Who is in charge of this war: Israel or the United States?

One side believes Israel lured Trump into a trap from which he cannot extricate himself. The tail is wagging the dog.

The other believes that the US, as the world’s sole military super-power, is the one that writes the geo-strategic script. If Israel acts, it is only because it serves Washington’s interests as well. The dog is wagging the tail.

Certainly, the idea that the tail, the client state of Israel, could be wagging the dog, the military juggernaut that is the US, seems, at best, counter-intuitive.

But then again, there is plenty of evidence that suggests advocates for the tail wagging the dog scenario may have a case.

They can point to the fact that Trump launched this war of choice on Iran despite winning the presidency on an “America First” platform in which he promised: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Rushed into war
His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, openly stated that the administration was rushed into war, finding itself apparently unable to restrain Israel from attacking Iran.

Joe Kent, Trump’s top counter-terrorism official, noted in his resignation letter that the administration “started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.

Addressing the Israeli Parliament last October, Trump appeared to confess to being under the thumb of the Israel lobby. As he praised himself for moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the illegally occupied city of Jerusalem, he repeatedly pointed to his most influential donor, the Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson, before observing: “I actually asked her once, I said, ‘So, Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more, the United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That means, that might mean, Israel, I must say.”

A video from 2001 shows Benjamin Netanyahu, now Israel’s Prime Minister, caught secretly on camera, telling a group of settlers: “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”

Former US president Barack Obama, who ran up against Netanyahu repeatedly as Obama tried and failed to limit the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements, thought the same.

In his 2020 autobiography, he wrote that the Israel lobby insisted that “there should be ‘no daylight’ between the US and Israeli governments, even when Israel took actions that were contrary to US policy.”

Any politician who disobeyed “risked being tagged as ‘anti-Israel’ (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election”.

Obscuring the relationship
But any rigid, binary way of framing the relationship between the US and Israel obscures more than it illuminates.

I addressed this issue in my 2008 book on Israeli foreign policy, titled Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iran, Iraq and the Plan to Remake the Middle East. My conclusion then, as now, was that the relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv was better understood in different terms: as the dog and the tail wagging each other.

What does that mean?

Israel is Washington’s most favoured client state. It must, therefore, operate within the “security” parameters for the Middle East laid down by the US.

In fact, part of Israel’s job — the reason it is such an important client state — is because it has, until now, been able to enforce those parameters on others in the region.

But the story is more complicated than that.

At the same time, Israel seeks to maximise its ability to influence those parameters in its own interests, chiefly by shaping military, political and cultural discourse in the United States, through the many levers available to it.

Mobilised by Zionist lobbies
Zionist lobbies, both Jewish and Christian, mobilise large numbers of ordinary people to support whatever Israel claims to be in both its and US interests.

Mega-donors like Adelson use their wealth to cajole and intimidate US politicians.

Think-tanks with murky funding write legislation on Israel’s behalf that US politicians wave through.

Legal organisations, again with opaque funding, weaponise the law to silence and bankrupt.

And media owners, all too often in Israel’s camp, mould the public mood to stigmatise as “antisemitism” anything that opposes Israeli excesses.

This makes for a very messy arrangement.

The trouble with the idea that the US simply dictates to Israel — rather than that the two are constantly bargaining over what constitutes their shared interests — becomes apparent the moment we consider the two-and-a-half-year genocide in Gaza.

Desire to ‘disappear’ Palestinians
Israel has long had a fervent desire to disappear the Palestinians, whether through ethnic cleansing or genocide.

It wants the whole of historic Palestine, and the Palestinians are an obstacle to the realisation of that goal. Should the opportunity arise, Israel is also keen to secure a Greater Israel that requires grabbing and annexing substantial territory from neighbours, particularly Lebanon and Syria — as it is doing again right now.

After the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, Israel seized on the chance to renew in earnest the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians it began in 1948, at the state’s founding.

It carpet-bombed Gaza, creating a “humanitarian crisis”, to force Egypt to open the floodgates into Sinai, where it hoped to drive the enclave’s population. Cairo refused.

As a result, Israel tried to increase the pressure by slaughtering and starving the people of Gaza. In legal terms, that constituted genocide.

But the idea that the US was deeply invested in Israel carrying out a genocide in Gaza, or directed that genocide, or had any particular interest in the genocide taking place, is hard to sustain.

Washington — first under Biden, then under Trump — gave Israel cover to carry out the mass slaughter of the Palestinian population, and armed and financed the genocide. But that is very different from it having a geostrategic interest in the mass slaughter.

Indifferent to Palestinians’ fate
Rather, the US is and always has been largely indifferent as to the fate of the Palestinians, so long as they are contained. They can be locked up permanently in occupation prisons.

Or ethnically cleansed to Sinai and Jordan. Or given a pretend statelet under a compliant dictator like Mahmoud Abbas. Or exterminated.

The US will bankroll whichever option Israel believes best serves its interests — so long as that “solution” can be sold by pro-Israel lobbies to western publics as a legitimate “response” to Palestinian “terrorism”.

What Israel could get away with changed on 7 October 2023. The US was prepared to approve Israel shifting from a policy of intermittently “mowing the lawn” in Gaza — short wrecking sprees — to the incremental levelling of the whole of Gaza.

In other words, Israel worked all its levers to persuade Washington that it was the right time for it to get away with genocide. It sold to the US the plan that Gaza could now be destroyed.

To present that as Washington’s plan is simply perverse. It was decisively Israel’s plan.

That doesn’t diminish in any way US responsibility for the genocide. It is fully complicit. It paid for the genocide. It armed the genocide. It must own it too.

Similar Iran war analysis
A similar analysis can be applied to the Iran war.

The US and Israel share the same larger policy towards Iran: they want it contained, weak, unable to exert influence. But they do so for slightly different reasons.

Israel demands to be regional hegemon in the Middle East, an invaluable client state with privileged access to Washington policymakers. Its supremacy and impunity, therefore, depend on Iran — its only plausible rival in the region — being as weak as possible and incapable of forging effective alliances with armed resistance groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Equally, Washington wants Israel unthreatened, leaving its ally free to project US imperial power into the Middle East.

But it has a more complex set of interests to consider. It needs to ensure that the Arab monarchies remain compliant, and it does so by both wielding a stick — threatening to unleash the attack dog of Israel on them should they disobey — and proffering a carrot — promising to shield them under its security umbrella against Iran so long as they stay loyal.

The ultimate goal is to guarantee unchallenged US control over the flow of oil and thereby the global economy.

In other words, the US has to weigh far more interests in how it deals with Iran than Israel does.

Effects on the global economy
Unlike Israel, Washington has to consider the effects of an attack on Iran on the global economy, to assess any impact on the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and protect against rival powers like China and Russia exploiting strategic missteps.

For those reasons, Washington has traditionally preferred maintaining a degree of stability in the region. Instability is very bad for business, as is being demonstrated only too clearly right now.

Israel, by contrast, regards its struggle against Iran in existential terms. Many in the Israeli cabinet view it as a religious war. They are not interested in simply containing Iran – a decades-old policy they believe has failed. They want Iran and its allies on their knees, or at least in so much chaos that they cannot pose any kind of challenge to Israeli regional hegemony.

That point was highlighted by Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s former national security adviser, this week in an interview with Jon Stewart. He cited recent comments to him by Israel’s former military intelligence lead on Iran, Danny Cintrinowicz, that Netanyahu’s aim is to “just break Iran, cause chaos”.

Why? “Because,” says Sullivan, “as far as they’re concerned, a broken Iran is less of a threat to Israel.”

In other words, Israel wants to engineer instability in Iran, which is sure to spread instability across the region.

Those two agendas, as should be clear by now, are not easily compatible. Which is why Netanyahu has spent decades working every lever at his disposal in Washington to create an appetite for war.

Had war been self-evidently in US interests, his efforts would have been superfluous.

Israel deployed its lobbies
Instead, Israel has had to deploy its lobbies, marshal its donors and recruit sympathetic columnists to slowly shift the public mood to the point where a war was conceivable rather than patently dangerous.

And most importantly of all, Israel nurtured an intimate, ideological alliance with the neocons — hawkish, zealously pro-Israel US officials — who long ago gained a foothold in the inner sanctums of Washington.

Each recent administration has been a cat-fight over whether the neocons or more “moderate” voices would win out. Under George W Bush, the neocons dominated, leading to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Israel’s short war on Lebanon in 2006, and a failed plan to expand the war to Syria and then Iran.

I documented all of this in Israel and the Clash of Civilisations.

Under Obama, the neocons were forced to take more of a back seat, which is why his administration was able to sign a nuclear deal with Iran that held until Trump ripped it up in 2018, during his first term as president. Biden, as with so much else, dithered.

In Trump’s second term, the neocons seem to be firmly back in charge, again weaving their mischief. The result — an illegal war on Iran — is likely to be a strategic catastrophe for the US, and a potential, if short-lived, victory for Israel.

So isn’t this the same as saying the tail wags the dog?

Sole repositories of power
No, not least because that assumes the visible realm of US politics — the President, the Congress, the two main political parties — are the sole repositories of power in the system.

Even in this visible sphere, support for Israel has dramatically waned since the Gaza genocide. As the illegal war on Iran grows ever more costly, both in treasure and lives, support for Israel among US voters is going to fall off a cliff.

Israel is for the first time a deeply partisan issue, dividing Democrats and Republicans, as well as a generational divide between the young and old. It is even splitting the MAGA base Trump depends on.

This political polarisation will continue to get much worse, ultimately freeing braver figures in US politics to start speaking out in franker terms about Israel’s nefarious role.

But power in the US isn’t just wielded at the formal, visible level. There is a permanent bureaucracy, with an institutional memory, that operates out of sight. We have gained brief glimpses of its covert operations from the work of Wikileaks, Julian Assange’s publishing platform for whistleblowers, and from Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who revealed illegal mass surveillance by the US state of its own citizens.

Both suffered serious consequences for their efforts to bring a little transparency to a profoundly corrupt system of secret power. Assange was locked away in a London high-security prison for many years as the US sought to extradite him on trumped-up “espionage” charges, while Snowden was forced into exile in Russia to evade arrest and long-term incarceration.

That bureaucracy — sometimes referred to as the Deep State, or the military-industrial complex — doesn’t play or fight fair. It doesn’t need to. It operates in the shadows.

Curtailing Israel’s influence
Were it to so choose, it could undermine the Israel lobby, and thereby curtail Israel’s influence over the visible realm of US politics.

It could effectively do to the leaders of the lobby — AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Zionist Organisation of America, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, Christians United for Israel, and others — what it did to Assange and Snowden.

It could, for example, influence public discourse to begin questioning whether these groups are really serving US interests or acting as foreign agents. That would, in turn, free up space for the media and legislators to call for tighter restrictions on these groups’ activities, requiring them to register as such.

The permanent bureaucracy is doubtless capable of doing much darker, underhand things too.

The fact that it hasn’t chosen to do any of this yet suggests Israel’s goals are not seen so far to be significantly in conflict with US goals.

But that could be about to change. In fact, the current, all-too-public debates about Israel driving the US into a war against Iran — an idea already seeping into popular consciousness — may be the first salvoes in the battle to come.

If the war on Iran turns out to be a catastrophic misstep, as it gives every appearance of being, there will be a price to pay — and leading US politicians are likely to scramble to shift the blame on to Israel. It may be that they are already getting in their excuses.

The all-too-visible freedom Israel has enjoyed in Washington to buy, bully and silence could soon become a central liability. It will not be hard to argue that a system so clearly open to manipulation that the US could be bounced into a self-sabotaging war needs to be remade, to prevent any repeat of such a disaster.

This may be the biggest lesson Washington learns from the war on Iran. That it is time to stop the tail wagging so vigorously.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Prominent lawyers are joining opposition parties as they call for the New Zealand government to denounce the United States attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iranian New Zealander and lawyer Arman Askarany said the New Zealand government was showing “indifference”.

It comes as acting Prime Minister David Seymour told reporters on Monday there was “no benefit” in rushing to a judgment regarding the US attack.

US President Trump says Israel and Iran have agreed to a ceasefire to end the “12-day war,” with the truce taking effect in stages over 24 hours, following Iran’s missile attack on a US base in Qatar.

🔴 Follow our LIVE coverage: https://t.co/f0V5nlsAMR pic.twitter.com/XC4Xld0Q7U

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) June 24, 2025

“We’re far better to keep our counsel, because it costs nothing to get more information, but going off half-cocked can be very costly for a small nation.”

Iran and Israel continued to exchange strikes over the weekend after Israel’s initial attack nearly two weeks ago.

Israeli authorities say at least 25 people have been killed, and Iran said on Sunday Israeli strikes had killed at least 224 people since June 13.

The Human Rights Activists news agency puts the death toll in Iran above 650 people.

US attacked Iran nuclear sites
The US entered the war at the weekend by attacking what it said was key nuclear sites in Iran — including Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan — on Sunday.

On Monday, the Australian government signalled its support for the strike, and called for de-escalation and a return to diplomacy.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the strike was a unilateral action by its security ally the United States, and Australia was joining calls from Britain and other countries for Iran to return to the negotiating table

Not long after, Foreign Minister Winston Peters issued a statement on X, giving tacit endorsement to the decision to bomb nuclear facilities.

The statement was also released just ahead of the NATO meeting in Brussels, which Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was attending.

Peters said Iran could not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, and noted the United States’ targeted attacks aimed at “degrading Iran’s nuclear capabilities”.

He went on to acknowledge the US statement to the UN Security Council saying the attack was “acting in collective self-defence consistent with the UN Charter”.

Self-defence ‘complete joke’
Askarany told RNZ it was a “complete joke” that New Zealand had acknowledged the US statement saying it was self-defence.

“It would be funny if it wasn’t so horrific.”

He said it was a clear escalation by the US and Israel, and believed New Zealand was undermining the rules-based order it purported to support, given it refused to say Israel and the US had attacked Iran.

Askarany acknolwedged the calls for deescalation and for peace in the region, but said they were “abstract platitudes” if the aggressor was not named.

He called on people who might not know about Iran to learn more about it.

“There’s so much history and culture and beautiful things about Iran that represent my people far more than the words of Trump and Netanyahu.”

Peters told RNZ Morning Report on Monday the government wanted to know all the facts before taking a position on the US strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Politicians at a crossroads
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour held his first post-cabinet media conference on Monday, in which he said nobody was calling on New Zealand to rush to a judgment on the rights and wrongs of the situation.

He echoed the Foreign Minister’s statement, saying “of course” New Zealand noted the US assertion of the legality of their actions.

He also indicated, “like just about every country in the world, that we cannot have a nuclear-armed Iran.”

“That does not mean that we are rushing to form our own judgment on the rights or wrongs or legality of any action.”

He insisted New Zealand was not sitting on the fence, but said “nor are we rushing to judgement.”

“I believe the world is not sitting there waiting for New Zealand to give its position on the legality of the situation.

“What people do want to see is de escalation and dialogue, and most critically for us, the safety of New Zealanders in the region.”

When asked about the Australian government’s position, Seymour said New Zealand did not have the intelligence that other countries may have.

Hikpins says attack ‘disappointing’
Labour leader Chris Hipkins called the attack by the US on Iran “very disappointing”, “not justified” and “almost certainly” against international law.

He wanted New Zealand to take a stronger stance on the issue.

“New Zealand should take a stronger position in condemning the attacks and saying that we do not believe they are justified, and we do not believe that they are consistent with international law.”

Hipkins said the US had not made a case for the action taken, and they should step back and get back around the table with Iran.

The Green Party and Te Pāti Māori both called on the government to condemn the attack by the US.

“The actions of the United States pose a fundamental threat to world peace.

‘Dangerous escalation’
“The rest of the world, including New Zealand, must take a stand and make it clear that this dangerous escalation is unacceptable,” said Green Party coleader Marama Davidson.

“We saw this with the US war on Iraq, and we are seeing it again with this recent attack on Iran. We are at risk of a violent history repeating itself.”

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi said the government was remaining silent on Israel.

“When the US bombs Iran, Luxon calls it an ‘opportunity’. But when Cook Islanders assert their sovereignty or Chinese vessels travel through international waters, he leaps to condemnation,” said Waititi.

“Israel continues to maintain an undeclared nuclear arsenal. Yet this government won’t say a word.

“It condemns non-Western powers at every turn but remains silent when its allies act with impunity.”

International law experts weigh in
University of Waikato Professor Alexander Gillespie said it was “an illegal war” and the option of diplomacy should have been exhausted before the first strike.

As Luxon headed to NATO, Gillespie acknowledged it would be difficult for him to take a “hard line” on the issue, “because he’s going to be caught up with the members and the partners of NATO.”

He said the question would be whether NATO members accept there was a right of self-defence and whether the actions of the US and Israel were justified.

Gillespie said former prime minister Helen Clark spoke very clearly in 2003 against the invasion of Iraq, but he could not see New Zealand’s current Prime Minister saying that.

“That’s not because they don’t believe it, but because there would be a risk of a backhand from the United States.

“And we’re spending a lot of time right now trying not to offend this Trump administration.”

‘Might is right’ precedent
University of Otago Professor Robert Patman said the US strike on Iran would likely “make things worse” and set a precedent for “might is right.”

He said he had “no brief” for the repressive Iranian regime, but under international law it had been subject of “two illegal attacks in the last 10 days”, from Israel and now from the US.

Patman said New Zealand had been guarded in its comments about the attacks on Iran, and believed the country should speak out.

“We have championed non nuclear security since the mid 80s. We were a key player, a leader, of the treaty to abolish nuclear weapons, and that now has 94 signatories.”

He said New Zealand does have a voice and an expectation to contribute to an international debate that’s beginning to unfold.

“We seem to be at a fork in the road moment internationally, we can seek to reinstate the idea that international relations should be based on rules, principles and procedures, or we can simply passively accept the erosion of that architecture, which is to the detriment of the majority of countries in the world.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Israel targeted one of the buildings of the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) in Tehran on the fourth day of attacks on Iran, interrupting a live news broadcast, reports Press TV.

The attack, involving at least four bombs, struck the central building housing IRIB’s news department, while a live news broadcast was underway.

The transmission was briefly interrupted before Hassan Abedini, IRIB’s news director and deputy for political affairs, appeared on air to condemn the “terrorist crime”.

At the time of the attack, news anchor Sahar Emami was presenting the news. Despite the building trembling under the first strike, she stood her ground and continued the broadcast.

“Allah o Akbar” (God is Great), she proclaimed, drawing global attention to the war crime committed by Israel against Iran’s national broadcaster.

Moments later, another blast filled the studio with smoke and dust, forcing her to evacuate. She returned shortly after to join Abedini and share her harrowing experience.

“If I die, others will take my place and expose your crimes to the world,” she declared, looking straight into the camera with courage and composure.

Casualties unconfirmed
While the number of casualties remains unconfirmed, insiders reported that several journalists inside the building had been injured in the bombing.

Israel’s war ministry promptly claimed responsibility for the attack.

Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the aggression on the state broadcaster as a “war crime” and called on the United Nations to take immediate action against the regime.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei denounced the attack and urged the international community to hold the regime accountable for its assault on the media.

“The world is watching: targeting Iran’s news agency #IRIB’s office during a live broadcast is a wicked act of war crime,” Baghaei wrote on X.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) also condemned the bombing of the IRIB news building, labeling it an “inhuman, criminal, and a terrorist act.”

CPJ ‘appalled’ by Israeli attack
The Committee to Protect Journalists said it was “appalled by Israel’s bombing of Iran’s state TV channel while live on air.”

“Israel’s killing, with impunity, of almost 200 journalists in Gaza has emboldened it to target media elsewhere in the region,” Sara Qudah, the West Asia representative for CPJ, said in a statement after the attack on an IRIB building.

The Israeli regime has a documented history of targeting journalists globally. Since October 2023, it has killed more than 250 Palestinian journalists in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The regime launched its aggression against the Islamic Republic, including Tehran, early on Friday, leading to the assassination of several high-ranking military officials, nuclear scientists, and civilians, including women and children.

In response, Iran launched a barrage of missiles and drones late Friday night, followed by more retaliatory operations on Saturday and Sunday as part of Operation True Promise III.

In Israel, 24 people have been killed and hundreds wounded since hostilities began. In Iran, 224 people have been killed.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji’s Embassy in Abu Dhabi says it is closely monitoring the situation in Iran and Israel as tensions remain high.

Israel carried out a dozen strikes against Iranian military and nuclear sites on Friday, claiming it acted out of “self-defence”, saying Iran is close to building a nuclear weapon.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Israel that “severe punishment” would follow and two waves of missiles were fired at Israel.

Fiji’s Embassy in Abu Dhabi is urging the Fijian community there to remain calm, stay informed, and reach out to the Embassy should they have any concerns or require assistance during this period of heightened regional tensions.

A Fiji national in Abu Dhabi said he had yet to hear how other Pacific communities in the Middle East were coping amid the Israel-Iran conflict.

Speaking to RNZ Pacific Waves from Abu Dhabi, Fiji media specialist Kelepi Abariga said the situation was “freaky and risky”.

Abariga has lived in Abu Dhabi for more than a decade and while he was far from the danger zones, he was concerned for his “fellow Pacific people”.

‘I hope they are safe’
“I just hope they are safe as of now, this is probably the first time Israel has attacked Iran directly,” he said.

“Everybody thinks that Iran has a huge nuclear deposit with them, that they could use it against any country in the world.

“But you know, that is yet to be seen.

“So right now, you know we from the Pacific, we’re right in the middle of everything and I think you know, our safety is paramount.”

Abariga was not aware of any Pacific people in Tehran but said if they were, they were most likely to be working for an NGO or the United Nations.

However, Abariga said there were Fiji nationals working at the International Christian embassy in Jerusalem and Solomon Island students in the south of Israel.

He also said that Fijian troops were stationed at Golan Heights occupied by Israel.

While Abariga described Abu Dhabi as the safest country in the Middle East, he said the politics in the region were volatile.

“It’s been intense like that for all this time, and I think when you mention Iran in this country [UAE], they have all the differences so it’s probably something that has started a long way before.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Listen to the audio from 3:00 minutes in.

Over the last 24 hours, the atomic control agency IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) formed a view at its UN Geneva meeting, that there was so-called evidence that Iran had ‘undisclosed sites’ where uranium was identified.

Iran disputes this, and suggested today that the IAEA members were wrong.

It appears Israel identified a window of opportunity where it can strike Iran’s nuclear power generation infrastructure, assassinate its nuclear scientists, and destroy other sites that it insists are covert nuclear-development-sites.

But let’s be clear at this moment, it is not proven that Iran has or had a covert uranium enrichment operation in play.

ISRAEL CLAIMS:

Israel claims its attacks on Iran are justified as preemptive defence operations – but we need to understand here… preemptive defence in itself is not legal.

The problem on this aspect is Israel has arguably, long ago, crossed the Rubicon regarding International Law – especially in Gaza and the West Bank. So it’s reasonable to suggest; Israel is not deterred by the possibility of any future recourse being brought upon it by the international community.

CONTEXT:

Iran is believed to be not war-ready. But, Iran will respond. Its Supreme Leader stated it will respond. It remains to be seen how it will respond.

At this moment, there are reports in Israel that over 100 missiles are incoming from Iran to Israel.

We also know, Israel has weakened Hezbollah, especially within Lebanon. The strikes on Beirut earlier this month and prior were designed to weaken Hezbollah.

Further, Syria is in a state of transition.

This is the backdrop to Israel’s window of opportunity.

THE UNITED STATES:

The United States obviously knew a strike was imminent. It pulled non-essential personnel out of neighbouring Iraq and from the general region.

United States President Donald Trump has confirmed that there was communication on this offensive between Israel and the US, in the context of no-surprises.

Trump added that the US would help defend Israel, but it’s unclear what ‘defend’ actually means. The US appears to be waiting to see exactly how Iran responds.

The Trump Administration insists Israel’s decision to strike Iran was unilateral. United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said today: “We are not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.”

IRAN’S POSITION:

Last Sunday, the Iranian President said Iran was “ready for inspections” but added it is “unacceptable to deprive peoples of access to knowledge, technology and scientific achievements”.

*** Only yesterday Iran’s foreign minister stated that Iran and the US were close to a deal on its nuclear energy ambitions. In a statement he said: “Trump took office saying that Iran should not have nuclear weapons. In fact, this is in line with our own doctrine and could be the main basis for the deal.”

Perhaps Israel saw its window of opportunity narrowing.

Iran insists its nuclear energy programme has been transparent.

BACK-STORY:

In negotiations with United States envoys, Iran has been insisting that it has the right to enrich its uranium but insists this is for efficient energy generation.

Back in May Iran’s foreign minister said: To claim that any country that wants to enrich uranium has non-peaceful purposes is a “deliberate misconception”

He stressed. “There are states that enrich uranium but do not possess nuclear weapons.”

LEAKS ISRAEL GOVERNMENT INTELLIGENCE:

On June 7, Iran’s Intelligence Minister claimed Iran had acquired trove of Israel Government documents that detailed Israel’s nuclear program.

Iran described the intelligence as “sensitive and strategic” and one of the most significant intelligence leaks in Israel’s history.

The intelligence documents also detailed communications between Israel and the United States, Europe and other countries.

OTHER CONTEXT:

The Russian Federation announced this week that it was willing to assist Iran with its nuclear energy ambitions.

The madness has begun.

We should have suspected something when the cloud strike shut down occurred.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to continue war so that he is never held to account.

This madness is the last straw.

NZ must immediately expel the Israeli Ambassador for this unprovoked attack on Iran.

As moral and ethical people, we must turn away from Israel’s new war crime, they have started a war, we must as righteous people condemn Israel and their enabler America.

This is the beginning of madness.

We cannot be party to it.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, Jordan, said the Israeli army radio was reporting that in addition to the air strikes, Israel’s external intelligence service Mossad had carried out some sabotage activities and attacks inside Iran.

“There are also several reports and leaks in the Israeli media talking not only about the assassination of the top chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard but rather a very large number of senior military commanders in addition to prominent academics and nuclear scientists,” she said.

“This is a very large-scale attack, not just on military installations, but also on the people who could potentially be making decisions about what Iran can do next, how Iran can respond to this attack that continues as we speak.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A national Palestinian advocacy group has called on the Aotearoa New Zealand government to immediately condemn Israel for its resumption today of “genocidal attacks” on the almost 2 million Palestinians trapped in the besieged Gaza enclave.

Media reports said that more than 320 people had been killed — many of them children — in a wave of predawn attacks by Israel to break the fragile ceasefire that had been holding since mid-January.

The renewed war on Gaza comes amid a worsening humanitarian crisis that has persisted for 16 days since March 1.

This followed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to block the entry of all aid and goods, cut water and electricity, and shut down the Strip’s border crossings at the end of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.

“Immediate condemnation of Israel’s resumption of attacks on Gaza must come from the New Zealand government”, said co-national chair John Minto of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) in a statement.

“Israel has breached the January ceasefire agreement multiple times and is today relaunching its genocidal attacks against the Palestinian people of Gaza.”

Israeli violations
He said that in the last few weeks Israel had:

• refused to negotiate the second stage of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas which would see a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza;
• Issued a complete ban on food, water, fuel and medical supplies entering Gaza — “a war crime of epic proportions”; and
• Cut off the electricity supply desperately needed to, for example, operate desalination plants for water supplies.

‘Cowardly silence’
“The New Zealand government response has been a cowardly silence when the people of New Zealand have been calling for sanctions against Israel for its genocide,” Minto said.

“The government is out of touch with New Zealanders but in touch with US/Israel.

“Foreign Minister Winston Peters seems to be explaining his silence as ‘keeping his nerve’.

Minto said that for the past 17 months, minister Peters had condemned every act of Palestinian resistance against 77 years of brutal colonisation and apartheid policies.

“But he has refused to condemn any of the countless war crimes committed by Israel during this time — including the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war.

“Speaking out to condemn Israel now is our opportunity to force it to reconsider and begin negotiations on stage two of the ceasefire agreement Israel is trying to walk away from.

“Palestinians and New Zealanders deserve no less.”

‘Devastating sounds’
Al Jazeera reporter Maram Humaid said from Gaza: “We woke up to the devastating sounds of multiple explosions as a series of air attacks targeted various areas across the Gaza Strip, from north to south, including Jabalia, Gaza City, Nuseirat, Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis.”

“The strikes hit homes, residential buildings, schools sheltering displaced people and tents, resulting in a significant number of casualties, including women and children, especially since the attacks occurred during sleeping hours.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said at least 232 people had been killed in today’s Israeli raids.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A national Palestinian advocacy group has called on the Aotearoa New Zealand government to immediately condemn Israel for its resumption today of “genocidal attacks” on the almost 2 million Palestinians trapped in the besieged Gaza enclave.

Media reports said that more than 230 people had been killed — many of them children — in a wave of predawn attacks by Israel to break the fragile ceasefire that had been holding since mid-January.

The renewed war on Gaza comes amid a worsening humanitarian crisis that has persisted for 16 days since March 1.

This followed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to block the entry of all aid and goods, cut water and electricity, and shut down the Strip’s border crossings at the end of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.

“Immediate condemnation of Israel’s resumption of attacks on Gaza must come from the New Zealand government”, said co-national chair John Minto of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) in a statement.

“Israel has breached the January ceasefire agreement multiple times and is today relaunching its genocidal attacks against the Palestinian people of Gaza.”

Israeli violations
He said that in the last few weeks Israel had:

• refused to negotiate the second stage of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas which would see a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza;
• Issued a complete ban on food, water, fuel and medical supplies entering Gaza — “a war crime of epic proportions”; and
• Cut off the electricity supply desperately needed to, for example, operate desalination plants for water supplies.

‘Cowardly silence’
“The New Zealand government response has been a cowardly silence when the people of New Zealand have been calling for sanctions against Israel for its genocide,” Minto said.

“The government is out of touch with New Zealanders but in touch with US/Israel.

“Foreign Minister Winston Peters seems to be explaining his silence as ‘keeping his nerve’.

Minto said that for the past 17 months, minister Peters had condemned every act of Palestinian resistance against 77 years of brutal colonisation and apartheid policies.

“But he has refused to condemn any of the countless war crimes committed by Israel during this time — including the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war.

“Speaking out to condemn Israel now is our opportunity to force it to reconsider and begin negotiations on stage two of the ceasefire agreement Israel is trying to walk away from.

“Palestinians and New Zealanders deserve no less.”

‘Devastating sounds’
Al Jazeera reporter Maram Humaid said from Gaza: “We woke up to the devastating sounds of multiple explosions as a series of air attacks targeted various areas across the Gaza Strip, from north to south, including Jabalia, Gaza City, Nuseirat, Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis.”

“The strikes hit homes, residential buildings, schools sheltering displaced people and tents, resulting in a significant number of casualties, including women and children, especially since the attacks occurred during sleeping hours.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said at least 232 people had been killed in today’s Israeli raids.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

SPECIAL REPORT: By Joe Hendren

Since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon I can’t help but think of a friend I met in Beirut.

He worked at the Regis Hotel, where I stayed in February 2015.

At one point, he offered to make me a Syrian dish popular in his hometown of Aleppo. I have long remembered his kindness; I only wish I remembered his name.

At the time, his home city was being destroyed. A flashpoint of the Syrian Civil War, the Battle of Aleppo lasted four long years. He didn’t mention this of course.

I was lucky to visit Lebanon when I did. So much has happened since then.

Economic crisis and a tragic port explosion
Mass protests took over Lebanese streets in October 2019 in response to government plans to tax WhatsApp calls. The scope of the protests soon widened, as Lebanese people voiced their frustrations with ongoing economic turmoil and corruption.

A few months later, the covid-19 pandemic arrived, deepening the economic crisis and claiming 10,000 lives.

On 4 August 2020, the centre of Beirut was rocked by one of the largest non nuclear explosions in history when a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut detonated. The explosion killed 218 people and left an estimated 300,000 homeless. The government of Hassin Diab resigned but continued in a “caretaker” capacity.

Tens of thousands of protesters returned to the streets demanding accountability and the downfall of Lebanon’s political ruling class. While some protesters threw stones and other projectiles, an Al Jazeera investigation found that security forces violated international standards on the use of force. The political elite were protected.

In 2021, The World Bank summarised the situation:

“The Lebanon financial and economic crisis is likely to rank in the top 10, possibly top three, most severe crises episodes globally since the mid-nineteenth century. This is a conclusion of the Spring 2021 Lebanon Economic Monitor (LEM) in which the Lebanon crisis is contrasted with the most severe global crises episodes as observed by Reinhart and Rogoff (2014) over the 1857–2013 period.

“In fact, Lebanon’s GDP plummeted from close to US$ 55 billion in 2018 to an estimated US$ 33 billion in 2020, with US$ GDP/capita falling by around 40 percent. Such a brutal and rapid contraction is usually associated with conflicts or wars.”

The Lebanon Poverty and Equity Assessment, produced by the World Bank in 2024, found the share of individuals in Lebanon living under the poverty line more than tripled, rising from 12 percent to 44 percent. The depth and severity of poverty also increased over the decade between 2012 and 2022.

To make matters worse, the port explosion destroyed Lebanon’s strategic wheat reserves at a time when the war in Ukraine drove significant increases in global food prices. Annual food inflation in Lebanon skyrocketed from 7.67 percent in January 2019 to a whopping 483.15 percent for the year ending in January 2022. While food inflation has since declined, it remains high, sitting just below 20 percent for the year ending September 2024. The World Bank said:

“The sharp deterioration of the Lebanese pound, which lost 98 percent of its pre-crisis value by December 2023, propelled inflation to new heights. With imports constituting about 60 percent of the consumption basket (World Bank, 2022), the plunging currency led to triple-digit inflation which rose steeply from an annual average of 3 percent between 2011 and 2018, to 85 percent in 2019, 155 percent in 2020, and 221 percent in 2023 . . .

“Faced with falling foreign exchange reserves, the government withdrew subsidies on medication, fuel, and wheat further fuelling rising costs of healthcare and transport (Figure 1.2). Rapid inflation acted effectively as a highly regressive tax, striking hardest at the poor and those with fixed, lira-denominated incomes.” 

The ongoing crisis of the Lebanese economy has amplified the power of Hezbollah, a paramilitary group formed in 1982 in response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon.

“Hezbollah is famous for entrenching its power in an elaborate social infrastructure of Islamic welfare. The social grip of those structures and services is increased by the ongoing crisis of the Lebanese economy. When the medical service fails, desperate families turn to the Hezbollah-run health service,” says Adam Tooze

As banks imposed capital controls, many Lebanese lost confidence in the financial system. The financial arm of Hezbollah, the al-Quad al-Hassan Association (AQAH), experienced a significant increase in clients, despite being subject to US Treasury sanctions since 2007.

The US accuses Hezbollah of using AQAH as a front to manage its financial activities. When a 28-year-old engineer, Hassan Shoumar, was locked out of his dollar accounts in late 2019, he redirected his money into his account at AQAH: “What I care about is that when I want my money, I can get it.”

While Hezbollah portrays itself as “the resistance”, as a member of the governing coalition in Lebanon, it also forms an influential part of the political elite. Adam Tooze gives an example of how the political elite is still looking after itself:

“[T]he Lebanese Parliament in a grotesque act of self-dealing in January 2024 passed a budget that promised to close the budget deficit of 12.8 of GDP by raising regressive value-added tax while decreasing the progressive taxes levied on capital gains, real estate and investments.

“For lack of reforms, the IMF [International Monetary Fund] is refusing to disburse any of the $3bn package that are allocated to Lebanon.”

While the protest movement called for a “technocratic” government in Lebanon, the experiences of Greece and other countries facing financial difficulties suggest such governments can pose their own risks, especially when they involve unelected “experts” in prominent positions.

One example is the political reaction to the counterproductive austerity programme imposed on Greece by the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. This demonstrates how the demands of international investors can conflict with the needs of the local population.

Lebanon carries more than its fair share of refugees
Lebanon currently hosts the largest number of refugees per capita in the world, despite its scarce resources. This began as an overflow from the Syrian conflict in 2011, with nearly 1.2 million ‘displaced’ Syrians in Lebanon registered with UNHCR by May 2015.

When I visited Lebanon in 2015, I tried to grasp the scale of the refugee issue. In terms of population, Lebanon is comparable to New Zealand, with both countries having just over 5 million people.

I imagined what New Zealand would be like if it attempted to host a million refugees in addition to its general population. Yet in terms of land area Lebanon is only 10,400 square kilometres — about the size of New Zealand’s Marlborough region at the top of the South Island.

Now, imagine accommodating a population of over 5 million in such a small space, with more than a fifth of them being refugees.

While it was encouraging to see New Zealand increase its refugee quota to 1500 places in July 2020, we could afford to do much more in the current situation. This includes creating additional visa pathways for those fleeing Gaza and Lebanon.

#BREAKING
United States VETOES Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and the release of all hostages

RESULT
In Favor: 14
Against: 1 (US)
Abstain: 0 pic.twitter.com/BpUj5xhJHE

— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) November 20, 2024

On top of all that – Israeli attacks and illegal booby traps
Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the ongoing Israeli invasion of Gaza, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire across Lebanon’s southern border.

Israel makes much of the threat of rocket attacks on Israel from Hezbollah. However, data from US based non-profit organisation Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) shows Israel carried out 81 percent of the 10,214 attacks between between the two parties from October 7, 2023, and September 20, 2024.

These attacks resulted in 752 deaths in Lebanon, including 50 children. In contrast, Hezbollah’s attacks, largely centred on military targets, killed at least 33 Israelis.

Hezbollah continues to offer an immediate ceasefire, so long as a ceasefire also applies to Gaza, but Israel has refused these terms.

While the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) disputed these figures as an “oversimplification”, the IDF do not appear to dispute the reported number of Lebanese casualties. Hezbollah continues to offer an immediate ceasefire, so long as a ceasefire also applies to Gaza, but Israel has refused these terms.

In a further escalation, thousands of handheld pagers and walkie-talkies used in both civilian and military contexts in Lebanon and Syria suddenly exploded on September 17 and 18.

Israel attempted to deny responsibility, with Israeli President Isaac Herzog claiming he “rejects out of hand any connection” to the attack. However, 12 defence and intelligence officials, briefed on the attack, anonymously confirmed to The New York Times that Israel was behind the operation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later boasted during a cabinet meeting that he had personally approved the pager attack. The New York Times described the aftermath:

“Powered by just a few ounces of an explosive compound concealed within the devices, the blasts sent grown men flying off motorcycles and slamming into walls, according to witnesses and video footage. People out shopping fell to the ground, writhing in agony, smoke snaking from their pockets.”

The exploding devices killed 42 people and injured more than 3500, with many victims losing one or both of their hands or eyes. At least four of the dead were children.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikatri called the explosions “a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a crime by all standards”.

While around eight Hezbollah fighters were among the dead, most of those killed worked in administration roles and did not take part in hostilities. Under international humanitarian law targeting non-combatants is illegal.

Additionally, the UN Protocol on Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices also prohibits the use of “booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material”. Israel is a signatory to this UN Protocol.

Israel’s decision to turn ordinary consumer devices into illegal booby traps could backfire. While Israel frequently stresses the importance of its technology sector to its economy, who is going to buy technology associated with Israel now that the IDF have demonstrated its ability to indiscriminately weaponise consumer devices at any time?

International industry buyers will source elsewhere. Such a “silent boycott” could give greater momentum to the call from Palestinian civil society for boycotts, divestments and economic sanctions against Israel.

The booby trap pagers are also likely to affect the decisions of foreign airlines to service Israel on the grounds of safety. Since the war began in October 2023, the number of foreign airlines calling on Ben Gurion Airport in Israel has fallen significantly. Consequently, the cost of a round-trip ticket from the United States to Tel Aviv has risen sharply, from approximately $900 to $2500.

Israel targets civilian infrastructure in Lebanon
Israel has also targeted civilian organisations linked to Hezbollah, such emergency services, hospitals and medical centres operated by the Islamic Health Society (IHS). Israel claims Hezbollah is “using the IHS as a cover for terrorist activities”. This apparently includes digging people out of buildings, as search and rescue teams have also been targeted and killed.

Israel accuses the microloan charity AQAH of funding “Hezbollah’s terror activities”, including purchasing weapons and making payments to Hezbollah fighters. On October 20, Israel attacked 30 branches of AQAH across Lebanon, drawing condemnation from both Amnesty International and the United Nations.

Ben Saul, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism maintains AQAH is not a lawful military target: “International humanitarian law does not permit attacks on the economic or financial infrastructure of an adversary, even if they indirectly sustain its military activities.”

On top of all that — an Israeli invasion
In 1982, Israel attempted to use war to alter the political situation in Lebanon, with counterproductive results, including the creation of Hezbollah. In 2006, Hezbollah used the hilly terrain of southern Lebanon to beat Israel to a stalemate. Israel risks similar counterproductive outcomes again, at the cost of many more lives.

Yet on 1 October 2024, Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon, alongside strikes on Beirut, Sidon and border villages. The IDF confirmed the action on Twitter/X, promising a “limited, localised and targeted” operation against “Hezbollah terrorist targets” in southern Lebanon. One US official noted that Israel had framed its 1982 invasion as a limited incursion, which eventually turned into an 18-year occupation.

Israeli strikes have since expanded all over the country. According to figures provided by the Lebanese Ministry of Public Heath on November 13, Israel is responsible for the deaths of at least 3365 people in Lebanon, including 216 children and 192 health workers. More than 14,000 people have been wounded, and more than one million have been displaced from their homes.

Since September 30, 47 Israeli troops have been killed in combat in Southern Lebanon. Around 45 civilians in northern Israel have died due to rocket fire from Lebanon.

So, on top of an economic crisis, runaway inflation, unaffordable food, increasing poverty, the port explosion and covid-19, the Lebanese people now face a war that shows little signs of stopping.

Analysts suggest there is little chance of a ceasefire while Israel retains its “maximalist” demands, which include a full surrender of Hezbollah and allowing Israel to continue to attack targets in southern Lebanon.

A senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Mohanad Hage Ali, believes Israel is feigning diplomacy to push the blame on Hezbollah. The best chance may come alongside a ceasefire in Gaza, but Israel shows little signs of negotiating meaningfully on that front either.

On September 26, the Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah BouHabib summarised the mood of the country in the wake of the pager attack:

“[N]obody expected the war to be taken in that direction. We Lebanese—we’ve had enough war. We’ve had fifteen years of war. . . .We’d like to live without war—happily, as a tourist country, a beautiful country, good food—and we are not able to do it. And so there is a lot of depression, especially with the latest escalation.”

In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Māori phrase “Kia kaha” means “stand strong”. If I could send a message from halfway across the world, it would be: “Kia kaha Lebanon. I look forward to the day I can visit you again, and munch on a yummy Za’atar man’ousheh while admiring the view from the beautiful Corniche Beirut.”

Joe Hendren holds a PhD in international business from the University of Auckland. He has more than 20 years of experience as a researcher, including work in the New Zealand Parliament, for trade unions and on various research projects. This is his first article for Asia Pacific Report. His blog can be found at http://joehendren.substack.com

Where I ate my Za’atar man’ousheh – Pigeon’s Rock, Corniche Beiruit

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

American President Joe Biden is among the latest Western politicians to land in Tel Aviv in a show of support to Israel.

As Israel’s primary backer, the United States has sent two aircraft carriers to the region and indicated it could deploy 2000 American troops to Israel.

Biden was also set to meet Palestinian and Arab leaders in the Jordanian capital Amman. But Jordan cancelled the meeting after a reported airstrike on October 17 killed about 500 people at a Gaza hospital.

In the days after Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel, European and North American governments (with few exceptions) were quick to provide a unified and consistent message of support for Israel.

That message contains at least four interconnected elements:

• Israel is the victim of an unprovoked terrorist attack;
• Israel has the right to defend itself;
• The West fully stands with Israel against the barbaric and wanton violence of the Palestinians; and
• Hamas is to blame (either partially or fully) for all civilian deaths on both sides since they began these hostilities and forced Israel’s hand while hiding behind civilians.

Palestinians erased
There are a few important features of this message, but I want to focus on two that highlight the West’s double standards.

First, is the advancement of anti-Palestinian racism in the West. It is critical to underscore a salient feature of anti-Palestinian racism: the silencing of the Palestinian critiques of Zionism and Israel.

This is a dynamic which has its roots in the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) and erases Palestinian voices, history, presence, aspirations and identity from public discourse.

Political, media and educational institutions in the West regularly sideline and silence Palestinians and their supporters. This is not just an issue among the right-wing or even centrists, but occurs across the political spectrum.

Left-wing politics, including progressive spaces, that purport to be anti-racist often remain hostile to Palestinian voices

Here in Canada, a statement by progressive Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow painted a rally in support of Palestinians as allegedly supporting violence and as a threat to the safety and security of Canadian Jews. That statement is still up on her X account.

This is precisely the anti-Palestinian narrative that has permeated in the West for years: that all support for Palestine is inherently violent and driven by antisemitic hatred of all Jews. Thus, in the name of anti-racism, Palestinians and their supporters are denounced and even criminalised.

Gaza| The City Of War And Love. #GazaGenocide pic.twitter.com/naiFWgYS1G

— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) October 20, 2023

Differing reactions to civilian death
Second, the double standard is on display in the reactions we have seen to the killing of Israeli civilians and the reactions — or lack thereof — to the killing of Palestinian civilians. Many are rightly highlighting Western hypocrisy by drawing comparisons to how the West responded to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

We need to look at how Western governments have responded to the killing of Israeli civilians versus the killing of Palestinian civilians. For the Israeli state and Israeli victims, political, military, economic, cultural and social institutions have fully mobilised to provide support.

The same is entirely absent for the Palestinians. For the Palestinians, there are no evacuations. Aircraft carriers are not sent to provide military support. Mainstream political and cultural discourse does not humanise Palestinian life and mourn Palestinian death.

Aid relief is withheld and used as a bargaining counter. Economic support is not forthcoming. Institutions do not send Palestinians messages of support.

In some ways, this silence is not surprising. No one expressing support for Israel risks losing their livelihood. Many who have voiced solidarity with Palestinians have lost their jobs, been rebuked, suspended and faced doxing.

More than 400 congressional staffers signed a letter urging Congress to back a cease-fire in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/WT99B79n4f

— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) October 20, 2023

Western self-interest
States are not moral entities, but act purely in self-interest. Palestinian freedom and liberation does not align with the interests of the US-led West.

Therefore, Western institutions repeat the increasingly weak talking point that “terrorism” is the cause of all the violence. This talking point is used to provide Israel with the green light to unleash uninhibited violence against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Jerusalem.

The idea that Western governments and institutions are horrified by violence against civilians rings hollow because of their silence when it comes to violence against Palestinian civilians and other groups around the world.

For decades, Palestinians have been expelled from their land, killed and maimed in great numbers, including in mass atrocities and many well-documented cases of sexual violence and torture in Israeli prisons.

This only scratches the surface of the violence that Palestinians continuously experience, and have experienced, since well before Hamas was formed.

I’m confused. When Ukrainians attacked back after Russia’s invasion, the US celebrated them. When Palestinians do the same against Israeli occupation, they’re condemned.

Filter the propaganda through this lens: the US empire will always choose sides based on its own interests.

— Bianca Graulau (@bgraulau) October 8, 2023

Palestinians continue to suffer what Palestinian scholars Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha have called an ongoing Nakba and genocide of the Palestinian people. Yet, when Palestinians suffer, as they are now in Gaza, what Israeli historian and expert on genocide Raz Segal has called “a textbook case of genocide,” Western governments remain silent.

There was no Western outrage when Israel ordered more than a million Palestinians to leave their homes in 24 hours. In February, Israeli settlers went on an hours-long rampage in the Palestinian town of Huwara after two settlers were shot by a Palestinian.

Western condemnations of the rampage were muted or non-existent.

Hundreds of scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies are now sounding the alarm about the possibility of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The stories of Palestinian lives that end with the sudden drop of a bomb are not told. Palestinian voices that explain the settler colonialism they suffer remain sidelined. And Palestinian aspirations for decolonised liberation are denied.

The West’s institutional reaction is not just hypocritical, it is an expression of where Western governments stand on the question of Palestine. The West is an active participant in the erasure of Palestine, and when moments of intensified violence like this happen, the West’s true position becomes clear for all to see.

However, people power across the world, including in the US, provide reason for hope. Increasingly, many in the West are disgusted and ashamed by the erasure of Palestine and the killing of Palestinian civilians.

More people are joining the protests and calling for the siege on Gaza to be lifted once and for all. More people power is needed to demand that governments do everything they can to resolve this issue, which can only begin to move towards peace and justice when the Palestinian people are free.

M. Muhannad Ayyash is professor of sociology, Mount Royal University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Major media organisations all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch has asked BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it — even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government.

“Palestinian health officials in Gaza say hundreds of people have been killed in an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. They’re blaming an Israeli strike on the hospital.

“But the Israel DefenCe Forces said an initial investigation shows the explosion was caused by a failed Hamas rocket launch.”

That was how RNZ’s news at 8am last Tuesday reported the single deadliest incident of this conflict so far — and likely to be the deadliest one in all of the five times Israel and Hamas have fought over Gaza so far.

The Israeli Defence Force also singled out Islamic Jihad for the atrocity — but the absence of hard evidence put the media reporting it in a difficult position.

“It’s still absolutely unclear. There are varying bits of information that are coming out for now. I don’t think anybody can quite say . . . it’s most likely to have been Israel,” the BBC Middle East editor Sebastian Usher told RNZ on Wednseday night.

“They said it seems like it might be a misfired rocket,”

Huge anger on streets
“We can’t say for now, but I don’t think  — in terms of the mood in the Arab world and the Middle East — that that really matters. People out on the streets are showing huge anger and they will reject any investigation, any Israeli claim, to say that Israel is not responsible,” he said.

Reporting those claims and counterclaims creates confusion among the audience. It’s also stoked the anger of those objecting to reporters’ choice of words.

CNN’s Clarissa Ward, for example, was criticised heavily on social media for mentioning the Israeli Defense Force claims — and then expressing doubt about them at the same time.

A video showing a pro-Palestinian protester calling Clarissa Ward “a puppet” has gone viral on social media. So did another falsely accusing her of faking a rocket strike.

The longer version of the video of Egyptian podcaster Rahma Zein confronting CNN reporter Clarissa Ward at the Rafah crossing. It’s raw, sincere, and powerful. Much respect for Rahma, she expressed our collective pain at the Western media’s dehumanization of the Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/yfB7zFYPwe

— Amro Ali (@_amroali) October 20, 2023

Her CNN colleague Anderson Cooper was also criticised online for referring to a huge civilian loss of life during the live report from Tel Aviv in Israel and repeating himself, but then without the word “civilian”.

Among those who, alongside expert investigators, tried to sift the available evidence and cut through the information war was Alex Thompson, correspondent for UK broadcaster Channel Four

“Israel and Hamas can tweet what they like. The truth of what happened here requires independent expert investigation — not happening,” was Alex Thompson’s bleak conclusion.

‘A fierce information war’
“Any doubt is due to a fierce information war that in truth matters little to the victims of the Gaza hospital tragedy,” another British correspondent — ITV Jonathan Irvine — said on Newshub at 6 last Tuesday.

At times, broadcasters have used the wrong words and given audiences the wrong idea.

Last week the BBC’s main evening news bulletin made a rapid apology for describing pro-Palestine protests in the UK as “pro-Hamas”.

“We accept that this was poorly-phrased and was a misleading description,” the presenter told viewers just before the end of the bulletin.

And earlier this month, people protested outside the BBC News headquarters in London about the BBC’s long-standing policy of not labeling any group as “terrorists”.

“You don’t seem to be particularly interested. If the BBC seems to refuse to call terrorists even though the British Parliament has legislated them terrorists — that is a question I haven’t heard the BBC answer yet,” UK government Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told the BBC radio flagship news show Today.

“Have you not seen any of the coverage on the BBC of the atrocities, the dead, the injured, the survivors?” the startled presenter asked him.

“How can you say that we’re not interested?” she replied, when Shapps said he had.

An obligation to audiences
The BBC’s deputy chief executive of news Jonathan Munro was at Sydney’s South by Southwest festival this week to talk about how the BBC delivers news from and about conflict zones.

“We’ve already seen journalists lose their lives in this country, working for organisations who are also facing the same dilemmas as we are,” said Munro, who is also the BBC’s director of journalism.

“We’ve got an obligation to audiences to explain what’s going on and that involves lots of people on the ground as witnesses to events, but also the analysis that comes with expert knowledge,” he told Mediawatch.

“Expertise is just invaluable. People like Jeremy Bowen (former Middle East editor and current international editor of BBC News) and our chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and correspondents who are based in that region,” he said.

“But the main story here is the catastrophic loss of life and the appalling conditions that people are living in and that the hostages are being held in — the humanity of that,” he said.

A lot of reporting people will see, hear and read will come from Israel. Reporting from Gaza itself is difficult and dangerous — and access to Gaza at the border is restricted by Israel.

“We have a correspondent in Gaza, but he’s moved from Gaza City to Khan Yunis in the south of the strip, a safer option. But he can’t report 24 hours a day, and he is looking after his family which is paramount.

Need for transparency
“So we do have to add to that [with] reporting from Israel and from London by people who know Gaza very well,” he said.

“We have to be transparent about that and tell the audience and then the audience knows that wherever it’s coming from, and you still hold editorial integrity.”

A lot of what people will be seeing from Gaza is amateur footage and social media content that’s very difficult to verify.

The BBC recently launched BBC Verify, dedicated to checking out this kind of material and vetting its use.

“There’s a huge amount of video out there on social media we can all find at the touch of a button. The brand of BBC Verify is a signpost that the material . . . has been checked by us using methods like geolocation and looking at the metadata,” he said.

Even when verified, there are still ethical dilemmas.

For example, BBC Verify used facial recognition software to analyse images of an individual in the Hamas surprise attacks on October 8. It identified one gunman as a policeman from Gaza.

Independently verifying claims
“It’s case-by-case — but something shouldn’t go out on the BBC without us knowing it’s true. There are occasions we would broadcast something and we would tell the audience that we’ve not been able to independently verify a claim . . . and we need to caveat our coverage of the reaction to it with the fact that we do not have our own verification of source material,” he said.

Major media outfits all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch asks BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it – even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government https://t.co/gm8Fyv4ar1

— Mediawatch (@MediawatchNZ) October 21, 2023

Even before the Al Ahli hospital catastrophe amplified emotions, intense scrutiny of reporters’ work was adding to the stress of those reporting from the region.

“Every word you say is being scrutinised so closely and is likely to be contested by one side or the other more or both — and that definitely adds to the pressure,” Channel Four correspondent Secunder Kermani told the BBC’s Media Show last week from Gaza.

“In the Israel Gaza situation it is critical. Every word can be checked and rechecked and double checked for any implication which is either inferred or implied by accident.

“Because our job is to be impartial, tell the reality of the story, and most importantly, share the witnessing of that story by our correspondents,” Jonathan Munro told Mediawatch.

“That’s why we’ve got a significant number of correspondents in Israel and back in the newsroom in London are adding explanations and leaning into that scrutiny on language,” he said.

Adjectives ‘can be dangerous’
“We’re using expertise, our knowledge as an organisation and we’re making sure that at every stage of that every sentence, every paragraph is reflective of what we know to be true.

“But adjectives can be dangerous, because they may imply something which is more emotive than we mean. We have to be quite clean in our language in these circumstances,” he said.

“Of course, people can come on the BBC and express their views in language of their choice. All of those things help to keep our coverage straight and honest and ensure that correspondents on the ground aren’t in danger by slips or mistakes that are made in good faith elsewhere in the BBC output.”

Last week at its annual conference, senior members of the Conservative Party — which is in power in the UK — heavily criticised the BBC for alleged bias and elitism. Some — including home secretary Suella Braverman and former prime minister Liz Truss made a point of praising GB News — the new right-wing TV channel backed by billionaire Brexiteers — for disrupting the news.

“The criticism of the BBC from politicians is as old as the BBC itself. Just because they’re habitual critics doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but we’ve got a well developed set of editorial guidelines which have stood the test of time over many, many difficult stories,” Munro told Mediawatch. 

“The editorial guidelines are robust and public. You can go online and look at them. All of our journalism abides by those guidelines and if you have guidelines that you believe in as an organisation, that’s a significant defence to some of the less well-founded attacks that we sometimes find ourselves on the end of,” he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The initial contribution would include $2.5 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and a further $2.5 million to the World Food Programme (WFP) under the umbrella of the United Nations appeal.

The Defence Force also remains on standby to help with evacuations of New Zealanders from the area, if required.

In a statement, caretaker Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said he was “deeply saddened” by the deaths and conflict in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

“The situation continues to evolve rapidly, and New Zealand is joining other likeminded countries to support those civilians and communities affected by the conflict.

“The ICRC protects and assists victims of armed conflicts under international humanitarian law, and is working to gain access to people held hostage, distributing cash and other assistance to displaced people, and providing essential medical assistance and supplies.”

With the Erez and Kerem Shalom crossings shut, the Rafah border was the only way into and out of the Gaza Strip for people and also for humanitarian aid. But that had shut in October too.

Safe passage
Western countries are also getting involved to try to secure safe passage through Rafah for both foreign passport holders in Gaza and humanitarian aid, and there have been conflicting reports about whether it would open temporarily or not.

The WFP aid would help address food insecurity concerns in Gaza and the West Bank, and ensure emergency stock was prepared once access was guaranteed, Hipkins said.

“New Zealand calls for rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access to enable the delivery of crucial life-saving assistance.

“We call on all parties to respect international humanitarian law, and uphold their obligations to protect civilians, and humanitarian workers, including medical personnel.”

Both the ICRC and WFP act with full independence and neutrality.

With the Labour-led government being in the caretaker position and trying to transition to the National Party after the general elections, the decision for aid had been made after consultation with National leader Christopher Luxon, Hipkins’ statement read.

Luxon said he was appreciative of the communication between the outgoing government and the incoming one.

“It’s important that the government owns those decisions, we are consulted, and when we’re consulted we can give our support.”

NZDF on standby
On Monday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said most New Zealanders who were registered as being in Israel had already left, but 50 Kiwis were still there, and 20 were registered as being in the occupied Palestinian territories (Gaza and the West Bank).

But the government has asked for the New Zealand Defence Force to remain on standby in case it is needed to help with evacuations.

“While not everyone wanting to leave can necessarily get themselves to a departure point, the government has requested NZDF to remain on standby to deploy if necessary,” Hipkins said.

“Commercial routes remain the best option to depart the region, and MFAT is actively providing consular assistance to New Zealanders who remain in the affected region,” he said.

“Anyone who wishes to depart should take the earliest commercial opportunity to do so.”

New Zealand was also working with its partners on evacuation points for people who could not access commercial routes, but Hipkins acknowledged “the security situation on the ground make this difficult”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Israeli occupation forces are intentionally targeting Palestinian journalists in the besieged Gaza Strip, media outlets warned after three reporters were killed Tuesday bringing the total number of journalists killed since Saturday to seven, reports Middle East Monitor.

The Government Media Office’s Monitoring and Follow-up Unit in Gaza has documented dozens of attacks and crimes against journalists and media outlets.

Israeli attacks have resulted in the killing of seven journalists: Ibrahim Lafi, Muhammad Jarghun, Muhammad Al-Salhi, Asaad Shamlikh, Saeed Al-Taweel, Muhammad Subh Abu Rizq and Hisham Al-Nawajaha.

In addition, “more than 10 journalists have been injured with varying degrees of severity, and they lost contact with two colleagues, Nidal Al-Wahidi and Haitham Abdul-Wahed”.

The monitoring unit added that the homes of journalists Rami Al-Sharafi and Basel Khair Al-Din had been targeted and destroyed.

In contrast, the homes of dozens of other journalists were partially damaged.

Furthermore, dozens of media institutions were either completely or partially damaged by Israeli strikes including on Palestine Tower and Al-Watan Tower, with more than 40 media headquarters being affected, the unit reported.

Despite the risks, the government media office emphasised that their journalists will continue their professional role and national duty in covering the events, exposing the crimes of the occupation and debunking its false claims.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Hamas has responded to Israel’s escalating violence with an unprecedented attack. This is not a new tragedy; it is an extension of the same old cycle.

We grieve all the losses of this calamity, and we call on our government not to speak the same old words but to finally act.

To call today’s act “unprovoked” is wilful blindness. Choose your timeframe; choose your provocation.

Israel is carrying out the longest, now-illegal, now-apartheid occupation in modern history. Gaza has been illegally blockaded for 17 years, confining more than two million mostly civilian human beings in deteriorating conditions, subjecting them to repeated bombardments and ceaseless deprivation.

More than 200 Palestinians have been killed in 2023 so far, including four the other day. The latest of Israel’s settler-state pogroms in the West Bank took place in Huwara one day before Hamas’s action.

Hamas’s attack is a response to longterm and escalating, immediate violence.

The blockade wall that was breached is an illegal structure. A million children have been born behind that wall; did you expect them to sit quietly?

Wall deserves to fall
That wall deserves to fall — but we, here in Aotearoa and throughout the world, should have brought it down with diplomatic and economic and legal sanctions long before it came to this.

Now Hamas’s violent resistance has broken through the wall.

Palestinians have a legal right to armed resistance, but no one has a right to unlimited violence. There is no honour in attacking civilians in their homes or bombing Gazan apartment buildings.

It is a core principle of international humanitarian law that the violations of one armed group do not release another armed group from its constant obligation to uphold the rights of civilians. Armed groups are responsible to the law, to the idea of minimising the harm done in this world.

We who demand the protection of Palestinian civilians can best do that by calling for the protection of all civilians: human rights are either everyone’s rights or they are nothing.

If we lose sight of that, the world becomes even more dangerous — and Palestinians have always borne the brunt of that danger.

No military solution
There is no military solution. Solutions call for political will here, outside Israel/Palestine.

The rage and despair accumulated through generations and decades of brutality will not reset. Do not call for the return to the status quo ante because it was intolerable, unjust and illegal.

We, here in Aotearoa New Zealand, need to act on the basis of law and the equal rights of human beings to protection, to justice, to self-determination.

We call on our government to initiate, to pick up the phone and lead in mustering international action.

For anyone to be safe, Palestinians must be free and civilians must be protected.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz