A leading Middle East analyst has pushed back against US President Donald Trump’s dismissal of the conclusion of his own national intelligence chief, who said in April that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, said in an interview that Tulsi Gabbard, the US Director of National Intelligence, who issued the determination on Iran, “does not speak for herself” or her team alone.

“She speaks for all the intelligence agencies combined,” Bishara said.

“This intelligence is supposed to be sound. This is not just one person or one team saying something. It’s the entire intelligence community in the United States. He [Trump] would dismiss them? For what?

“For a lie by a rogue element called Benjamin Netanyahu, who has lied all his life, a con artist who is indicted for his crimes in Gaza? It’s just astounding.”

US senators slam Netanyahu
Two US senators have also condemned Netanyahu while Israel continues to bomb and starve Gaza

Chris Van Hollen and Elizabeth Warren, two Democrats in the US Senate, have urged the world to pay attention to what Israel continues to do in Gaza amid its conflict with Iran.

“Don’t look away,” Van Hollen wrote on X. “Since the start of the Israel-Iran war 7 days ago, over 400 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, many shot while seeking food.

“It’s unconscionable that Netanyahu has not allowed international orgs to resume food delivery.”

Warren said the Israeli prime minister “may think no one will notice what he’s doing in Gaza while he bombs Iran”.

“People face starvation. 55,000 killed. Aid workers and doctors turned away at the border. Shooting at innocent people desperate for food. The world sees you, Benjamin Netanyahu,” she wrote.

Israel’s Prime Minister may think no one will notice what he’s doing in Gaza while he bombs Iran.

People face starvation. 55,000 killed. Aid workers and doctors turned away at the border. Shooting at innocent people desperate for food.

The world sees you, Benjamin Netanyahu.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 20, 2025

‘A trust gap’
The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, appealed for an end to the fighting between Israel and Iran, saying that Teheran had repeatedly stated that it was not seeking nuclear weapons.

“Let’s recognise there is a trust gap,” he said.

“The only way to bridge that gap is through diplomacy to establish a credible, comprehensive and verifiable solution — including full access to inspectors of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], as the United Nations technical agency in this field.

“For all of that to be possible, I appeal for an end to the fighting and the return to serious negotiations.”

Meanwhile, in New Zealand hope for freedom for Palestinians remained high among a group of trauma-struck activists in Cairo.

In spite of extensive planning, the Global March To Gaza (GMTG) delegation of about 4000 international aid volunteers was thwarted in its mission to walk from Cairo to Gaza to lend support.

Asia Pacific Report special correspondents report on the saga.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Hope for freedom for Palestinians remains high among a group of trauma-struck New Zealanders in Cairo.

In spite of extensive planning, the Global March To Gaza (GMTG) delegation of about 4000 international aid volunteers was thwarted in its mission to walk from Cairo to Gaza to lend support.

The land of oranges and pyramids became the land of autocracy last week as peace aid volunteers — young, middle-aged, and elderly — were herded like cattle and cordoned behind fences.

Their passports were initially seized — and later returned. Several New Zealanders were among those dragged and beaten.

While ordinary Egyptians showed “huge support” for the GMTG, the militant Egyptian regime showed its hand in supporting Israel rather than Palestine.

A member of the delegation, Natasha*, said she and other members pursued every available diplomatic channel to ensure that the peaceful, humanitarian, march would reach Gaza.

Moved by love, they were met with hate.

Violently attacked
“When I stepped toward the crowd’s edge and began instinctually with heart break to chant, ‘Free Palestine,’ I was violently attacked by five plainclothes men.

“They screamed, grabbed, shoved, and even spat on me,” she said.

Tackled, she was dragged to an unmarked van. She did not resist, posed no threat, yet the violence escalated instantly.

“I saw hatred in their eyes.”

Another GMTG member, a woman who tried to intervene was also “viciously assaulted”. She witnessed at least three other women and two men being attacked.

The peacemakers escaped from the unmarked van the aggressors were distracted, seemingly confused about their destination, she said.

It is now clear that from the beginning Egyptian State forces and embedded provocateurs were intent on dismantling and discrediting the GMTG.

Authorities as provocateurs
The peace participants witnessed plainclothed authorities act as provacateurs, “shoving people, stepping on them, throwing objects” to create a false image for media.

New Zealand actor Will Alexander said the experience had inflated rather than deflated his passion for human rights, and compassion for Palestinians.

“This is only a fraction of what Palestinians experience everyday. Palestinians pushed into smaller and smaller areas are murdered for wanting to stand on their own land,” he said.

“The reason that ordinary New Zealanders like us need to put our bodies on the line is because our government has failed to uphold its obligations under the Genocide Convention.

“Israel has blatantly breached international law for decades with total impunity.”

While the New Zealanders are all safe, a small number of people in the wider movement had been forcibly ‘disappeared’,” said GMTG New Zealand member Sam Leason.

Their whereabouts was still unknown, he said.

Arab members targeted
“It must be emphasised that it is primarily — and possibly strictly — Arab members of the March who are the targets of the most dramatic and violent excesses committed by the Egyptian authorities, including all forced disappearances.”

This did, however, continuously add to the mounting sense of stress, tension, anxiety and fear, felt by the contingent, he said.

“Especially given the Egyptian authorities’ disregard to their own legal system, which leaves us blindsided and in a thick fog of uncertainty.”

Moving swiftly through the streets of Cairo in the pitch of night, from hotel to hotel and safehouse to safehouse, was a “surreal and dystopian” experience for the New Zealanders and other GMTG members.

The group says that the genocide cannot be sustained when people from around the world push against the Israeli regime and support the people on the ground with food and healthcare.

“For 20 months our hearts have raced and our eyes have filled in unison with the elderly, men, women, and children, and the babies in Palestine,” said Billie*, a participant who preferred, for safety reasons, not to reveal their surname.

“If we do not react to the carnage, suffering and complete injustice and recognise our shared need for sane governance and a liveable planet what is the point?”

Experienced despair
Aqua*, another New Zealand GMTG member, had experienced despair seeing the suffering of Palestinians, but she said it was important to nurture hope, as that was the only way to stop the genocide.

“We cling to every glimmer of hope that presents itself. Like an oasis in a desert devoid of human emotion we chase any potential igniter of the flame of change.”

Ava Mulla, said from Cairo, that the group was inspired by the courage of the Palestinians.

“They’ve been fighting for freedom and justice for decades against the world’s strongest powers. They are courageous and steadfast.”

Mulla referred to the “We Were Seeds” saying inspired by Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos.

“We are millions of seeds. Every act of injustice fuels our growth,” she said.

Helplessness an illusion
The GMTG members agreed that “impotence and helplessness was an illusion” that led to inaction but such inaction allowed “unspeakable atrocities” to take place.

“This is the holocaust of our age,” said Sam Leason.

“We need the world to leave the rhetorical and symbolic field of discourse and move promptly towards the camp of concrete action to protect the people of Palestine from a clear campaign of extermination.”

Saige England is an Aotearoa New Zealand journalist, author, and poet, member of the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

*Several protesters quoted in this article requested that their family names not be reported for security reasons. Ava Mulla was born in Germany and lives in Aotearoa with her partner, actor Will Alexander. She studied industrial engineering and is passionate about innovative housing solutions for developing countries. She is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Labour MP for Te Atatu Phil Twyford criticised the New Zealand government today for failing to take stronger action against Israel over its genocide and starvation strategy in Gaza, saying that NZ should implement comprehensive sanctions and recognise Palestine.

Speaking at a rally in Henderson organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa in West Auckland suburbs for the first time in the 88th week of protest, Twyford said: “The Israeli government is operating in an apartheid state.

“They subject the Palestinian people under their military.

“People who are under international law they are obliged to protect,” he told about 500 protesters.

“They are subjecting them to the most ruthless, most brutal system of apartheid.”

It was a story of “ethnic cleansing, dispossesion, terror routinely visited upon Palestinian people on a daily basis in their land”, said Twyford, who is Labour Party spokesperson on immigration, disarmament and foreign affairs.

“And it is being done, not only by the forces of Zionism, but by the Western world complicit, knowing, understanding and actively conniving in that dispossession and repression.”

Widely condemned move
Twyford referred to the government’s move this week alongside four other countries to impose sanctions on two far-right ministers in the the Israeli cabinet, illegal settlers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, which has been widely condemned as too little and too late.

Leading British journalist Jonathan Cook this week criticised Britain, Australia, Canada and Norway along with New Zealand, saying they may have been “seeking strength in numbers” to withstand retaliation from Israel and the United States.

“But in truth, they have selected the most limited and symbolic of all the possible sanctions they could have imposed on the Israeli government.”

Israel was also condemned by speakers at the rally for its “unprovoked attack” on Iran and its strategy of forced starvation on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the repression in occupied West Bank.

The death toll in Gaza was almost 62,000 Palestinians — more than 17,000 of them children — and Israel had also killed at least 78 people in the first waves of attacks on Iran.

Meanwhile, in a statement today, the PSNA said it was appalled at the deportation of a Palestinian New Zealander from Egypt.

PSNA said it had conveyed to the Egyptian government its “shock and anger” at the deportation of Rana Hamida who had travelled to Egypt to take part in the Global March to Gaza.

Egyptian deportations over ‘global march’
Egyptian authorities have deported dozens of people, including Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, Moroccan, Greek and US citizens.

The Global March to Gaza is due to start this weekend in Egypt with thousands of people from throughout the world taking part.

PSNA co-chair John Minto said the march was to “express humanity’s outrage” at the ongoing Gaza-wide bombing and starving of the Palestinian population by Israel.

“Egypt’s action in deporting activists can only be seen as assisting Israel’s attacks against the Palestinian population,” he said.

“Unfortunately, Egypt has a long history of collaboration with the US and Israel to stifle the Palestine liberation struggle. This is in sharp contrast to the Egyptian people who are as appalled and angry as the rest of humanity at Israel’s horrendous war crimes.”

Minto said the following message from Rana as she returned to New Zealand — she was due at Auckland International Airport this afternoon:

‘The more we will roar’
“The Egyptian authorities, along with other governments, think that blocking humanity from this act of solidarity will stop because of them blocking people from being there and doing the job that they continue failing to do.

“They are so mistaken — the more complicit and enabling they get in their inaction and in this case their active participation, the more we will rise, and roar.

“We are escalating as you awaken the dragons within us.

“We will sing louder and we will walk longer — with our hiking shoes in the Sinai desert, or barefoot towards your embassies.

“We will disrupt your meetings, we will crowd your phone with calls and emails, and we will be the light that blinds your robotic heart and melts it alongside the lies you stand for.

“This is not about us, it is about HUMANITY within us that is dying and being oppressed in various forms, it is about the humans enduring hell in Gaza, West Bank and Falastine as a whole.

“Muslims, Jews and Christians together.

“It is about NEVER AGAIN.

“Boycott, divest — we will not stop we will not rest.”

Expel Israeli ambassador call
In an earlier statement in the wake of Israel’s attack on Iran, PSNA called on the government to immediately expel the Israeli ambassador from New Zealand.

Minto said Israel’s strikes on Iran were “unprovoked, unilateral and a massive threat to humanity everywhere”.

“This is such a dangerous action, that diplomatic weasel words about Israel are not acceptable. Israel is an out-of-control rogue state playing with the future of humanity. We must send it the strongest possible message.”

“Israel’s using its often repeated lies and misinformation to attempt to justify it’s unconscionable violence and aggression.”

Minto pointed to Iran’s right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.

“Even US intelligence officials have made is clear very recently that Iran is NOT on the way to produce a nuclear weapon.”

“And neither is Iran committed to the ‘annihilation’ of Israel.

‘Liberation for Palestine’
“Iran does not support Israel as a racist, apartheid state and wants to see liberation for Palestine.

“In this, Iran has, along with the overwhelming majority of countries in the world, called for an end to Israel’s military occupation of Palestine, the end of its apartheid policies directed against Palestinians and the return of Palestinian refugees.”

New Zealand had the same policies, Minto said.

However, he condemned NZ’s “appeasement of this apartheid state, as our government and other Western countries have done over 20 months”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz