Celebrated Italian war reporter Francesca Mannocchi has condemned the double standard over Israel’s war mongering.

“What Israel is doing in southern Lebanon is, quite simply, no different from what Russian troops have been doing in Ukraine,” she said in an interview.

“It’s the same thing…

“Since 2022, have we ever read a headline saying, ‘Putin is building a security buffer zone in Mariupol’? No.

“We’ve always called it what it is: a military occupation.

“Yet when Israeli troops do the exact same thing in southern Lebanon, we call it a ‘security buffer zone’.

That framing clearly shaped perception, Mannochi said.

‘Same dynamics, same methods’
“We are talking about the same dynamics, the same methods, the same displacement of civilians, the same destruction. And yet, on one side it is widely seen as a war crime; on the other, as a legitimate security operation.”

Mannochi asked why the difference?

“Because in recent years there has been a gradual erosion in how international law is perceived and applied. And it has its convenient enemies.

“Putin is an easy one: no one would seriously argue that the Russian Federation is a democracy.

Israel, on the other hand, continues to be described, and accepted, as a ‘democracy’, even when that label is increasingly contested.

“Why? Because this implicates us. While we no longer feel allied, morally or politically, with Russia, many in the West still see themselves as morally and militarily aligned with Israel.”

Italian war reporter Francesca Mannocchi:

“What Israel is doing in southern Lebanon is, quite simply, no different from what Russian troops have been doing in Ukraine. It’s the same thing…

Since 2022, have we ever read a headline saying “Putin is building a security buffer… pic.twitter.com/yRM0p7BBDp

— Paolo Mossetti (@paolomossetti) May 18, 2026

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

On Saturday, Trump took revenge on Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy for Cassidy’s vote five years ago to convict Trump, in his second impeachment, for instigating an attack on the US Capitol.

Cassidy thereby became the first GOP senator defeated by a Trump-endorsed candidate in a Republican primary. (Other Republican senators who have stood up to Trump — such as North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Utah’s Mitt Romney — saw the writing on the wall and didn’t seek reelection.)

Trump’s purge of Cassidy comes in the wake of Trump’s purges of House Republicans who stood up to him, such as Wyoming’s Liz Cheney.

Trump’s next Republican target in the House is Kentucky representative Thomas Massie, who had the guts to oppose US military involvement in Iran, demand release of the Epstein files, and criticise Trump’s spending bills for adding to the national debt. Massie appears likely to be defeated by a Trump-backed opponent in Tuesday’s Kentucky primary.

Trump is marshaling the full force of his MAGA machine — spending more than $30 million on a House Republican primary — to purge another of his political enemies from the Republican House. Even Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth is flying to Kentucky to campaign for Massie’s challenger.

It’s all seen as an investment in intimidating and disciplining Republican office-holders who might otherwise think of straying.

Trump has also purged state legislators who have refused to do his bidding, such as the seven Indiana Republicans who refused to redistrict the state as Trump demanded they do, and who Trump insured were defeated in their recent primaries.

The message is clear to every current or aspiring Republican politician: Be a toady to Trump, or you’re out.

In his concession speech Friday night, Cassidy stated the obvious reference to Trump:

“Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution.

“And if someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person is not qualified to be a leader.”

Nicely put but sadly irrelevant because Trump — who’s clearly serving himself rather than the American public — now possesses all levers of power in the official Republican Party.

As Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said yesterday on Meet the Press, “There’s no room in this party to destroy [Trump’s] agenda.”

Former generations of Republican politicians had principles, beliefs, ideals. They thought the federal government too large. Or believed it spent too much money. Or was too lenient on criminals. Or was too eager to support the civil rights of Black people. Or any number of issues with which Democrats disagreed.

Today’s Republican Party no longer has any purpose other than achieving whatever Trump wants, which is mainly to make Trump richer and more powerful. The GOP is now Trump’s; it is no longer America’s.

Today’s Republican voters, by contrast, are showing increasing frustration with Trump. Those who think of themselves as traditional Republicans don’t like Trump’s expansive use of federal power. Those who are fiscally conservative, like Thomas Massie, are upset by Trump’s wanton spending, tax cuts, and soaring debt.

“America-first” Republican voters are concerned about Trump’s intrusions into Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and elsewhere. And they want the rest of the Epstein files released.

Yet for elected Republicans, survival now depends on personal loyalty to Trump.

All of which raises a fundamental question: Has the official Republican Party — now nearly purged of anyone willing to reflect the concerns of Republican voters rather than Trump’s will — become complicit in Trump’s criminality? Is it aiding and abetting Trump’s lawlessness?

A case can be made that the official Republican Party is indeed complicit.

For Trump, the first and most basic sign of loyalty to him — and therefore survival as a politician in Trump’s Republican Party — is a willingness to publicly proclaim as truth what we know to be two big lies: that Trump won the 2020 election, and that he did not seek to overturn its results by illegal means. As a result, almost all congressional Republicans are now election deniers.

Trump has also made it clear that loyalty to him bars any criticism of his unlawful immigration dragnet, which has so far resulted in the murders of three US citizens by ICE agents and the detention and deportation, without a hearing, of people suspected of being in the US illegally.

To Trump, loyalty requires full support of his foreign policy — including the abduction of a foreign leader, an undeclared war with Iran, and the killing on the high seas of people only suspected of smuggling drugs, in violation of international law.

Loyalty also demands unquestioned support for other of his lawless acts — using the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents, building a mammoth White House ballroom, issuing no-bid contracts to his friends, promoting his family’s businesses and implementing policies favorable to them, accepting gifts from foreign powers, and defying court orders.

Is it fair to conclude from all of this that today’s official Republican Party — the people who are in office because Trump has put them there, or who maintain their office because they back whatever Trump wants — has in effect become a criminal organisation, analogous to the mafia or a drug cartel, whose members are blindly loyal to their criminal bosses?

Robert Reich is a US professor, former Secretary of Labor, co-founder of Inequality Media and writes at robertreich.substack.com

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Türkiye has condemned Israel’s intervention against the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters, describing it as “a new act of piracy”, reports TRT World News.

In a statement, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Israeli forces had yesterday intervened against the flotilla, which was carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Three New Zealanders were reported to be facing illegal interception — including Hāhona Ormsby, Mousa Taher, and Julien Blondel — according to Sumud Flotilla statement.

The Turkish ministry said: “We condemn the intervention carried out by Israeli forces in international waters against the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was formed to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and which constitutes a new act of piracy.”

The ministry noted that citizens from nearly 40 countries were on board the flotilla of more than 50 vessels and said Israel’s “attacks and intimidation policies” would not prevent international solidarity with the Palestinian people.

It called on Israel to immediately halt the intervention and unconditionally release the detained participants.

The ministry also said Turkish authorities were taking necessary steps to ensure the safe return of Turkish citizens aboard the flotilla and were closely monitoring developments in coordination with other countries.

Israeli military attack
The Israeli army attacked the Gaza-bound Global Sumud humanitarian flotilla in international waters on Monday. Live broadcasts from the flotilla showed Israeli naval forces intercepting the vessels one by one.

Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported that activists detained aboard the flotilla were being transferred to a navy ship described as a “floating prison” before being taken to the port of Ashdod.

The Global Sumud aid flotilla demanded “safe passage” for its humanitarian mission to Gaza, accusing Israel of carrying out “illegal acts of piracy.”

In a statement, the flotilla said Israeli forces attacked the first of its boats “in broad daylight” in international waters while military vessels intercepted the fleet.

“We demand safe passage for our legal, non-violent humanitarian mission,” the statement said.

A Sumud Flotilla Aotearoa statement in Auckland last night said three of the boats being illegally intercepted carried New Zealanders on board. They were reported to be:

Hāhona Ormsby aboard the Diabolo
Mousa Taher aboard the Kasri Sadabat
Julien Blondel aboard the Abodes

“This is an illegal interception of a peaceful humanitarian flotilla sailing under international law.” said Phoebe McLean of the Aotearoa Delegation.

“We must speak out. We must protect our people. We must protect Palestine.”

‘Propaganda campaign’
In a background statement, the Aotearoa Delegation statement said this latest military interception followed a “coordinated week-long propaganda campaign” broadcast by state-controlled Israeli regime media outlets, and amplified by their own “self-proclaimed propaganda yacht filled with influencers spreading the israeli regime’s lies”.

“This established playbook seeks to manufacture consent to carry out war crimes and crimes against humanity against an unarmed, non-violent civil society mission composed of doctors, journalists, and humanitarians.”

The Global Sumud Flotilla legal team has formally stated that the participants are entirely unarmed, and any violence executed on these vessels remains the sole legal responsibility of the israeli regime.

Active criminal investigations are moving forward across 20 countries, and individual liability will also be pursued in international courts for all forces “enforcing this genocidal siege”, the statement said.

Also, the naval interception of the flotilla “occurs in tandem with an aggressive containment strategy on land”.

The Global Sumud Land Convoy — comprising more than 30 vehicles, including 7 specialised ambulances and 20 mobile homes — has been halted near Sirte, Libya.

Eastern Libyan authorities, reportedly acting under direct political pressure from Egypt, have positioned military forces to block the overland humanitarian route toward Rafah.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Trita Parsi

The Middle East is once again teetering on the brink as Trump appears poised to reignite war with Iran.

Press reports indicate he will convene military advisers on Tuesday, though my understanding is that both the meeting and the decision are likely to come sooner.

Over the past several hours, Trump has flooded Truth Social with a barrage of incendiary threats. While some of this may be theatrical brinkmanship designed to force Tehran into submission, sources in the Iranian capital tell me they expect the United States to resume hostilities within the next 48 hours.

We should first recognise that restarting the war amounts to an admission that Trump’s previous escalatory gambit– the blockade of the blockade — has failed. That, in turn, was itself an admission that the war had failed. Which was an admission that the threats of war in January had failed.

As I have argued before on my Substack, this relentless search for an escalatory silver bullet capable of bringing Iran to its knees is not unique to Trump; it has become a defining pathology of American Iran policy for decades.

Although negotiators have made meaningful progress on several fronts, talks have thus far failed to produce an agreement, largely because of irreconcilable differences over Tehran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile. And as Washington has come to realise that the blockade is backfiring, a new and dangerous dynamic has emerged: both sides now believe another round of fighting will strengthen their hand in the negotiations that follow.

As I argued in numerous interviews in January, Trump dramatically underestimated Iran’s strength, while hardliners in Tehran believed war would strengthen Iran’s leverage by exposing the illusion of Iranian weakness.

Vindicated assessment
In their view, the outcome of the conflict vindicated that assessment, leaving them increasingly confident — even emboldened — about what a second round of war could yield. I am told the new Supreme Leader belongs to this camp.

Moreover, just as Tehran believes Trump intends to prosecute the next war with far greater ferocity, Iranian planners are preparing a far more expansive and punishing retaliatory campaign, complete with new strategic objectives and targets.

First, Iranian officials increasingly describe the next war as an opportunity to inflict maximum strategic damage on the United Arab Emirates, citing Abu Dhabi’s active role in the previous conflict, its deepening and increasingly overt partnership with Israel, and its role in urging Trump to resume hostilities.

Tehran is likely to target American data centers in the UAE, a move that serves multiple purposes. Iranian officials argue that these American technology firms have already become participants in the conflict through their support for the Pentagon.

At the same time, Tehran sees an opportunity to cripple the UAE’s ambitions to become a global artificial intelligence hub — and, in doing so, potentially undermine Washington’s AI competition with China.

This points to a second defining feature of Iran’s strategy in a future war. Tehran believes Trump and his family hold financial stakes in many of these same technology ventures.

Targeting Trump’s personal business interests is a lever Iran conspicuously avoided pulling during the first conflict but now appears increasingly willing to use.

Logic straightforward
The logic is straightforward: Trump may tolerate damage to American strategic interests, but he is acutely sensitive to threats against his own financial empire. Raise the personal cost to Trump himself, the reasoning goes, and he may prove more willing to adopt a realistic negotiating position.

Third, Tehran is likely to show far less restraint if evidence emerges that other Gulf Cooperation Council states permit the United States or Israel to use their territory or airspace in a renewed conflict. The result would be broader and far more perilous horizontal escalation, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the global economy should critical energy infrastructure come under attack.

Fourth, the Red Sea is now in play. That would dramatically widen the geographic scope of the conflict while placing even greater upward pressure on already volatile oil prices.

Finally, Tehran is increasingly examining the possibility of severing the major submarine fiber-optic cable networks running beneath the Persian Gulf — arteries through which most GCC internet traffic flows, including billions of dollars in financial transactions. Iranian officials increasingly view this as a potential second Strait of Hormuz: a powerful new point of leverage capable of disrupting the global economy at enormous scale.

Renewed war is not inevitable. But when both sides convince themselves that another round of fighting will strengthen their negotiating position, the gravitational pull toward conflict becomes dangerously strong — however irrational the logic may ultimately be.

Trita Parsi is an Iranian-Swedish political analyst and foreign policy scholar specialising in Middle East geopolitics and US-Iran relations. He is the co-founder and executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Israel is now perceived more negatively than any other country in the world, according to new global polling published by Nira Data as part of its 2026 democracy and country perception research.

The five most positively perceived countries were Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Sweden and Italy.

The findings place Israel at the bottom of the Global Country Perceptions 2026 ranking, a survey of 46,667 respondents assessing how 129 countries and three international organisations are viewed around the world.

The ranking was published alongside Nira Data’s 2026 Democracy Perception Index, which surveyed 94,146 respondents across 98 countries on how citizens experience democracy in their own countries.

The result marks another sign of Israel’s deepening international isolation amid its genocide in Gaza, mass displacement of Palestinians, starvation policies and escalating violence in the occupied West Bank, and attacks on Lebanon in breach of a so-called “ceasefire”.

Israel’s global image has collapsed as human rights organisations, UN experts and international courts have warned of grave violations of international law by the occupation state.

The United States has also suffered a dramatic collapse in global standing. The US is now ranked among the five most negatively perceived countries in the world, below both Russia and China in international favourability. Its net perception score fell from +22 per cent in 2024 to -16 per cent in 2026, a 38-point drop in just two years.

Growing anger over Trump
US decline came amid growing anger over President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, including strained relations with NATO allies, aggressive tariffs, threats relating to Greenland, cuts to Ukraine aid and Washington’s role in the US-Israeli conflict with Iran. The survey found that the US is now viewed as a major global threat, behind Russia and Israel.

The wider 2026 Democracy Perception Index describes itself as the world’s largest annual democracy survey.

Unlike expert-based democracy rankings, it asks citizens directly how they experience democracy through questions on elections, freedom of speech, political pluralism, civic education, separation of powers, rule of law, government transparency and peaceful transitions.

The collapse in Israel’s standing comes as global public opinion has shifted sharply against the occupation state over its assault on Gaza.

Since October 2023, Israel has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, destroyed most of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, displaced nearly the entire population and imposed conditions that UN experts and genocide scholars have described as genocidal.

For the US, the findings point to the steep cost of Washington’s continued military, diplomatic and political support for Israel.

While successive US administrations have shielded Israel from accountability at the UN and continued arms transfers despite mounting evidence of war crimes, the survey suggests that global publics increasingly associate American power with impunity, double standards and destabilising wars.

Republished from Middle East Monitor.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

What a blast at the Auckland Writers Festival today, I had tickets for Marika and I to attend Palestinian writer Tareq Baconi’s talk and decided to dress up and wear my Palestine-flag-dress.

Little did I know the stir it would cause — the Aotea Centre security literally chased me through the building and around the auditorium where Tareq would be talking, saying I had to “remove my flag”.

But it was attached to my dress, so it was not “removeable” — unless I took my dress off (which was an option if things got too heated).

So I kept on walking, staying in view of all the people who were witnessing and sticking up for me. Yes, members of the public were challenging those security guards chasing me and questioning them about why I couldn’t keep my flag-dress as it was.

This went on until I managed to disappear into the rows of seats — what a great example of humanity that was. Later, after the talk, when I met gorgeous Tareq for the book signing, he also praised the dress and the action to dodge the security guards (there was only one witness who totally disappointed by their lack of support and sourness).

But the rest of humanity was totally behind this unplanned and unintentional statement.

Kathrine Ross is an activist with the Palestine Soidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). This commentary was first published on her Facebook page.

• Palestinian scholar Tareq Baconi’s moving memoir, Fire In Every Direction, as described in the festival storybook: “At once a love story, a coming-of-age tale and diasporic narrative, it takes us from the Middle East to London, and from 1948 to the present, as Baconi traces generations of his family’s displacement through war, as well as his own political and queer awakening in the face of other forms of exile and expression.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

When the Paris-based global watchdog Reporters Without Borders released their annual World Press Freedom Index dossier online three days before World Press Freedom Day, journalists in the Asia-Pacific region were quick to check out their ranking.

Overall the prognosis wasn’t very flattering. No country in the region was ranked in the top 20 of the 180 countries surveyed, and even New Zealand, which has traditionally done well in the past – including even being in the top 10 a few years ago — had continued its downhill slide.

“New Zealand (22nd) remains the region’s model for press freedom, despite slipping six places,” said the World Press Freedom Index report. “Other Asia-Pacific democracies, such as Taiwan (28th), Timor-Leste (30th) and Australia (33rd), face real challenges to upholding the right to reliable information, yet continue to offer broadly protective environments.

“They stand as exceptions in a region where press freedom is being steadily eroded.”

Fiji scored a remarkable 16-place climb to 24th, just two places behind New Zealand, after the scrapping of the draconian Media Industry Development Act in 2023, but this was certainly no grounds to be complacent.

Responding to the rankings and after a woman journalist in Tonga was threatened at gunpoint at Kele’a Voice FM radio station by a jailed-for-life drug gangster’s hooded henchman in Tonga, Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) president Kalafi Moala (himself Tongan and a doyen of Pacific media) declared:

Tongan armed threat against journalist troubles Pacific media freedom

“Threats against press freedom are unfortunately ongoing in the Pacific. The incident in Tonga demonstrates that the enemies of press freedom can come from anywhere — not always the government or those in power, but anyone averse to truth and transparency.

“Whether it is in Fiji, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, French Polynesia or anywhere else in the Pacific, media freedom must be protected, advocated for and exercised to the fullest.”

Smear. Kill. Repeat: The constant horror for journalists in Gaza     Video: Al Jazeera

Deafening silence on Gaza
But for all the lively debate and responses across the Asia-Pacific to this year’s Press Freedom Index results, there was a deafening silence and lack of collegial concern from New Zealand to Taiwan about the elephant in the global media freedom room: the unprecedented and chilling wholesale assassinations of Palestinian (and now Lebanese) journalists by the Israeli military forces.

Many of them were targeted and murdered for doing their jobs.

And those still surviving have been risking their lives (and those of their families) day and night while truth-telling to the world with extraordinary courage.

“Under Article 79 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (1977), journalists on ‘dangerous professional missions in armed conflict’ must be treated as civilians. It is one of the clearest protections in international law,” write Majdolin Hasan and Wadih Sabbagh of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN).

“Yet in Gaza, their cameras and press vests have become targets.”

Statistics on this Israeli bloodlust are varied, depending on the source and methodology and criteria in compiling the information. According to the latest figures on the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Gaza database, 264 journalists have been killed, 174 wounded and 107 imprisoned. These figures include war-related killings of journalists and media workers in Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Iran and Israel.

“By silencing the press, Israel is silencing those who document and bear witness to what human rights groups and UN experts agree is a genocide. CPJ calls on the international community to hold Israel to account for its unlawful attacks on journalists; ensure international media is given immediate, independent access to Gaza; and open humanitarian corridors for journalists.”

Death toll even higher
Some media counts put the death toll even higher. A United Nations human rights web page, for example, cites UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk saying in a statement to mark World Press Freedom Day that the situation for journalists in Gaza is a “death trap”.

“Israel’s war in Gaza has become a death trap for the media. My office has verified the killing of nearly 300 journalists since October 2023, with many more injured,” Türk said.

He urged States to investigate all violations against media workers and expressed alarm at the lack of accountability for killings of journalists.

“This year alone, at least 14 journalists have been killed. Over the past 20 years, only around one in 10 killings has led to full accountability,” Türk said.

In January 2024, I wrote an article for Declassified Australia that was already an “early warning” indicator of the growing death toll among Palestinian journalists. My earlier media freedom articles had frequently dealt with the Philippines, which used to be among the worst countries for the killing of journalists.

In the article, “Silencing the messenger”, I also warned against the growing censorship in what was already emerging as the greatest moral issue of our times: “Western journalists taking a stand against their media outlets’ biased coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza are being targeted with career threats and even dismissal. But their colleagues in Palestine are suffering a worse fate.”

I called on journalists to make a stand for truth-telling and in solidarity with their colleagues in Gaza.

Shameful NZ silence
Yet while the silence in the Pacific is perhaps not surprising given the conflicted collaboration of several governments, such as Fiji and Papua New Guinea, on the wrong side of history, in New Zealand it is shameful. At least in Australia, there has been a strong pushback by journalists against the bias in the mainstream, and one independent publication, Crikey, has been publishing a “register” of journalists who have been on paid junkets to Israel and are regarded as potentially compromised.

Media editor Daanyal Saeed wrote: “It’s become clear that a number of Australian politicians and journalists have been on organised tours to the Middle East — many of them sponsored by pro-Israel lobby groups and interest organisations.”

A similar grooming of New Zealand journalists has also been carried out by pro-Israel lobby groups’ “sponsorship” in recent years, but no media has published a comprehensive list.

Is this “captive journalists” phenomena one of the factors for the perceived bias of much of the New Zealand media? John Minto, national campaigns coordinator of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), the largest and most visible advocacy and protest group in the country, agrees: “The large number of journalists here, who should know better, who have taken all expenses paid trips to Israel are part of Israel’s building of a propaganda base.

“Another important factor is the long history of false smears of antisemitism against anyone criticising Israel. Editors think twice about reporting anything showing Israel in a bad light.

“Just last week an RNZ journalist talked on radio about an interview she had done with UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, and that the interview would be heard on the Nine to Noon show early the following week. The interview was then advertised to be broadcast on the Monday morning but then never appeared on the programme.

“Pressure from the anti-Palestinian racists in the pro-Israel lobby is the only sensible explanation. Most likely it will simply be buried — along with what’s left of RNZ’s journalistic integrity.”

Limited independent reportage
It needs to be realised too that New Zealand media has a limited independent “international” reportage tradition in contrast to Australia and many other countries. What international coverage with a New Zealand perspective that did exist, largely disappeared after the closure of the country’s only independent news agency, the 131-year-old NZ Press Association cooperative. This shut down in 2011.

Minto blames the narrow range of international news as another factor in why New Zealand media seems so slanted.

“The media industry here takes its overseas content solely from Western news sources such as AP [Associated Press, American], Reuters and the BBC [both British-based] alongside UK and US newspapers such as The New York Times, Washington Post and Daily Telegraph. It is packaged by Israeli sympathisers embedded in senior positions across these outlets and the inevitable result is a stream of pro-Israeli propaganda rather than balanced and accurate journalism.

“The recent analysis by The Intercept underscores this built-in bias in favour of Israel and against Palestinians.”

The Pacific Journalism Review also ran a special edition in July 2024 focused on systemic bias in the New Zealand and some international media. The provocative title theme was “Gaza, genocide and media: Will journalism survive?” and it was aimed at alerting journalists that declining credibility was at stake over this critical moral issue of our times.

Maher Nazzal, a Palestinian New Zealander who is a community advocate and chair of the Palestine Forum of New Zealand, echoes this view.

“Much of the New Zealand media coverage on Palestine has been shaped through Western political narratives and reliance on international wire services that often frame events primarily through an Israeli lens,” he says. “This has contributed to the dehumanisation or invisibility of Palestinian voices, including journalists working under unimaginable conditions in Gaza.”

Courage and professionalism
A good point. The courage and professionalism of Gaza journalists has been widely acknowledged around the globe, including their collectively winning the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 2024, yet NZ journalists seem to be reluctant to recognise this, let alone give statements of solidarity. Why?|

“What Gaza journalists have shown over the past 19 months is extraordinary courage and professionalism,” says Nazzal. “Many continued reporting while displaced, grieving family members, facing starvation, or living under bombardment.

“Some paid with their lives simply for documenting the truth. Their work has become one of the few direct windows into what is happening on the ground.

“Unfortunately, solidarity from many mainstream media institutions in New Zealand has been limited. There appears to be hesitation, fear of controversy, or political sensitivity around speaking openly on Palestine compared with other global conflicts.

“This silence itself becomes part of the problem.”

An independent New Zealand journalist who has been based in the occupied West Bank for two periods during the Israeli war on Gaza — in 2024 for two months and again last year – is also unimpressed with the local reportage.

Video and photojournalist Cole Martin from Ōtautahi Christchurch believes there is a serious lack of understanding in New Zealand media of the context of the structural and institutional violence towards the Palestinians.

“It is a media scene in Aotearoa that repeats very harmful and inaccurate narratives,” Martin says.

“Also, there is this idea to be unbiased and neutral in a conflict, both perspectives must have equal legitimacy.”

Israel regularly condemned
Reporters Without Borders has regularly condemned Israel for refusing to allow journalists from international media into Gaza, except on rare occasions embedded with Israeli military — they saw merely what Tel Aviv wanted them to see.

RSF has joined unsuccessful legal proceedings led by the Foreign Press Association (FPA) at Israel’s Supreme Court to challenge the ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza. It has also file multiple complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) calling for investigations into war crimes against journalists.

Minto believes New Zealand journalism is generally embedded with the “built-in bias of Western media” and with very few exceptions local journalists “are as complicit as journalists overseas”.

“I’m the first to admit it’s not easy for journalists to speak up and confront the bias — it’s easier to look the other way.

“Having said that I can’t understand why they would not report on Gaza journalists receiving awards for heroic reporting in circumstances when they know they are on an Israeli hit list. Journalistic solidarity based on fearless reporting which speaks truth to power is sorely missing.”

In general, says Minto, New Zealand journalists wait until Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or US President Donald Trump make a statement before they report anything on Gaza or Palestine.

“And it’s not just reporting on the genocide in Gaza. Again and again I hear stories from our journalists — particularly in our state broadcaster TVNZ and RNZ — being directed towards reporting stories alleging antisemitism here rather than Islamophobia which is a far greater threat to our social fabric.

“It’s as though we never had a terrorist attack in 2019 which killed 51 Muslim worshippers.”

Media releases ignored
Mainstream news media routinely ignore media releases by Palestinian and solidarity groups.

“They are read by news editors and chief reporters but are otherwise disregarded,” admits Minto. “In fact, pretty much the only time our mainstream media report on PSNA is when we are attacked by the pro-Israel lobby as they did when we opposed Israeli soldiers coming here for rest and recreation from the genocide in Gaza or when we were attacked for ‘selective morality’ by an Iranian supporter of the old despotic Shah of Iran.

“On the other hand, our media releases are avidly read by our supporters and get good pickup on social media.”

While there was a fierce pushback by pro-Israel groups over PSNA’s controversial “Genocide Hotline” in New Zealand media, there was a more sympathetic response by many international media.

In fact, many campaigns in other countries, partly due to the inspiration of the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), are going further and actively seeking prosecutions of dual-citizen Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers on rest and recreation to their countries.

The Brussels-based foundation is dedicated to “breaking the cycle Israeli impunity and achieving justice for all the victims of the Gaza genocide” — more than 72,000 people so far, mostly women and children. It was established to honour the memory of five-year-old Hind Rajab who was murdered along with her family on January 29, 2024, in a brutal act of genocidal violence by the IDF.

Hind survived the initial attack, but was left trapped in a car alongside the bodies of her family. Her cries for help were broadcast to the world before being killed by an Israeli tank crew. An investigation found that the car was hit by 335 bullets. The inhumanity of this act has been captured in the 2025 docudrama film The Voice of Hind Rajab.

Hasbara propaganda
The PSNA and other groups have regularly complained to TVNZ and the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) about the “appalling reporting” and “systemic bias”, but with little success. At a national hui in Rotorua earlier this month, the PSNA discussed plans to step up its campaign to push back against Israeli disinformation in response to the Knesset’s approval last month of a fivefold budget boost to $730 million for Hasbara — Israeli “public policy”, or propaganda.

In spite of the many obstacles, Maher Nazzal says public awareness about the Palestine struggle has grown significantly in Aotearoa as well as globally: “Community movements, independent journalists, academics, and grassroots organisations have helped challenge dominant narratives and push for more balanced coverage and accountability.”

To improve media coverage, Nazzal would like to see a greater inclusion of Palestinian perspectives, stronger journalistic independence, and willingness to apply universal human rights standards consistently, regardless of who the victims are.

Dr David Robie is convenor of the Asia Pacific Media Network’s Pacific Media Watch project, a former media professor and who previously worked as a journalist and editor with several global news agencies, including Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Gemini News Service.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Most of the Western media refuse to join the dots and explain Israel’s decades-long obsession with defanging Tehran.

The war in Iran is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has planned for four decades. He has always wanted Israel to extend from Egypt to the Euphrates and in the process have the United States overthrow seven neighbouring countries, the last and latest being Iran.

That was also America’s plot, hatched by the neo-conservative authors at the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 2000. The list of targeted countries, confirmed by US General Wesley Clark in 2007, was based on a proposal published in Israel in 1982.

Ambitious as they were, these long-held intentions have now culminated in the US-Israel war on Iran, which seems sudden but was carefully planned, a former British Ambassador claims.

US President Donald Trump was not “bounced into it” by Israel: it had been in gestation for months, says Craig Murray, Britain’s ambassador to Uzbekistan between 2002 and 2004.

Well in advance, Trump had weapons ordered for fast delivery from Lockheed Martin, naval ships and troops were moved to the Gulf, and CIA and Mossad agitators reportedly stirred up Iranians in several cities, already exasperated by their theocratic rulers and by US sanctions.

If Murray is right, Trump and Netanyahu must have been planning this in their frequent meetings before and since the “12-day war” against Iran last year. Or for longer: Trump has reminded the world that as far back as 1987 he wanted the US to take over some of Iran’s oil, and to go to war for it.

Everything is a ‘deal’
But Trump’s shambolic war shows that he regards everything as a “deal’” and while aggrandising himself, he fails to understand that Iranians don’t accept transactionalism about their country, whoever its leader is.

He appears not to remember that under the Shah, Iran was on good terms with Israel and the US, until the uprising against the Pahlavis in 1979. He doesn’t mention the CIA’s overthrow in 1953 of Prime Minister Mossadegh, who merely wanted to nationalise Iran’s oil.

Instead of understanding Iran and its people, Trump claims to trust his “gut instinct” about the war, and he regularly gets it wrong.

The state of the president’s mental, cognitive and physical health has been raised again lately by his niece Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist. She observes symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in Trump, and recalls that his father and her grandfather, Fred Trump sr., died with dementia.

Other specialists detect signs of “malignant narcissism”, and note that the President’s repeated threats, exaggerations, and reversals are more likely to be the results of incapacity than of intent.

Still, Trump’s erratic statements keep attention focussed on him, keeping the world guessing and confused, and his narcissistic self on centre stage. For Trump, as for Netanyahu, the personal is paramount. Both of them face coming elections (Trump has to face the mid-terms in November while Netanyahu has a general election before the end of the year); both want to stay alive and out of jail; and the continuing war further enriches them, their families and friends.

Plans for war
Netanyahu’s project derives from the 1982 Yinon Plan, named after its author, an Israeli diplomat, journalist, and former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Published in the Hebrew journal Kivunim (“Directions”) as “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”, it reappeared in a 1996 policy paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”, prepared for Netanyahu by American neoconservative strategists. They also produced their “Project for the New American Century”, advocating a “catastrophic and catalysing event” that would convince Americans of the need for war.

The “Clean Break” document argued that Israel should abandon land-for-peace diplomacy and instead pursue a strategy that would weaken or remove hostile regimes in the region, particularly Iraq and Syria. The goal was not mere military victory but a geopolitical restructuring of the Middle East in Israel’s favour.

In 1997, some of the same people involved with that report established the Project for the New American Century think tank, which produced several major reports, especially “Rebuilding America’s Defences” in the year 2000. It argued for preserving US military preeminence in the Middle East and two other theatres with a “revolution in military affairs” that might be accelerated by a “catastrophic and catalysing event — like a new Pearl Harbor”.

Just a year later on 9/11, such an event occurred, leading Congress quickly to pass the Authorisation for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, and the anti-terrorism PATRIOT Act.

Track the planning process forward to 2001, and a former CIA operator confirms what many conspiracy analysts have suspected for years: that Israel, together with Saudi Arabia, was potentially informed about conspirators in the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11 before they occurred. John Kiriakou, a former CIA bureau chief for Pakistan, points to the involvement of the Saudi royal family in Al-Qaeda’s plan.

As well, Kiriakou says that Mossad was thick on the ground on the US east coast in 2001 and Israel knew what was to happen, but did nothing to stop it.

Furious response over Saudis
Kiriakou points to the furious response to Riyadh by US agencies on learning of the Saudis’ dominant involvement in 9/11. It produced three sudden deaths in a week in July 2022: Princes Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz (in hospital after an operation), Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki (in a car accident), and Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir (of thirst in the desert).

The latter two were both in their mid-twenties, while Ahmed was 43. Seven months later Mushaf Ali Mir, Pakistan’s Air Marshal, died in a plane crash in clear weather over the unruly Northwest Frontier province, along with his wife and closest confidants.

9/11 researchers have found out a lot more about what two US “allies”, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, knew in advance of 9/11 and did in support of al-Qaeda. US lawyer Gerald Posner’s account is based on al-Qaeda operative Ali Zubaydah’s claims about his capture and interrogation, and his admissions about his work with Saudi and Pakistani officials.

From Guantánamo Bay, where he has been held without charge for more than two decades, he told Posner that both Prince Ahmed and Mushaf Ali Mir, Pakistan’s Air Marshal, “knew that an attack was scheduled for American soil on that day”. Like Israelis, they did nothing to stop it.

The Report of the 9/11 Commission, which some said was “set up to fail”, read more as a call to arms against al-Qaeda than a forensic criminal report. The GW Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations prevented the US Congress accessing 28 pages from the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after 9/11.

Eventually released by Biden in June 2016, the pages identified Saudi Arabian diplomats, officials, and members of the ruling family as contributors to preparations for the attacks, but not Israelis.

Yet when US President Bush declared a “war on terror” in response to 9/11, he realised Netanyahu’s aim for the US to attack Israel’s neighbours. And war, says Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, “is always the first option, not the last one in Israel“.

Heavy insider trading was recorded in New York in advance of September 11, including put options on United Airlines, American Airlines, and other related stocks. A majority of those polled by The New York Times in the five years after the attacks on the Twin Towers and Washington thought the government was lying or was hiding something.  Even some staff, investigators, and members of the 9/11 Commission knew that senior military officials and CIA director George Tenet had lied to them, while others’ evidence was suppressed. But their knowledge was excluded from the final report.

Terrorists, neo-colonialists, tyrants and war criminals
This history reveals the need to be sceptical of Washington’s claims about terrorism from 9/11 to today’s war against Iran. “Terror” is repeatedly used as propaganda to manufacture consent for war and to demonise enemies of the West, while what the US and Israel do is “not terrorism”.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was a war crime, said NATO and its friends: yet the US coalition’s long wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, and Syria were not. Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its former territory, was an outrageous land grab: Israel’s annexations of Syria’s Golan and the Palestinians’ West Bank territory were not. Hamas’ breakout from Gaza on 7 October 2023 was terrorism; Israel’s recurrent attacks on Palestinians since 1948 and its ethnic cleansing of Gaza since 2023 were not.

Hamas and Hezbollah’s retaliation and the Houthis’ attacks are terrorism: Israel’s bombing and occupation of Gaza and southern Lebanon are not. Iran’s leaders are murderous tyrants: Israel’s indicted war criminals Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant (both wanted by the International Criminal Court on arrest warrants for crimes against humanity).are not. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s IRGC are designated terrorist organisations: the IDF, CIA, and Mossad are not. The US assaults on Venezuela and Iran, to be followed by Cuba, are claimed to be against terrorism or drugs: in fact they are about who controls oil and makes and unmakes governments.

It does not occur to most Americans and Israelis that their own activities are state terror. Instead, they claim a right to defend US hegemony and all Jews’ right to Eretz Israel and greatness as “God’s chosen people”. Palestinians who resist have no such rights and are called subhuman terrorists, and under a new law, Arab Israelis will be executed for terrorism, while Jewish Israelis are not.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis made similar claims about the superiority of their civilisation to justify the Holocaust. No wonder some now detect a resurgence of fascism in the US, Israel, and elsewhere. Others observe the sudden rise of anti-Semitism since October 2003.

A growing number expect the US war to fail, leaving Israel to do its worst in Iran and Lebanon.

Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis have been added to Al-Qaeda on the list of designated terrorists. The wars that followed culminate in Iran, labelled by Trump a “terrorist regime”.

Candidate Trump took Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s advice to “move fast and break things”. He has done it as president. What ends up broken is now the whole world’s concern.

Dr Alison Broinowski AM is an Australian former diplomat, academic and author. Her books and articles concern Australia’s interactions with the world. She is president of Australians for War Powers Reform. Republished with permission from Declassified Australia.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Palestine Forum of New Zealand has criticised plans for the country taking part in next month’s military exercises with Israel and the United States, saying Wellington must not be seen aligning militarily with a state “facing serious allegations of war crimes and genocide before international legal institutions”.

In a statement today, the Palestine Forum expressed “deep concern” over the reports that the NZ Defence Force (NZDF) would participate in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) military exercises with Israel and the US in Hawai’i between July 21 and 31.

“New Zealand has long claimed to uphold international law, human rights, and an independent foreign policy,” the statement said.

“Participating in joint military exercises alongside Israel fundamentally contradicts those values and risks damaging New Zealand’s international reputation.”

Such exercises should not happen at a time when the world was witnessing the ongoing devastation in Gaza and growing international condemnation of Israel’s actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Palestine Forum said.

“There should be no military cooperation with states engaged in ongoing conflicts and facing credible allegations of violations of international humanitarian law.”

The Palestine Forum called on Christopher Luxon’s coalition government to “immediately review” New Zealand participation in these exercises and “ensure the country does not become complicit directly or indirectly in legitimising violence, occupation, or collective punishment”.

Stand on side of justice, peace
New Zealanders expected their country to stand on the side of justice, peace, and international accountability, not military cooperation with governments accused of grave human rights abuses.

Valerie Morse, a member of Peace Action Wellington, yesterday released a statement about RIMPAC 2026 from the NZDF obtained in response to an Official Information Act (OIA) request last month.

“The NZDF is sending the largest contingent of troops and materiel in a decade to the this year’s RIMPAC including three ships and 328 service personnel,” Morse said.

“This is while Israel continues its genocide in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and the US and Israel wage an illegal war on Iran.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

While appreciating certain points in Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s speech “Securing NZ’s Future in a more Volatile World” on current challenges to international law, enshrined “rules” and “order”, we must take a hard look at the solutions he offers to enhance security.

Security now clearly is shaped in a global context. The world’s geopolitical issues affect us all, not just those near sites of military engagement, as wars on Ukraine and Iran show.

So it’s misleading to consider security as simply a national or even regional issue, though people within range of military missiles and drones suffer the most horrendously.

We would agree, as Luxon claims in closing remarks, that we have values worth defending.

What kind of a world and what network of values do we most want to defend? And how can we do this without compromising those same values?

Does anyone really believe that cultural and political values such as democracy are best defended by doubling military spending as he proposes? Or that 20th century national security perspectives and “bomb them to hell” strategies are fit for purpose today, while nuclear arsenals grow month by month, no longer restrained by arms control agreements?

We don’t exist in a defence structure siloed off from a former ally who flouts any semblance of a “rules-based order”. Australia, now our only officially acknowledged defence partner, is closely linked militarily with the US.

Exercises against ‘enemy’
Last year. NZ’s navy joined US and Israel in regular RIMPAC military exercises, to prepare for war against those labelled “enemy”. Judith Collins justified this on the basis that the US sent the invitations; NZ didn’t create the guest list. (Jack Tame interview, The Nation).

Clearly it’s time to weigh up our bedfellows more judiciously, and what values their actions, rather than their words, show they are defending.

It’s hard to see how one defends values like democracy by preparing for war alongside nations whose “Ministries of War” commit and enable genocide in Gaza, threaten to add Canada and Greenland to the US real estate portfolio, and bomb weaker nations back to the Stone Age, while kidnapping presidents of other nations if US corporate interests could benefit.

Luxon is right in stating that this is a historical inflection point, and the way in which we react, along with other nations, will determine “what kind of world comes next”.

How are our values best defended? With weapons and threats? Or by joining like-minded nations to call out all who undermine the values, rules and institutions that endeavoured since the end of World War Two and the United Nations Charter to enhance genuine human security worldwide?

Only ethically grounded values, policy and strategies, supported by inspired multilateral diplomacy and conflict resolution skills, can promote such values and the multilateral order which supported them.

War is a barbaric, blunt tool from a past age which cannot deal with worsening 21st century existential threats which need global collaboration to solve, if most of humanity is to survive the future.

We owe it to our descendants to defend ethical values appropriately to build the foundations of a world that is fit for them.

Frances Palmer is a peace and conflict studies advocate and commentator. She was a SCF nurse in Vietnam and Khmer refugee camps 1975, 1980. Palmer wrote history resources for schools on “Cambodia, Faces of Violence, Hegemony & Holocaust” and “Aotearoa NZ 1980s-1990s, Participation & Resistance to International War”. This article was first published at Scoop.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Major Garrett (which apparently is a real name belonging to a real guy who works for 60 Minutes) told the CBS audience that “Netanyahu attributes the reputational harm to Israel almost entirely to social media, which he calls the eighth front of the war”.

“This is yours, right?” asked Netanyahu, picking up Garrett’s phone. “You’re not immune either. Because you can penetrate this machine, you can penetrate this little instrument, and you can say about Major Garrett anything you want.

“And I can paint you as a monster. And if I say it often enough, enough people will believe it.”

According to a Pew survey published last month, 60% of U.S. adults viewed Israel unfavorably, up nearly 20 points in four years. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the rise of social media is a major reason for this decline. https://t.co/QP4ESNtjGq pic.twitter.com/miCEwFYLX3

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) May 10, 2026

“We have seen the deterioration of the support for Israel in the United States almost – I would say, it correlates almost 100 percent with the geometric rise of social media,” said Netanyahu, adding, “We have several countries that basically manipulated social media.

“And they do it in a clever way. And that’s something that has hurt us badly.

“Israel is besieged on the media front, on the propaganda front, and we’ve not done well on the propaganda war,” the prime minister lamented.

Netanyahu stresses the need for more propaganda     Video: Caitlin Johnstone

Netanyahu has been repeatedly stressing the need for more aggressive propaganda manipulation as public opinion of Israel plummets worldwide.

Earlier this year he told The Economist that “I’d like to do everything I can to fight the propaganda war waged against us,” complaining that “we’ve been using cavalry against f-35s, because they’ve flooded the social networks with the fake bots and many other things.”

Despite having the entire Western political-media class bending over backwards to protect Israel’s image, Netanyahu consistently frames his country’s struggle for narrative control as a brave little David figure standing up against the colossal Goliath of anti-Zionist social media users.

Last year the Israeli leader claimed that Israel was losing the propaganda war because “there are vast forces arrayed against us,” denouncing “the algorithms of the social network that are driving a lot of everything else”.

Here Netanyahu admits that TikTok and X are weapons of war   Source: Shayan Nikzad

In a meeting with American social media influencers last year, the prime minister spoke of how vital the forced sale of TikTok had been for Israeli information interests, and said that Elon Musk could help facilitate Israeli PR on the X platform as well.

“We have to fight back. How do we fight back? Our influencers,” Netanyahu said. “We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we’re engaged, and the most important ones are on social media.”

Of course, the possibility of Israel improving its public image by simply murdering fewer people and doing fewer evil things is never even considered. It is taken as a given that shoving pro-Israel messaging down everyone’s throat is the only way to sway public opinion in a positive direction.

It is under this framing that Israel has again massively increased its propaganda budget for the year, after having massively increased it from what it was the year before.

The Jerusalem Post reports the following:

“Israel is betting nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars that it can talk its way out of a reputation crisis.

“Lawmakers in Jerusalem approved a 2026 national budget last month that includes roughly $730 million for public diplomacy — the broad category known in Hebrew as hasbara — more than four times the $150 million they allocated the year before. That earlier sum was itself about 20 times what Israel had spent on such efforts before the war in Gaza broke out in 2023.

“The unprecedented expenditure comes as survey after survey shows declining support for Israel in the United States, its most important ally. A Pew Research Center poll released earlier this month found 60% of Americans now view Israel unfavorably, up seven points in a single year, with only 37% viewing it favorably.”

So you know how you’re already seeing an insane amount of pro-Israel propaganda and running into aggressive Zionist trolls online? You can expect that to get a whole lot worse.

If you saw a guy spending 730 million dollars on media operations to manipulate people into thinking he is not an asshole, what could you reasonably conclude about that guy’s personality? https://t.co/giH4e1vYUY

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) May 5, 2026

Narrative manipulation has served Israel well over the years, but there’s a limit to how much propaganda can accomplish. If I walked up to you and spat in your face, there’s no amount of verbiage I could throw at you to convince you I’m actually a nice person.

There’s only so much carnage people can watch on their phones before you can no longer convince them it’s not what it looks like.

The propaganda has already hit a point of diminishing returns, and soon it’s going to start having a reverse effect. People are going to start hating Israel for all the evil things it’s been doing, and then hating it even more for all its in-your-face perception management operations to manipulate their thoughts and feelings.

At some point the hasbarists are themselves going to inadvertently become anti-Zionist propaganda agents, just because they make Israel look so creepy with the way they’re always trying to stick their rapey fingers into everyone’s mind.

The truth can only be concealed and distorted for so long.

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 the website Caitlin Johnstone and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A New Zealander who took part in the global flotilla trying to break the illegal Gaza siege and who was abducted by Israel returned home this week and gave a searing speech in Auckland today condemning the abuses he and others suffered.

“They abducted us at gunpoint and threatened to kill us if we resisted,” said Sean Janssen.

“Dozens of people were packed into shipping containers and kept in conditions most would deem unfit for animals.”

Janssen was one of more than 170 people who were illegally abducted by Israeli military forces on board Global Sumud Flotilla boats in international waters for 48 hours and given restricted access to food and water.

He said flotilla participants were beaten and 34 people needed immediate medical attention when they were dumped ashore in Greece.

Three other abducted New Zealanders — Jay O’Connor, Mousa Taher and Julien Blondel — were taken ashore as well while at least two others are continuing on with the flotilla that has now reached Turkïye.

Two high-profile flotilla leaders who were kidnapped and taken illegally to Israel were set to be released after more than a week of torture allegations and diplomatic efforts to seek their freedom.

Abukeshek, Ávila being freed
Saif Abukeshek, a Spanish-Palestinian, and Brazilian Thiago Ávila were being freed, according to a statement from the rights group Adalah, which was representing the two men.

“I believe in a Free Palestine and that this isn’t a radical belief,” Sean Janssen told the cheering crowd. “Yet for almost 80 years, this belief and having the conviction to say it publicly has been met with harassment, suppression and violence.

“Leaders who preach of freedom, justice and equality have done nothing or actively contributed to the destruction of those things for Palestinians.

“For almost 80 years the world has watched as Israel has strengthened its capacity to inflict suffering and death against the people of Palestine, yet done nothing because it was only inflicted on Palestininians.”

Janssen said that for 20 years Israel had restricted the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, blocked by a military siege.

“They impose this blockade on Gaza because starvation is one of their tools of extermination,” he said.

“In the last 3 years, Israel has attacked more than 200 schools in Gaza. They have murdered more than 300 journalists.”

36 hospitals destroyed
Since October 2023, the occupation forces had destroyed 36 hospitals.

“They have bombed the sick and slaughtered new born babies in their incubators.”

Janssen said that there was no course too extreme and no action too radical that Israel would not take to ensure the genocide was completed.

“When Palestinians did what all people have a right to do — defend themselves — they were condemned,” he said.

“Palestinians have been condemned for demanding the most basic of rights and for following the most fundamental of human instincts — to survive.

“They were condemned for refusing to accept violence and barbarism forced upon them.

“They refused to do nothing as their culture, their history and their people were erased.”

Brutal Israeli treatment
Moving on to the brutal treatment by Israeli forces against the Gaza flotilla humanitarian activists on April 30, Janssen said:

“The Israeli occupation forces abducted myself, 4 other citizens of New Zealand, and in total almost 200 people from nations around the world.

“They abducted us at gunpoint and threatened to kill us if we resisted.

“Dozens of people were packed into shipping containers and kept in conditions most would deem unfit for animals.

“As people slept outside in freezing temperatures they had cold water poured onto them.

“We were denied access to life saving medicine. For refusing to stand when ordered I was held by the neck face down on concrete and bashed across the head.

“My treatment was far from the worst. My friend and fellow New Zealander, Julien Blondel, the man who taught me to tie a bowline knot  — with incredible patience — and is one of the gentlest people I’ve ever met, was beaten bloody and shot with crowd suppressing rounds at point blank range.

“This still is far from all of the violence and cruelty done to us by these [Israeli state] terrorists.”

Appeal for protest letters
Janssen appealed to the protesters to call and write to their MPs and ministers — “remember that for 2 of our comrades that violence and cruelty is not over.”

He was referring to Saif Abukeshek and Thiago Ávila, who have since his speech been freed by the Israeli authorities under global pressure and “deported”.

Saif Abukeshek was a man who had dedicated his life to supporting his people to freedom, Janssen said.

“He spoke of his love for his family every single time I heard him speak.”

“Thiago Ávila, who after being beaten by the Israelis, stood for hours by the entrance to the prison yard and greeted all of us, to make sure that a smile was the first thing all of his comrades saw, so we knew we were still in this together.

“Thiago Ávila, whose mother died with her son in Israeli custody.”

Janssen said these men were “as I speak held hostage by Israel, subject to torture and indefinite detention, and for Saif being Palestinian, potentially execution as well“.

‘Not radical’ to be humanitarian
“The President of the United States called us terrorists. The Israeli press labeled us as
radicals and extremists for what we aimed to do.

“But is it radical for starving people to be able to eat? Is it radical that people who are sick be able to access healthcare?

“Is it radical for children to have school books and colouring pencils so they can grow into full, creative and intelligent people?

“These things are what the flotilla aims deliver to Gaza. Are these things radical or are they what is needed for people to live?

“What is radical, what is extreme, are the lengths that Zionism and its allies will go to refuse these things to Palestinians.”

The violence of Israel was not just happening to Palestinians anymore, Janssen said.

“The violence of Zionism is growing bolder and it is spreading across the world with the backing of the United States.

“It is a disgrace that our [New Zealand] leaders did nothing for Palestinians, but for anyone who believed they would keep you safe when violence came to our shores, I have seen first hand that they will not.

NZ ‘silent, no sanctions’
“They have imposed no sanctions. They have not expelled the Israeli ambassador. They have not even publicly denounced this blatant act of terrorism.

“Their value for your lives and your safety only exists so long as it works for their benefit.”

Janssen saud that until New Zealand had leaders that would take action to uphold international law, “we are all of us — like I was — all 5 million of us hostages of Israel.”

He added that even if Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour, and Foreign Minister Winston Peters were “scared of Israel, I am not afraid”.

“Even if they are backed by the United States, I am not afraid of these terrorists.”

Devonport naval base protest
The protest crowd warmly applauded Janssen for his courage and conviction throughout the speech. Then they marched across Te Komititanga Square and caught the ferry to Devonport.

The protesters marched peacefully to the Devonport Naval Base, chanting “No money for bombs and occupation, money for books and education” and other calls in support for Palestinian freedom and against war on Iran and Lebanon.

Stop Wars Aotearoa organiser Joe Carolan addressed the crowd beside the naval base, saying “Christopher Luxon wants to send these sailors, and our soldiers, to die for [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. No!”

“The people of New Zealand are quite clearly against this war. Seventy percent of them are against this war. And the people of United States are against this war, and the people of Britain are against this war.

“But all of this is happening because of Netanyahu’s desire for a Greater Israel.”

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defence minister, are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. Israel is also on trial for genocide in a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) brought by South Africa supported by other countries.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Why is US President Donald Trump carrying on with his State visit to Beijing this week on May 14? I wouldn’t if I were him.

It also shows that he is surrounded by incompetent officials. Any competent advisor would advise him against undertaking this trip.

He goes as the leader of a “defeated” nation, against a foe on which the United States has imposed the stiffest sanctions for 47 years. He will be viewed by the Chinese as the President that ended the American empire.

He thinks he is going as a conquering hero and can wow the Chinese with his empty boasts that America won a huge victory and destroyed Iran. He will be met by President Xi and the Chinese leadership with polite smiles and smirks of the greatest disrespect.

If he has any EQ, he will know that his treatment in Beijing is going to be brutal. The Chinese may even gift him the symbolic white flag of surrender. You will see that in this summit, the US will be very much the junior partner.

Iran will never give this defeated President the satisfaction of a peace agreement which he so desperately needs, and is begging for, before his trip to Beijing. They will make sure he goes to Beijing as a defeated man.

Iran is not after a peace deal, but the total and comprehensive defeat of America as the global hegemon. Iran will see to it that the US gets out of the Middle East totally so that Israel is isolated and the Greater Israel project totally destroyed.

Security architecture shifting
Even as I write, the security architecture of the Middle East is shifting rapidly. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman are shifting their allegiances increasingly toward Iran, Russia and China.

Fifty-five years of being America’s poodles are coming to an end. These countries have realised that the US is an unreliable partner and cannot guarantee their security.

The stupid countries are the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, which still hitch their wagons to the Americans and Israel. They have dug their own graves.

History has never witnessed another event as dramatic as the Iran war, where a global power has lost power and prestige in such a short period of 4 months.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The signals are now coming from both sides of the negotiating table. American sources confirm it. Pakistani mediators confirm it.

The end of the US-Iran war is near, and the terms of that ending will echo across the international order for decades.

Let us be precise about what has happened here.

Iran, a nation under sanctions for more than four decades, subjected to assassinations, sabotage, proxy warfare — and finally direct military assault by the most expensively armed forces in human history, backed by a nuclear-armed Israel — has not been defeated.

It has not collapsed. It has not surrendered its sovereignty, its nuclear programme, or its dignity. It stood, absorbed the blows, struck back with precision, and forced Washington to the negotiating table.

That is not a stalemate. That is a victory.

Trump’s 10-day ceasefire declaration in April initially appeared like a pause. However, as days went by, it became clearer it was an exit strategy in search of a face-saving wrapper.

Silence terminal, not tactical
The Americans have not fired a significant shot since. The silence was not tactical. It was terminal.

Consider what Iran has demonstrated to the watching world. It faced two nuclear powers simultaneously, America and Israel, with all the military technology, intelligence infrastructure, and political backing that entails.

Strangely, Iran depleted American missile stockpiles to the point of a three-to-five-year restocking timeline. It struck American bases across seven countries.

It collected tolls on the Strait of Hormuz. It watched its adversary’s approval ratings collapse domestically while its own national resolve hardened.

Trump, the self-proclaimed dealmaker, cannot exit fast enough.

The man who launched this war with the language of dominance is now scrambling for the language of diplomacy, mediated by Pakistan, concluded on terms nobody in Washington would have accepted 12 weeks ago.

History will record this clearly. A civilisation several thousand years old, armed with ingenuity, patience, and righteous resistance, outlasted the last empire’s appetite for a fight it should never have started.

The war is ending. Iran is standing. The world has been watching, and the world has learned something.

Prince Taofeek Ajibade is an educator and digital creator from Ibadan, Nigeria.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Nothing illustrates the inversion of the international and moral order more than the genocide in Gaza and the shipment of tens of billions of dollars of weapons to Israel by Western nations — especially the United States — to sustain it.

Part of this inversion is the unrelenting persecution of those who denounce the genocide — especially those who risk their lives to halt it and demand the rule of law.

But the rule of law, it appears, is buried under the rubble in Gaza.

And because of that Israel is able, with barely a word of protest by Western nations — Spain being one of the few exceptions — to abduct 175 activists aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla 500 nautical miles from Gaza and 80 nautical miles west of the Greek island of Crete.

This violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was accompanied by the usual Israeli brutality. Flotilla members from the 22 vessels that were intercepted and then transferred to the Israeli vessel Nahshon were denied food, forced to sleep on the floor as it was flooded “repeatedly” with water, punched, kicked, dragged across decks with their hands tied and shot at with rubber bullets and live ammunition.

Kidnapped by Israel                                   Video: The Chris Hedges Report

Eventually, all but two flotilla members were transferred to Crete, with 36 requiring medical attention.

Two of the leading activists on the flotilla, the Brazilian organiser of the flotilla, Thiago Ávila, and the Spaniard Saif Abukeshek, who is of Palestinian descent and who has organised Palestinian solidarity movements across Europe for more than two decades, were not allowed to disembark when the vessel reached Ierapetra Port in southern Crete, although the ship was in Greek territorial waters.

They were kidnapped and taken to Israel.

“Participant eyewitnesses provided harrowing testimony of Abukeshek’s screams echoing throughout the ship as he was subjected to systematic torture, after being separated from the others,” read a communique issued by the Global Sumud Flotilla.

Abukeshek was blindfolded, forced to lie on his stomach “since the moment of his seizure until this morning” which resulted in “bruising to his face and hands”.

Ávila was “dragged face-down across the floor” and beaten so severely that he passed out twice.

When the two activists appeared in an Israeli court there were visible bruises on their faces. Ávila had trouble lifting his right hand.

Since their kidnapping, the two men have been on hunger strike. They are accused of “assisting the enemy during wartime” and “membership in and providing services to a terrorist organisation”.

This is the world we now live in. The moral and the courageous are criminalised. The ruling class weaponises the law to justify the abuse and atrocities of the lawless.

Here is a link to an interview I did in Italy with Ávila.

Here is a link to the documentary we made in Italy where Ávila, along with Francesca Albanese, Greta Thunberg, Yanis Varoufakis and the striking Italian dock workers, who refuse to load weapons onto ships bound for Israels, are featured.

We must contact the Israeli Embassy in Washington. We must protest in front of the embassy, as well as the Israeli consulate in New York, to demand the release of Thiago and Saif.

They are the best among us.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This commentary was first published on the Chris Hedges X page and is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz