Survival
MP: What should the international community focus on when reporting about the Pacific?
DR: It is important for media to monitor the Indo-Pacific rivalries, but to also keep them in perspective — so-called ”security” is nowhere as important to Pacific countries as it is to its Western neighbours and China. It is important for the international community to keep an eye on the ball about what is important to the Pacific, which is “development” and “climate crisis” and why China has an edge in some countries at the moment. Australia and, to a lesser extent, New Zealand have dropped the ball in recent years, and are tying to regain lost ground, but concentrating too much on “security”. Listen to the Pacific voices.

There should be more international reporting about the “hidden stories” of the Pacific such as the unresolved decolonisation issues — Kanaky New Caledonia, “French” Polynesia (Mā’ohi Nui), both from France; and West Papua from Indonesia. West Papua, in particular, is virtually ignored by Western media in spite of the ongoing serious human rights violations. This is unconscionable.
This article was first published by Global Voices on 25 June 2024. It has been republished with permission.

Decolonization, the climate crisis, and improving media education in the Pacific

The post David Robie: Decolonisation, the climate crisis, and improving media education in the Pacific appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/24/david-robie-decolonisation-the-climate-crisis-and-improving-media-education-in-the-pacific/

COMMENTARY: By Saige England

Being passive must come after being passionate and active.
Some know this. Some don’t.
So many people still don’t know this. I keep hoping they will learn, know, care and do something.
I recall a line about journalism many years ago, that good journalists write the truth about social issues so that the right people will read about them and do something to change those social issues, the terrible wrongs against humanity. But instead the news is read by the wrong people who continue to do the wrong things.

READ MORE: Decolonisation, the climate crisis, and improving media education in the Pacific

And I would add to this by so many who retreat into a zen state of “what I don’t see doesn’t affect me” or believing that if they pray to some great consciousness the ripple effect will go out.
I say we need both. We need to write about wrongs, read about wrongs, be active about those wrongs, then retreat and meditate so we can come out again and continue to forge a positive rather than a negative cycle.
David Robie and a small number of other journalists has been doing this for decades.
Decades.
David was a journalist activist on the last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.
Seven months after the Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland harbour in 1985, David Robie’s book Eyes of Fire was published.
The book tells the story of the Rainbow Warrior’s last voyage and the bombing. David won the 1985 New Zealand Media Peace Prize for his coverage.

David Robie’s 2025 talk to Greenpeace activists in Matauri Bay.   Video: Greenpeace
Several editions followed
Several editions of the book have followed, each providing updates to the events. To mark the 40th anniversary of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in July last year, Little Island Press released an updated edition of the book with a prologue by former NZ prime minister Helen Clark.
It is a brilliant moving account of an incident we should never forget. An incident our children should know about. A terrorist action by a country against our country.
Why? Because the French were bombing the Pacific, testing nuclear bombs in the Pacific, ruining the habitat of indigenous people. Not giving a fig about them. I love so much about France it pains me.
When I lived in France I asked French people who supported nuclear testing why they didn’t test nuclear bombs in their own harbours they shrugged. Some followed up by racist stuff about people in those islands.
Of course there were — and there are good French people — against the racism and the war on nature. But many did not know about it, many did not hear about it. Many did not think about it.
Like here, like now.
David’s book Eyes of Fire needs to be taught in schools. Read it, buy it, share it. It is our history. And one we should never forget. Lest it happens again. Because it is happening.
Chain in supply of sniper guns
Right now we have a NOIA building in Ōtautahi Christchurch. NOIA makes armaments. It supplies armies. It is a chain in the supply of sniper guns used by Zionist terrorists to kill little children in Gaza.
Here in Aotearoa. The worst leaders still cause the worst damage and they raise soldiers on nationalist propaganda. And we support those toxic leaders by supplying their armies with arms.
And the war is still being waged against nature. Because nature is not treated as a friend, a mother, a lover, by these people. She is bombed to smithereens.
So stand up and then retreat. Speak up and then retreat. Subscribe to independent media like Asia Pacific Report or Café Pacific, buy Eyes of Fire.
Buy books by Palestinian authors and anti-Zionist authors who speak out about the genocide, how it was a long term plan to get rid of the Indigenous people of the land, how the massacres started decades ago and never stopped.
Some of us have been there and we know. Some of us have not been there and we know, just as we knew apartheid was wrong without witnessing it in action.
The one good thing about social media is we can turn away but we can never say we did not see. Those poor children. Those poor aid workers. Those poor journalists. The truth about this.
Can we do something? Yes!
We can do our bit first then retreat. Earn the retreat.
You are a representative of peace. You are a representative of humanity. You are a representative of nature.
Then when you look at the sun sinking or rising over our placid ocean you know you have done your best for the people on the other side, for the people on this side, and for nature.
Breathing in the peace you are helping to protect is far healthier than breathing in peace that you are doing nothing to protect.
Good independent media include:
Asia Pacific Report
Scoop
Double Down News
Democracy Now!
The Intercept
Caitlin Johnstone
George Hazim
Michael West Media
E-Tangata
Adding in thanks to a helpful contributor:
Owen Jones
Medhi Hassan – Zeteo 
George Galloway
Bassem Youssef
Amy Goodman
Medea Benjamin – Codepink
Eugene Doyle – Solidarity
Saige England is the author of the highly acclaimed debut novel, The Seasonwife. In her previous career as a journalist, Saige won a number of Qantas Media Awards for feature writing and the New Zealand Media Peace Award. She has worked in various conflict zones including Romania, the former Yugoslavia, and the Middle East.
The post Saige England: We need to write about wrongs, read about wrongs – and be active about those wrongs appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/22/saige-england-we-need-to-write-about-wrongs-read-about-wrongs-and-be-active-about-those-wrongs/

SPECIAL REPORT: By Eugene Doyle

Something significant and revelatory just happened in the New Zealand Parliament. I was present at today’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee meeting when things kicked off between the Foreign Minister and humanitarian aid activist Hāhona Ormsby, one of the New Zealanders who survived kidnapping and beatings by Israeli forces in May.
Despite the presence of many well-known pro-Palestinian activists, there was no security in the room when things turned spicy. By the time security raced into the room the minister had lost all composure and repeatedly shouted at Ormsby, “You’re a liar!”
Hāhona may have breached parliamentary rules when he rose to challenge Winston Peters but he felt it was a price worth paying.

READ MORE: ‘Is it NZ First, or Israel First?’ Ormsby challenges NZ foreign minister Peters
A world first: Australia will now investigate Israel over Gaza flotilla brutality
France opens ‘war crimes’ probe into Israel’s treatment of Gaza activists
Other allegations of Israeli brutality against Gaza flotilla activists
The Global Sumud Aotearoa dossier answering Israeli claims
‘He’s Māori!’ Hāhona Ormsby – a New Zealander in the Israeli prison system nightmare

“Is it New Zealand First, Winston? Or is it Israel First? Ormsby shot at the minister, leader of the New Zealand First Party. Turning to see the speaker, Peters appeared to recognise the tattooed face (mata ora) of Ormsby (Ngāti Maniapoto).

The chair tried to shut things down but Ormsby continued, “Are you going to sanction Israel? Are we going to investigate Israel for the people on the fleet that were brutally beaten and tortured?”
When Ormsby identified himself as one of the activists who had been held captive and severely beaten by the Israelis, Peters shouted, “Get out of here! You’re a liar!”
Another activist shot back: “You’re a war criminal.”
A priceless moment
This was a priceless moment because it revealed something enormously important: Peters believes what Itamar Ben-Gvir, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli ambassador are saying and denies the evidence of 430 activists who were kidnapped and taken to Israel in May.
Some were hospitalised immediately on arriving in Türkiye. Winston takes the word of indicted war criminals in preference to medical examiners and lawyers who attended the activists on arrival in Türkiye.
Denying his own lying eyes, he waves away the black eyes, broken noses, deep wounds and other clearly visible injuries. Peters said there was “no evidence of brutality”.

Above all, he is calling fine New Zealanders, several of whom I know and respect, liars. He is calling Samuel Leason, Jay O’Connor, Mousa Taher, Rana Hamida, Julien Blondel, Sean Janssen and Hāhona Ormsby liars on the word of a state that invented a new form of lying — hasbara — a billion-dollar propaganda campaign to frame their genocidal violence as self-defence.
By impugning the good name of some of our finest citizens Winston Peters betrays his duty to defend New Zealand and puts at risk Kiwis who continue their non-violent campaign to open a humanitarian corridor to the suffering people of Palestine.

Meanwhile, even Australia has, on instruction from Winston’s counterpart Penny Wong, launched an investigation into testimonies of rape and torture by Australian members of the Global Sumud Flotilla.
France, Italy, Poland, Türkiye and others have launched investigations over crimes including unlawful interception and piracy, rape and other sexual violence, torture, systematic abuse and illegal detention.
Countries such as Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have issued stinging rebukes. Malaysia is taking Israel to the International Court of Justice over the kidnapping and violence dished out to their citizens.

What happened to the Gaza humanitarian flotillas?       Video: Al Jazeera
Surprise for Global Sumud Delegation
Just the day before, to the surprise of the Global Sumud Delegation, the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs (after having done absolutely nothing since Israeli forces attacked the flotilla in international waters) sent them an email offering to pass on any information about mistreatment to the Israelis.
It triggered suspicion as to motives. Today’s exchange reveals that MFAT and its minister had already made up their minds.
Rana Hamida of Global Sumud Aotearoa said: “Knowing we were coming to Wellington, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent us an email yesterday asking us to provide information on what happened to our activists. The message was that they would put this to the Israelis — in other words: they will leave it to Israel to be both the criminal and the judge. That’s not good enough.”
I tell Hāhona Ormsby’s story in detail in “He’s Māori!” Hāhona Ormsby – a New Zealander in the gruesome Israeli prison system”.

‘Is it NZ First, or Israel First?’ Ormsby challenges NZ foreign minister Peters #asiapacificreport #globalsumudflotilla @gbsumudflotilla #KiaOraGaza @1ElegantFriends #Israeliabuse #israelitorture #HumanRightsMatter https://t.co/ox6qZMhwLh pic.twitter.com/OVVWfYIPeC

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) June 18, 2026

Ormsby’s action today in a parliamentary select committee clearly breached rules. It was, however, acting in the long tradition of those who have the courage to oppose complicity with tyranny and oppression.
As such, he stands in the company of the great Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, my friend and former CIA veteran Ray McGovern, Greta Thunberg and so many others who have raised their citizen voices in the halls of power and calmly accepted the indignity of being frog-marched out of buildings for doing so.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and he hosts solidarity.co.nz

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/youre-a-liar-nz-foreign-minister-peters-insults-gaza-flotilla-torture-survivor-in-parliament/

It isn’t Tehran led by unhinged, genocidal megalomaniacs threatening the security of the region and the world. It is Tel Aviv and Washington, writes Jonathan Cook.

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook
Could it be that Israel’s 30-year narrative about Iran — one that persuaded US President Donald Trump to wage a criminal and disastrous war of aggression — was always a fiction, an invention cooked up in Tel Aviv?
Far from Tehran posing an existential danger to Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed for decades, might Israel’s real fear be that a stronger Iran would undermine its unique leverage over Washington, threatening its status as the region’s sole — and unmonitored — nuclear power?
Might large parts of the globe be facing economic meltdown simply so that Israel can remain the Middle East’s top dog — an unaccountable apartheid state committing genocide against the Palestinian people and ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon?

READ MORE: US bombs Iran’s Qeshm, Goruk; Kuwait reports ‘hostile’ missile attacks
Other Jonathan Cook articles

We got a definitive answer last week, care of The New York Times. It is an uncompromising yes to all of these questions.
The newspaper reported that Netanyahu not only mis-sold Trump on the idea of quick regime change in Iran following a short “shock and awe” bombing campaign. He also identified to the White House who was going to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader.
Extraordinarily, according to The Times, Netanyahu named the man for the job as former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The aim at the start of the air campaign was for Israel to kill Khamenei, then liberate Ahmadinejad from house arrest by striking the guards who were confining him.
Presumably, Ahmadinejad was then supposed to storm the citadel and seize the keys to the palace. But only Khamenei’s assassination went according to plan.
Ahmadinejad, who had reportedly been consulted on the scheme beforehand, is believed to have been injured in the Israeli strike near his home. He got cold feet, possibly suspecting he was being set up for assassination too, and went into hiding. His current whereabouts and medical condition are unknown.
Ultimate bogeyman
Neither US nor Israeli officials would comment to The Times on the alleged regime-change plot, a scheme that the newspaper called “audacious”. That is the understatement of all understatements.
The idea that Ahmadinejad had the popular support, let alone the religious authority and military muscle behind him, to take on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s crack military force responsible for protecting the clerical regime, is for the birds.
That anyone in the White House took this plan seriously, let alone acted on it, is a genuinely staggering notion. But the proposition that Ahmadinejad could retake the reins of power in Iran is possibly the least preposterous part of the scheme.

Fast forward two decades, and Netanyahu reportedly now thinks Ahmadinejad is the best person to lead Iran; the person for whom it was worth killing Khamenei
While younger readers may not recognise Ahmadinejad’s name, everyone else should. He made headlines on an almost weekly basis during much of his eight-year presidency, starting in 2005. Why? Because Israel turned him into the ultimate bogeyman.
After neighbouring Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was toppled and executed in 2006, following an illegal invasion by the US and Britain, Ahmadinejad was hyped as the new implacable threat to regional peace.
Claims about Ahmadinejad first breathed an illusory substance into Israel’s now-unchallenged script that a supposedly fanatical, deranged Iran would leave no stone unturned in seeking to destroy Israel. Ahmadinejad, we were told time and again, was seeking to pursue a nuclear bomb — even after Khamenei had issued a religious edict in 2003 strictly banning its development.
In 2006, Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli prime minister, warned the world that Ahmadinejad was a “psychopath of the worst kind”, adding: “He speaks as Hitler did in his time of the extermination of the entire Jewish nation.”
Olmert was echoing a panic-inducing campaign led by Netanyahu, then Israel’s opposition leader, that Iran needed to be attacked immediately to save Israel and the world.
“It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany,” Netanyahu told a meeting of American Jewish leaders that same year. “And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.”
Of Ahmadinejad, he said: “Believe him and stop him… He is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.”
Under Ahmadinejad, Iran was supposedly hellbent on destroying Israel, turning it into a giant Auschwitz. Also in 2006, Netanyahu told Israeli Army Radio: “Israel would certainly be the first stop on Iran’s tour of destruction.”
Ahmadinejad was so unhinged, Netanyahu said, that he would not stop at Israel’s eradication: “Iran is developing ballistic missiles that would reach America, and now they prepare missiles with an adequate range to cover the whole of Europe.”

Iran has won the war. Trump and Netanyahu now face a reckoning   Video: The David Hearst Podcast
‘Genocidal intent’
A short time later, Israel’s fear-mongering operation reached a crescendo in London.
Netanyahu told members of the British Parliament that Ahmadinejad had to be urgently brought before the International Criminal Court — the war crimes court in The Hague — for his “messianic apocalyptic view of the world”.
Irony of ironies, Netanyahu — who 20 years later is a fugitive from that same court, accused of crimes against humanity for starving the people of Gaza — emphasised Ahmadinejad’s supposed genocidal intent towards Israel.
“In the 1930s, too, no one believed that Hitler was capable of taking action because he didn’t explicitly talk about wiping out the Jewish people,” Netanyahu told British MPs. “In contrast, the Iranian president publicly announces his intentions and no one is trying to stop him.”
Michael Gove, a former Conservative cabinet minister who chaired the meeting, enthusiastically agreed, ignoring a confounding fact: that thousands of Jews have lived peacefully in Iran for centuries.
Gove told the meeting that Ahmadinejad’s “rhetoric is more than worrying, but tantamount to an incitement of genocide”.
Gove’s concern about genocide has not subsequently extended to Gaza. He has repeatedly denounced anyone, including legal experts and Holocaust scholars, who has noted Israel’s genocide there.
In the midst of the mass slaughter in Gaza, Gove even called for the Israeli military to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

It is not Tehran led by unhinged, genocidal megalomaniacs threatening the security of the region and the world. It is Tel Aviv and Washington.

Read my latest here: https://t.co/E24UPFnfIM
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) May 30, 2026

Smoke and mirrors
Two decades ago, the message from Netanyahu was clear: Ahmadinejad was so rabidly antisemitic that he deserved to be compared to Hitler.
Ahmadinejad was so eager to pursue a nuclear weapons programme that he was prepared to defy the country’s supreme religious leader. He was so mentally unstable that he was ready to use those weapons to exterminate Israel, even though such a move would ensure a retaliatory nuclear counter-strike on his own country.
Lest we forget, Ahmadinejad had a reputation for such ruthless crackdowns on political opponents that Amnesty International noted in 2014 that his rule had “sounded the death knell for academic freedom in Iran”.
Yet, fast forward two decades, and Netanyahu reportedly now thinks Ahmadinejad is the best person to lead Iran; the person for whom it was worth killing Khamenei, Iran’s most influential opponent of nuclear weapons.
The New York Times reports that in recent years, there were strong suspicions inside Iran that Israel, Britain and the US were cultivating ties with Ahmadinejad and those around him — suspicions that now seem to be confirmed by Israel’s apparent regime-change plan.
The newspaper further reports that Ahmadinejad had recently travelled to both Guatemala and Hungary, countries with very close ties to Israel.
Does any of this make sense? And yet for Western media, the fact that Netanyahu was championing Ahmadinejad as Iran’s saviour, and that the US administration wholeheartedly bought into this idea, is little more than “surprising”.
In truth, it wrecks Israel’s entire narrative about Iran. It is a telling reminder of the yawning gap between what we have been told about Iran for decades, and what has actually been going on.
Image and reality bear almost no resemblance to each other. This has all been smoke and mirrors.
‘Wiped off the map’
In my 2008 book Israel and the Clash of Civilisations, I pointed out that nothing Israel was telling us about its Middle Eastern rival could be accepted at face value — least of all Israel’s assertion that Ahmadinejad was a Jew-hating “new Hitler”.
Many of the claims promoted 20 years ago by Israel about Ahmadinejad’s genocidal intent stemmed from a mistranslation of a speech in which the Iranian leader had quoted the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
According to Western politicians and media, Ahmadinejad had called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” — widely portrayed as an ambition to launch a nuclear strike on Israel.

The disinformation about Iran should have been all too glaring back in 2006, had any of it been reported properly – just as it should be now
In fact, Ahmadinejad had been repeating Khomeini’s observation that Israel could not survive indefinitely in the form of an illegitimate Jewish supremacist state oppressing another people. He was pointing out that Israel’s days as a racist state were numbered, just as apartheid South Africa’s had been.
The sentiment behind Khomeini’s statement should be much clearer in the present circumstances, when it is Israel, not Iran, that has been busy wiping people off the map — in Gaza and southern Lebanon.
Similarly, Israel and its Western allies made a great deal of noise in 2006 when Ahmadinejad called what was widely misrepresented as a “Holocaust denial” conference in Tehran. In fact, Ahmadinejad had organised what was intended to be a provocative — and to some, offensive — stunt to challenge Western taboos about Israel and underscore the West’s hypocrisy towards Muslims.
Ahmadinejad’s point was twofold: firstly, if Muslims are not entitled to have their beliefs and sensitivities respected by Westerners — as evidenced by the 2005 “Danish cartoon affair” and the “free speech” defence for presenting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad — why should Westerners expect their own sensitivities about Israel and the Holocaust to be exempt from challenge?
He also wanted to dissect the Western belief that someone else, the Palestinian people, should pay a heavy price, including decades of dispossession and abuse, for the West’s crimes against Europe’s Jews.
Horror show
The disinformation about Iran should have been all too glaring back in 2006, had any of it been reported properly — just as it should be now, two decades later, were Western journalists doing their job rather than acting as stenographers for Israel and the White House.
The lies, now as then, serve the same end: to justify crushing Iran — then through sanctions, later through the addition of illegal bombing — so that Israel’s right to trample over the lives of people across the region without consequence can be protected.
Iran, now refusing to release its chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz and the global supply of oil, is demanding that the price include an end to US backing for the Israeli-directed horror show in the Middle East.
Like a spoiled toddler, Trump is thrashing around — while cashing in on the volatility of the oil markets — trying to impose the old rules, when the terms of the confrontation are no longer under his exclusive control.
His latest tantrum — one cooked up in Tel Aviv as much as Washington — is that most Arab states, including Iran’s neighbours in the Gulf, be forced to sign the so-called Abraham Accords with Israel. This is being presented as the framework for a regional “peace deal” involving Iran.
In truth, it is the very opposite.
The accords are designed to cement Israel’s status as the Middle East’s top dog, subordinating Arab states’ interests to Israel’s, and thereby isolating Iran in the region and leaving the Palestinian people and Lebanon to a genocidal Israel’s mercy.
This is another swindle, like Trump’s “Board of Peace”, which dresses up US and Israeli criminal aggression and genocide as “peacemaking”.
What the past 20 years of lies and misdirections have sought to hide is a simple fact: it is not Tehran that is led by unhinged, genocidal megalomaniacs threatening the security of the region and the world. It is Tel Aviv and Washington.
Since the pair launched their criminal war of aggression against Iran three months ago, Tehran has shown restraint, acted with caution, and displayed a willingness to negotiate in good faith. Too bad there are no responsible adults on the other side with whom it can make a deal.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye and republished with permission.
The post Jonathan Cook: Israeli claims about an Iran ‘threat’ were always a lie. Now we have proof appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/01/jonathan-cook-israeli-claims-about-an-iran-threat-were-always-a-lie-now-we-have-proof/

By Antony Phillips in The Vertical

For this edition of Kāpū Tī with Antony, I sit down with journalist and academic, Dr David Robie. A professor of journalism who has worked in Aotearoa and abroad, David is a Central Aucklander and regular visitor who is highly engaged in the City Centre. We sit down for a cuppa — coffee on this occasion and what a delight it was.

Kia ora David, this is a column that brings the interviewer and interviewee together over tea and today we are enjoying coffee together — do you drink tea?
Antony, I have to confess that I rarely drink tea, and when I do I feel vaguely conspiratorial and subversive. Selling out on my notorious coffee habits. Although visiting some tea plantations and a tea culture museum in the mountains near Taipei a couple of years ago, it was a fascinating experience and I became tempted — for a day or two.
How do you take your tea?
When I do take it (for a break from coffee), I go for green teas, or with lemon and ginger – just tea bags, not via the lovely little teapots my wife Del has.
You’re hosting afternoon tea at your home, who are your top five guests?
You mean a wish list? Francesca Albanese, Jonathan Cook, Wendy Bacon, Mehdi Hasan and Abbas Araghchi. But then, I am sure they’re all primarily coffee drinkers.
Now you’re not a City Centre local, we in the City Centre would almost describe you [in Inner City Grey Lynn], jokingly, as “semi-rural” — tell me about your relationship to the City Centre.
Yes, I am a fringe local, about a 20 minute walk if you like (although I use the many buses at our disposal – let’s have free public transport like in Dunkirk and Montpellier in France; Tallinn, Estonia; Luxembourg and a host of other progressive cities). But I am a regular townie and love the way the city has been becoming far more pedestrian friendly with blended streets. Although I must confess I have long wanted Queen Street to be totally pedestrian like Brisbane’s Queen Street.

What are your favourites parts to the City? For instance, if you were hosting visitors, where do you like to take them?
The Viaduct, although I am not very keen on luxury motor yachts — an insult to green footprints; Silo Park is better for a walk and with the night and fish markets. Not sure whether Karangahape Road precinct counts for “City Centre”, but I love the quirky bohemian atmosphere there and I am excited about the soon-to-be-opening City Rail Link and the new neighbourhood station is going to inject sparkling life (providing the modernity doesn’t eclipse the iconic K Road character). Also, the Ellen Melville Centre and Freyberg Place have a really appealing sense of community space.
Queen Street has become more pedestrian friendly with the widening of the eastern footpath and improved seating and planting. Do you feel Queen Street has improved?
Yes, it has improved — but not enough. In fact, it is a bit schizophrenic at the moment — the eastern side is more pedestrian and cyclist friendly, but the western is still captive to a fossil fuel regime. It is confused about what it is, so lacks a genuine “heart of Tāmaki Makaurau” identity. As I mentioned earlier, I would rather see it as totally pedestrian like Brisbane’s Queen Street.
There’s strong history of citizens’ assembly and protest on Queen Street, you’ve had a long history of activism, what’s your feelings about Queen Street as a civic space of national significance?
Love it! One of the best features of Queen Street is its photogenic and audio qualities for protest photography. In many ways, I feel I have been almost living every weekend in the urban heart troika at Aotea Square, Queen Street, Te Komititanga Square — either at rallies or marches. Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau has now hosted 132 [now 138] consecutive weekly rallies for an independent Palestine and against the Gaza genocide.
That is an extraordinary track record for the city — and far exceeds the longevity over any other issue. The creativity, sounds and ingenuity of protesters is impressive. Having lived through the annual May Day and other protests while living in Paris, France, some years ago, I think we can be truly proud of Auckland.
Belated republication from The Vertical City Centre newsletter April/May edition.

The post Kāpū Tī with Antony: Confessions of a fringe City Centre local appeared first on Café Pacific | David Robie.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/05/31/kapu-ti-with-antony-confessions-of-a-fringe-city-centre-local/

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

There was only one moment when I was interviewing him last week that Mousa Taher broke down and cried. It was a surprising, pivotal moment in the interview.
He had just made it back to Aotearoa New Zealand from Israeli detention. Of course, we covered the ordeal — the beatings, the death threats, the scare tactics with dogs, etc — that he and 430 other Global Sumud activists from 60 countries had been subjected to over four days from their interception in international waters to their release and flight to safety in Tűrkiye.
Near the end of the interview I asked him, “What do you think is going through the minds of our leaders — Christopher Luxon [Prime Minister] and Winston Peters [Foreign Minister] — that they choose to align themselves, not with you and the Palestinians, but with the Israeli regime that is committing genocide?”

READ MORE: ‘He’s Māori!’ Hāhona Ormsby – a New Zealander in the Israeli prison system nightmare
Gaza freedom flotilla – reluctance of the West to protest Israel’s thuggery enabled the abuse
Kidnapped Kiwi Gaza flotilla detainee condemns brutal Israeli torture
Other Gaza flotilla human rights reports

For a moment his head went down and then he said: “Honestly, it’s a bit of a touchy subject for me, Eugene.” And then he cried.

“On my way back I almost mourned the death of my country. I’m a proud Kiwi. My grandfather George Whale, fought for New Zealand in the Second World War. From my Pakeha (non-indigenous Māori) side, you learn about the nuclear-free New Zealand movement, you learn about the anti-Apartheid Springbok Tour protests, you learn about the attack and sinking of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior, you learn about New Zealand being the first country to give women the vote.
“You think your country is special, and has a sense of justice, a sense of doing what’s right, and standing up to the giants even if that’s going to cost us.  I just don’t know where that place is anymore.

France bans Ben-Gvir.                                       Video: France24
Mousa’s comment about mourning for our country brought to mind Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton’s 1948 novel about Apartheid South Africa — a country that was fractured along racial and political lines, one where the ruling group had sunk into a moral abyss, resolutely cleaving to an abhorrent vision of the world.  New Zealand, like most Western countries, stood with white South Africa through long decades. We mobilised and eventually changed that.
Endless wars of aggression
New Zealand’s close alignment with both Israel and the US in their endless wars of aggression may sit badly with many New Zealanders but, to date, the pushback has been insufficiently powerful, the mobilisation of citizens too small to effect a fundamental change in the country’s foreign policy settings.
This November’s general election, coming just four days after the US mid-terms, will be instructive and crucial.
Mousa Taher had two gruelling encounters with the Israeli occupation forces in the past month. It speaks to his commitment, his sense of sumud (steadfastness) that he signed up for a second sailing with the flotilla in May.
This was just weeks after being captured by the Israelis in international waters off Crete. That time he got off relatively lightly compared to the severe beating dished out to some of his comrades, including New Zealander Julien Blondel.
The Turkish government laid on flights from Crete for a couple of hundred activists, taking them to Istanbul. New Zealand offered zero support.
“At that point I was kind of done. ‘I’ve done my dash here.  I miss my family, and I think I’m ready to go home’.” But then his friend Bianca, a Kiwi-Australian said she would stay and join the next flotilla attempting to open a humanitarian corridor to Gaza.
“Wow, she’s a soldier, mate.  I just completely changed my mind. I thought: ‘If there’s a chance to go and to finish this mission, I’m in’.”

Hugged the Turkish coast
Mousa, a “backyard” mechanic, spent May working on boats, training and getting everything ready to sail again. Sailing from Marmaris, Tűrkiye, they initially hugged the Turkish coast and were treated to wonderful experiences including a village turning out en masse and preparing a feast for the Sumud activists.
Not long after passing Cyprus, still over 400km from Israeli waters, the flotilla was intercepted and a four-day ordeal began. It was quickly clear the Israelis tactics were hardening, perhaps out of a sense of impunity after governments like New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the UK turned a blind eye and deaf ears to the mistreatment of their own citizens last time.
Israeli Shayetet 13 commandos, weapons trained on the humanitarian activists, took control of Kasr-i Sadabad, the vessel Mousa was sailing on. He and another activist, also of Palestinian descent, were made to strip to their underpants in front of everyone. “It was kind of weird.”
The crew was then transferred to a prison ship which sailed for Ashdod, Israel.  Without cause, they were tasered.
“They knew me by name this time. They blindfolded all of us, zip-tied all of us. They zip tied my legs, not anybody else’s — and my hands very tightly. ‘Don’t you ever fucking come back here, Mousa.  It’s your second time. We’ve seen the messages you sent to your kids.
“‘You’re saying you’re scared for your life — that means you want to kill yourself, you’re going to suicide bomb. You’re a terrorist!’ They’d stand on my hands, stand on my face, kick me in the face.”
“They were complete sadists. They were enjoying it, mate. When he put his boot on my face, I couldn’t quite see because of the blindfold, but I could feel he was posing. They were laughing and having this conversation, like it wasn’t a serious thing that they were doing.”
More tasers, kicks, punches
After they got to Ashdod, it got worse. More tasers, more kicks, punches, stripping and humiliating, menacing with dogs, stress positions, the craft of sadism.  Later he learnt of the sexual violence the Israelis committed on many comrades, male and female.
All this comes in a week that saw Israel added to the United Nations blacklist of states committing sexual violence in conflict zones.  I have written about the deliberate sexual depravity that is now standard in the Israeli gulag, home to thousands of Palestinian hostages abandoned by our governments.  Some Zionist Israelis openly admit that rape is an Israeli weapon of war.

France, Italy, Türkiye, Spain, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Libya, and several other countries have condemned the violence. Malaysia has announced it is preparing to take a case to the International Court of Justice over the kidnapping and torture of Sumud activists.
Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin has sent a letter to the European Council using the treatment of the Sumud flotilla to demand the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
New Zealand’s PM, as usual, is missing in action.
I spent a long time talking with Mousa Taher.  Like all the many Sumud people I have dealt with, he is the soul of decency and humanity.  And courage.  I won’t recount his full story but Mousa Taher has been through the fires of hell — the Israeli prison system.
His torment was relatively brief — four days — compared to the endless agony of thousands of Palestinian souls caught in the torment that Israel inflicts and which New Zealand, Australia and all the other state sponsors of genocide facilitate every day.
Last word to Alan Paton
I’ll give the last word to Alan Paton, author of Cry, the Beloved Country. I address it to all the people who have not stepped forward and joined the struggle for Palestine, who have not stepped forward to reshape our foreign policy and move New Zealand towards peace and independence, who have not raised their voices to reject hostile military alliances and America’s endless wars of aggression.
Without necessarily taking the same risks, we all need to be more like Mousa Taher, Hāhona Ormsby, Julien Blondel, Jay O’Connor, Rana Hamida, Samuel Leason, Sean Janssen, and all the wonderful activists of the Global Sumud organisation like my friend Eloiza Montana.
Alan Paton: “To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one’s responsibility as a human being.”
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and hosts solidarity.co.nz

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/05/31/cry-my-beloved-new-zealand-another-kiwi-abandoned-to-the-idf/

As World Press Freedom Day rapidly approaches and Reporters Without Borders has condemned the Israeli government for its massacre of journalists in Lebanon and Palestine, New Zealand journalist David Robie reflects in a speech at Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square today.

MEDIA FREEDOM: By David Robie

In a week’s time next Sunday, it is World Press Freedom Day on May 3. And already our whānau of journalists who are facing horrendous danger at the hands of the Israeli killing machine have had a shocking few days.

During our 133 weeks of protest we have become painfully accustomed to how one journalist after another has been brutally assassinated, some even alongside their family members.

Far more than 260 journalists — the actual number varies with different media freedom monitoring agencies and different methodologies — have been slaughtered in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 2023.

And some of you may have seen the chilling photograph circulating on some social media channels. It shows 8 Lebanese journalists – four men and four women – smiling and giving peace signs.

Eight Lebanese journalists killed in a month by Israel https://t.co/Fqeji5D3M8

— Pen MacRae (@penmacrae) April 23, 2026

They have all been murdered in the last month, including the tragic killing of Amal Khalil, who died last Wednesday under building rubble in the town of al-Tayri, southern Lebanon, after a double tap attack and then the Israelis fired a stun grenade on the ambulance rescue workers preventing them trying to save her.

But before I talk more about her tragedy and what it means– she was just buried yesterday with thousands at her funeral — I want to show you another photo.

This is Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American journalist working for the Arabic channel Al Jazeera who was a highly popular household name right across the Middle East if not the world.

She was known as the “daughter of Palestine” and she was shot and killed by Israeli occupation forces on 11 May 2022 — just eight days after Media Freedom Day that year.

I have this photo hanging on the wall of my office, thanks to Palestine Youth of Aotearoa, to remind me daily of the brutality and global impunity of the Israelis.

With my experience as a media freedom defender for Pacific Media Watch and Reporters Without Borders since 1996, I have come to a chilling and shameful conclusion:

The fact that there was no accountability for her murder and the US authorities and Biden administration orchestrated a cover-up – even though she was American — signalled to the Netanyahu government that they could target journalists and those bearing witness with absolute impunity.

So this is where we are at now, the Israeli killing machine launched into a bloody massacre of more than 72,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza over the past two plus years, especially targeting journalists, doctors and medical workers, teachers, and aid workers.

And the hypocritical Western countries, including Aotearoa New Zealand, have barely offered a timid bleat.

The Israeli bloodlust has now spread to Lebanon and other countries. The IDF claims that its military is the “most moral in the world”. That claim is an obscenity.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect journalists (CPJ), Israel is by far the world’s biggest killer of media workers.

On its monitoring website it lists the following:

• 260 journalists and media workers killed by Israel, of which:
• 207 were Palestinians killed in Gaza
• 2 Palestinian killed in Gaza during the Iran war
• 2 Palestinians killed in Israeli detention centers
• 31 Yemenis – out of a total of 32 – killed in Yemen
• 6 Lebanese in Lebanon during the war on Gaza
• 9 Lebanese in Lebanon during the Iran war
• 3 Iranians in Iran during the 12-day war

To return to the targeted murder of Amal Khalil, who worked for Al-Akhbar, she was with another journalist, Zeinab Faraj, who was rescued and survived.

The Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in a statement by its Middle East desk chief Jonathan Dagher:

“The Israeli army has very likely committed two more war crimes on 22 April, by targeting journalists who were identified as such, obstructing rescue operations and continuing strikes that killed one journalist and injured another.

“Responsibility for these crimes also lies with Israel’s allies, who continue to allow the Netanyahu government to commit them with impunity.”

RSF published a compelling and disturbing timeline of how the IDF blocked her would-be rescuers for seven hours.

CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa regional director Sara Qudah said:

“We knew [Amal] was alive beneath the rubble – a real, breathing presence. Not in the abstract, not as rumour or hope.

“The 40-year-old female journalist, Amal Khalil, whose voice had just reached her family and colleagues, her survival depended on whether the machinery of rescue would be allowed to operate as it is supposed to under international law, and the law of humanity.

“That is what made what followed so difficult to process — not only emotionally, but structurally.

“Because this was not a case of disappearance in the fog of war.

“It was a case of proximity to survival that collapsed into confirmed death while rescue was still theoretically possible.”

Qudah added that her death could not be understood only as an individual tragedy, “although it was that to everyone who knew her, every journalist in the region”.

“It must also be understood as a stress test of the systems that are supposed to prevent this outcome — early warning, protection, humanitarian access and accountability. On each of these dimensions, the case raises unresolved questions.”

Israel is not only killing journalists, it is systematically torturing them — along with hundreds of other Palestinian hostages. CPJ’s recent report, “We returned from hell”, where the watchdog published the in-depth testimonies of 59 media prisoners released from jail since October 2023 is shocking reading.

I would like to finish with a quote by Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein, who visited New Zealand in 2023 to launch his book The Palestine Laboratory about how the Israeli killing machine exports in brutal technologies — a book that has been translated into many languages and had a profound influence in the world.

“With some notable exceptions, too many in the international media, journalists, editors and owners, have refused to take appropriate action against Israel. No official sanction.

“[They are] still interviewing Israeli spokespeople and politicians as normal. Not treating this as a monumental crime and outrage. Instead, often deferring to unproven Israeli claims that every journalist murdered was a ‘terrorist’.”

This complicity by many journalists — even in our own region — must be widely condemned.

Dr David Robie is convenor of Pacific Media Watch and a media freedom defender with global groups including RSF. He gave this short address at the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) rally in Auckland on Anzac Day.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Updated research has shown up lingering headaches over the impacts of decades-long nuclear testing in the Pacific islands and interventions of outside powers, amid growing threats from climate change, writes Dr Lee Duffield for the Independent Australia.

REVIEW: By Lee Duffield

The journalist, professor and peace activist Dr David Robie, was one of a media party on the ill-fated voyage of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in 1985, before its sinking by French security operatives in Auckland Harbour.

He wrote a definitive book about the lead-up in the region to the fatal sinking of the ship with limpet mines; unmasking of the plot made in Paris; attempts to obtain justice and a long aftermath with demands for empowerment by former “colonial” people to prevent such outrages in their island homelands.

The book is Eyes of Fire, first published in 1986, then successively updated as the story unfolded, with new facts and consequences of the outrage coming to light.

It ran to three revised editions, the latest out now to commemorate 40 years since the attack took place. It therefore marked 40 years since the death of the Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, a Portuguese-born Dutch national, aged 35, father of two children, Marelle and Paul, drowned on board after the second of two blasts that hit the ship.

Eyes of Fire is a highly professional work of journalism, built out of investigation and documentation of facts, then fashioned into an accessible read; illustrated also with easy-to-comprehend maps and diagrams, showing where the ship travelled and where the bombs were planted against its hull, plus photographs from a copious accumulation built up as the Greenpeace movement generated publicity for its actions worldwide.

Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior
One section describes the Rainbow Warrior, appreciatively and affectionately: a former fisheries research vessel, a trawler type, 50-metres in length, with some difficulty converted for sail as well as power, made into a “proud campaign ship”, painted a strong green with a long rainbow-emblem along the sides.

“The wheelhouse was rather lumpy and unattractive but the rest of the ship was appealing. She had a high North Sea prow, graceful sheerline and round-the-corner stern.”

For the record…
The Rainbow Warrior sailed from Hawai’i on the Pacific Voyage — taking on board seven journalists and some leading figures from the Pacific communities, to the Marshall Islands — where it evacuated the inhabitants of a nuclear afflicted island, Rongelap, to an uninhabited island Mejatto on Kwajalein Atoll.

Pacific distances are great. They transported 350 people — with house lumber and belongings — in four trips, 250 km there and back.

The islanders were suffering from contamination by the infamous upwind explosion of the experimental thermonuclear weapon, Castle Bravo, in 1954 — causing thyroid disorders, cancers and constant miscarriages and birthing disorders.

Dissatisfied that health officials sent by the United States administration were more interested in research than care, they decided to leave. The key instigator was the late Marshall Islands legislator Senator Jeton Anjain. He was one of two Pacific Islands leaders with prominent roles in Robie’s narrative.

The other was Oscar Temaru, a nuclear-free town mayor in Tahiti, also elected as the territory’s President on five occasions.

Temaru, now 81, spoke for many when he said:

“The sad truth is that the only ones who tried to help us are the Greenpeace ecologists…”

According to folklore among Greenpeace founders, a native American woman named “Eyes of Fire” told of a legend that where there was dispossession and despoilation of the land and culture, in time mythical warriors — deliverers — would come, who would mend and restore both. So the peaceship offering aid would be a “Rainbow Warrior”.

The author, Robie, in his news despatches for Radio New Zealand and other media (for which he was awarded the 1985 NZ Media Peace Prize, judged the evacuation project a change for Greenpeace towards humanitarian work connected with environmental destruction:

“This isn’t a game or the sort of action publicity stunt that Greenpeace would do so successfully.”

But the next part of the journey was another dramatic action, in Marshall Islands, at the US missile testing base on Kwajalein Atoll. A party from the ship went ashore, got through perimeter wires and hoisted a banner inscribed “Stop Star Wars” onto a space tracking dome, escaping before the arrival of security guards.

The banner was a reference to the American Strategic Defence Initiative, “Star Wars”, testing for which had increased the heavy traffic of missiles of different levels at the Kwajalein range (dubbed by the empire as the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Site).

The scene was then being set for the tragedy as the vessel made its way 5000 km to Auckland through friendly territory, calling in at Kiribati, the country hosting the former Christmas Island base for British nuclear tests (1957-58), and Vanuatu, where the leader of the then five year-old Republic, Father Walter Lini, a champion for a nuclear free Pacific, organised a big public welcome.

The strike
Celebration fitted the mood of the “Warrior” crew a lot of the time, in this account; a group of 11 skilled and idealistic younger people, sharing a mission they considered important to the world, and enjoying it as an adventure. They wanted to protect nature and promote peace, never violent, but charismatic, given to direct action, often enough dangerous.

They had others on board — in the case of David Robie, for an extended time, 11 days, time enough to get to know the characters and introduce them to readers in his book.

A further leg of the voyage was intended, to take them to Moruroa Atoll — where France was continuing with underground nuclear testing — as flagship for a flotilla of protest boats. In the event, the flotilla sailed, led by another Greepeace ship, Greenpeace III. One boat was arrested penetrating the 12-kilometre territorial limit around the atoll, where a series of tests was about to begin.

The planned disruption of activities on Moruroa may have been the death warrant for Rainbow Warrior — a solution to the riddle of what purposes its destruction was supposed to serve.

As the ship made its way towards Auckland, two French infiltrators got to work in that City, penetrating the Greenpeace operation. A group of military divers from a training base in Corsica was en route to New Zealand on a charter boat and two officers of France’s security service, DGSE, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, flew in under cover as a honeymoon couple.

Rainbow Warrior came in on Sunday, 7 July 1985, surrounded by an escort of small boats and was sunk at the dock in shallow water just before midnight on 10 July.

Divers using an inflatable boat set off the two explosions. Prieur and Mafart were spotted picking up one of the divers on a beach by men doing night watch at their boat club, who got the number of their vehicle, enabling the police to apprehend them, and begin a tortured process to try and secure justice.

Aftermath
Updating of the book takes in the negotiations over holding Prieur and Mafart, their eventual transfer to France and subsequent early release; the fate of other conspirators spirited home, promoted, decorated, “looked after” in early retirement; intensive and large scale work by the New Zealand police to find out about the charter boat carrying some of the divers, said to have transferred them onto a submarine, the Rubis; and investigative work by the French press to sheet home responsibility for the attack.

Very soon after Rainbow Warrior was sunk, the Defence Minister, Charles Hernu, was sacked and the head of the DGSE Admiral Pierre Lacoste resigned. The book has a positive impression of the replacement Minister, Paul Quiles and the Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, who admitted the obvious — that it had been done by French agents and was apologetic.

Subsequent negotiations between New Zealand and France, under United Nations auspices were made very difficult; a formal apology was avoided for some time; eventually both New Zealand and Greenpeace received financial packages in compensation and exemplary damages.

After the 1996 death of François Mitterrand, French President at the time, an investigation by Le Monde turned up circumstantial evidence that he knew of the attack in advance and a statement by Lacoste that he had approved it. Fabius evidently had not known.

Mitterrand’s motive was said to have been realpolitik — to support nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union in tandem with the US, which supplied France with highly strategic computer technology.

Reviewer intercession…
Mitterrand, as a highly equivocal and manipulative politician, walked a tightrope, always watching his soft electoral margins — in this case knowing there was 60 percent support for nuclear testing in France.

In office for four years in 1985, it may have been a new government still failing to face down entrenched security identities, undisciplined, considering themselves to be “deep state”, attached to violent solutions, with potential to go rogue.

Most of Robie’s work here is a narrative, a strong true story, but it has space for analysis, and in particular registers the correlation between devastation brought by the nuclear testing, and colonial management and manipulation of islands affairs.

The post-war wave of independence had come to the Pacific, though not to French Polynesia nor New Caledonia. In addition, the United States still held its Micronesian dependencies in trust or, for Sovereign states, via signed compacts of free association, accompanied by substantial aid payments.

France’s position against independence is incentivised by maintaining colonies of more than 200,000 settlers; and in New Caledonia, the nickel deposits, around 15 percent of world resources, as well as the 200 kilometre territorial zone off the long coast of Grande Terre island, opening onto as yet unsurveyed undersea resources.

For the Americans, the priority has been both weapons testing and maintaining a strategic barrier against Russia, then China.

Old problems, future challenges
These considerations help to address the always unanswered question of what the plotters thought they had to gain. The book suggests a clumsy and excessive attempt to stop the ship leading a flotilla to Moruroa Atoll as most likely.

It goes on to identify same-old patterns of resistance in latter-day moves, successful, to get better recognition of the impacts of nuclear contamination and in the moves through international forums — such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, South Pacific Forum, United Nations agencies, the international courts — to get recognition and action on the impacts of climate change.

Pacific communities mindful of the rising seas, and other problems like impacts on sea-life, have struggled to get a hearing, finding, again, that “great powers” outside the region which hold resources that can help hold off the crisis, hold back their response.

Nuclear testing in the atmosphere was made to stop in 1974; tests underground on the atolls continued to 1996, leaving a very brief interregnum before global warming reared its head.

The current edition of Eyes of Fire has a prologue by Helen Clark, New Zealand Prime Minister from 1999-2008, a staunch keeper of the faith in a nuclear-free Pacific. Saying, “storm clouds are gathering”, she warns against renewed militarisation especially with Australia and perhaps other Pacific states acquiring nuclear submarines under the 2021 AUKUS agreement.

It is time for “de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific”, writes Clark in her contribution to the new edition. With its peace policy, New Zealand wanted to be “a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering”.

Clark warns withdrawal of funding from the United Nations, led by the US, is a new threat: “Its humanitarian, development, health, human rights, political and peacekeeping, scientific and cultural arms all face fiscal crises.”

David Robie reports on the 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1985 events by Greenpeace, sending the new purpose-built ship, the new Rainbow Warrior, sometimes known as Rainbow Warrior III, to carry out independent radiation research. He follows up the lives and careers of the crew members and the islanders they worked with, several of whom have passed away.

While the writer’s own message, as in much good journalism, emerges from true handling of the facts, Robie does privilege a quotation from the executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa, Russel Norman, on the crew of Rainbow Warrior, to close the story:

“They faced down a nuclear threat to the habitability of the Pacific. Do we have the courage and wits to face down the biodiversity and climate crises facing humanity, crises that threaten the habitability of planet Earth?”

Dr Lee Duffield reported on Australia’s dispute with France over atmospheric testing for ABC News in Sydney and then from Paris as the ABC European Correspondent. His work entailed monitoring police actions against Kanak activists in New Caledonia, including the killings on Ouvéa Island; confrontations with French Ministers over the test programme; and negotiations between France and New Zealand, in Paris, on Rainbow Warrior, especially the jailing then early release of Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart. He later taught Journalism at QUT in Brisbane and was a contributor to Pacific Journalism Review. Dr Duffield is also one of the co-owners of Independent Australia, and the chair of its editorial board. This review is republished from the Independent Australia with permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

OBITUARY: By Aubrey Belford, Australia and South Pacific regional editor of OCCRP

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is deeply saddened to announce the passing of Dan McGarry, the organisation’s Pacific editor, who died yesterday in Brisbane, Australia, at the age of 62.

A veteran journalist and a pillar of the Pacific media community, Dan was instrumental in establishing and leading OCCRP’s investigative efforts across the region.

Dan joined OCCRP in late 2021 to help spearhead its first dedicated Pacific programme. A Canadian by birth, he spent more than two decades in the Pacific, eventually becoming a citizen of Vanuatu.

His deep love for the region was matched by an unparalleled knowledge of its political and social landscape, making him an essential voice for transparency and accountability.

“Words cannot convey how devastated we are by this loss,” said OCCRP editor-in-chief Miranda Patrucic. “Dan was so much more than an editor who worked with local journalists and helped build our reporting teams, including our media member centres Inside PNG and In-depth Solomons.

“He was beloved because he truly cared about the mission and the people he worked with. He possessed a bottomless well of patience and is irreplaceable as a mentor and leader.”

Dan’s life was defined by a multifaceted set of talents. Beyond his rigorous investigative work, he was a dramatic actor in theatre and television and a self-described “tech geek” who pioneered new ways to integrate technology into journalism.

When I moved back to Australia to start OCCRP’s Pacific programme, Dan’s name was the one everyone mentioned first. He had years of what was often a lonely experience fighting for press freedom and the public good in the region and he was instrumental in every single investigation OCCRP has done in the region.

He was formerly media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post.

He is mourned not just by his family, but also by the second family he built among the Pacific’s journalists.

Dan fell ill several weeks ago while on a work assignment in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. He was evacuated by jet ambulance to Australia for specialised medical care. Despite the best efforts of medical teams, he passed away peacefully with family by his side.

OCCRP remains committed to honoring Dan’s legacy by continuing the vital investigative work he championed and by providing ongoing support to his family.

Read some of Dan’s reporting

Korean Doomsday Sect Gets Rich in Fiji With Government Help

Chinese ‘Miracle Water’ Grifters Infiltrated the UN and Bribed Politicians to Build Pacific Dream City

Mystery Deepens as Second Narco-Sub Washes Ashore in Solomon Islands

Influencer Andrew Tate got Vanuatu Passport Around Time of Arrest on Rape Charges

Solomon Islands PM Has Millions in Property, Raising Questions Around Wealth

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

Westerners are about to start paying a lot more attention to the war in Iran as massive US-Israeli escalations point to a coming energy crisis set to impact on the whole world.

Israel has bombed the world’s largest natural gas field in southwestern Iran, reportedly in coordination with the United States.

Now that a major red line for Tehran has been crossed, retaliatory strikes have already begun pummeling the energy infrastructure of US allies in the region, with Qatar reporting that its primary gas facility has sustained “significant damage” from an attack after Iran issued evacuation warnings for energy facilities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Fuel prices are already surging. If Middle Eastern energy infrastructure starts taking extensive damage on top of the already hugely significant Iranian blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, this war could end up affecting virtually every corner of human civilisation in one way or another.

Westerners are largely apathetic about US military explosives landing on populations on other continents. But once it starts having a direct impact on their personal bank accounts, you can expect them to get a lot more interested in US foreign policy.

This war has been a bit odd for me because as an anti-imperialist peacemonger I’m not yet entirely sure what my role is in my commentary here.

Normally I’d be begging Westerners to care about another horrific act by the US war machine, but as things stand it looks like Westerners are going to be forced to care about this one whether they want to or not.

Normally I’d be writing furiously about how people should not support this war, but the war has exceptionally low public support already.

Normally I’d be trying to help everyone open their eyes and recognise the US warmongers for the psychopaths that they are, but the Trumpanyahu administration is openly waging an unprovoked war of aggression while constantly thumping its chest and boasting about how it’s showing the Iranians “no quarter, no mercy” and saying it can kill whoever it wants with impunity.

Normally I’d be writing about how the mass media are churning out war propaganda to manufacture consent for more US military butchery, but the mass media keep putting out stories about how the US government is lying about a war that should never have happened while Trump administration figures have public tantrums about how the media isn’t churning out war propaganda for them.

President Trump is on social media babbling about how news outlets “should be brought up on Charges for TREASON” for not reporting on an embarrassing story about a US aircraft carrier fire the way he wants, while Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave one of his fire-and-brimstone podium sermons bitching about how “an actual patriotic press” would be framing this war in a more positive light.

Do you see what I mean? What am I supposed to do with this? Where does that leave dissident fringesters like myself? All I can do is clear my throat and sheepishly go “Uh, yeah, I uh . . .  agree with CNN.”

With Ukraine the mass media fell all over themselves to hide the West’s role in provoking the conflict, framing Putin as an evil maniacal Hitler figure who just spontaneously flipped out and invaded a country on Russia’s border because he hates freedom.

With Gaza the Western press gave nonstop narrative cover to Israel’s genocidal atrocities, constantly dragging public attention into an endless conversation about antisemitism and Jewish feelings whenever opposition to the slaughter got too hot.

That’s just not happening with Iran. It’s the first US war I’ve ever seen where a big chunk of the imperial power structure just refuses to get on board. The media’s not playing along, US allies are telling Trump to get stuffed when he asks for military assistance with the Strait of Hormuz, and the public’s not buying the lies.

This is a frightening time to be alive  —  but you can’t say we’re in a period of stasis. Things are moving faster and faster.

They might get a whole lot worse. They might get a whole lot better. They might get a whole lot worse and then get a whole lot better. But it seems a safe bet that the situation won’t remain the same.

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

This article was first published on Café Pacific.