New Zealand activist Roger Fowler, a longtime Gaza solidarity organiser and Palestine Chronicle contributor, who died last Saturday, leaves a legacy of principled resistance.

Roger Fowler was a beloved figure in the global solidarity movement and a steadfast advocate for justice in Palestine. He leaves behind a legacy defined by courage, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to a cause greater than himself.

Born in New Zealand, Roger dedicated much of his life to amplifying the voices of the oppressed and building bridges of solidarity across continents.

As coordinator of Kia Ora Gaza (Aotearoa New Zealand), he played a central role in grassroots efforts to challenge the inhumane blockade of Gaza and to bring aid and hope to its people.

Under his leadership, Kia Ora Gaza organised and supported international aid convoys and solidarity flotillas aimed at breaking the siege and delivering humanitarian assistance to besieged communities.

The most significant international moment connected to those efforts was 2010, during the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which sought to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

Solidarity networks across the world — including activists in Aotearoa New Zealand — mobilised politically, financially, and logistically around that initiative and subsequent flotilla attempts in the following years.

Inspired countless others
His determination and moral clarity inspired countless others to act with purpose and humanity in the face of injustice.

Roger’s voice was both passionate and principled. Even as his health declined, he remained a familiar presence at solidarity rallies across New Zealand, uplifting crowds with his words and his spirit.

To his friends and fellow activists, he was not only a colleague but a guiding light, a man of “great integrity and character with passion for justice”.

Beyond activism in the streets, Roger was also a thoughtful and committed writer. Through his contributions to The Palestine Chronicle, he brought stories of international solidarity to wider audiences.

His work illuminated both the daily struggles of Palestinians and the global networks of activism that stand with them.

In these difficult times, Roger’s work will continue to live on in the movements and projects he helped build. His life stands as a testament to the enduring power of solidarity, conviction, and the belief that ordinary people can make extraordinary differences.

The Palestine Chronicle family joins his loved ones, friends, and comrades in mourning this profound loss, and in honoring a life devoted to justice, dignity, and the freedom of Palestine.

This article was first published by The Palestine Chronicle under the title “Remembering Roger Fowler: A life devoted to justice and Palestinian freedom” on 23 February 2026.

• Roger Fowler’s life is being celebrated today at Ngā Tapuwae Community Centre, 255 Buckland Road, Mangere, 10-2pm, Wednesday, February 25.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The conflict between Israel and Iran over the past 12 days has redefined the regional chessboard. Here is a look at their key takeaways:

Israel:
Pulled in the US: Israel successfully drew the United States into a direct military confrontation with Iran, setting a significant precedent for future direct (not just indirect) intervention.

Boosted political capital: This move generated substantial political leverage, allowing Israel to frame US intervention as a major strategic success.

Iran:
Forged a new deterrence: Iran has firmly established a new equation of deterrence, emerging as a powerful regional force capable of directly challenging Israel, the US, and their Western allies.

Demonstrated independence: Crucially, Iran achieved this without relying on its traditional regional allies, showcasing its self-reliance and strategic depth.

Defeated regime change efforts: This confrontation effectively thwarted any perceived Israeli strategy aimed at regime change, solidifying the current Iranian government’s position.

Achieved national unity: In the face of external pressure, Iran saw a notable surge in domestic unity, bridging the gap between reformers and conservatives in a new social and political contract.

Asserted direct regional role: Iran has definitively cemented its status as a direct and undeniable player in the ongoing regional struggle against Israeli hegemony.

Sent a global message: It delivered a strong message to non-Western global powers like China and Russia, proving itself a reliable regional force capable of challenging and reshaping the existing balance of power.

Exposed regional dynamics: The events sharply exposed Arab and Muslim countries that openly or tacitly support the US-Israeli regional project of dominance, highlighting underlying regional alignments.

Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London). He has a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and was a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. This commentary is republished from his Facebook page.

In the final strike before the ceasefire, Iranian missiles caused extensive destruction, killing and injuring several Israelis in the city of Beersheba. pic.twitter.com/b25fHPw2yD

— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) June 24, 2025

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Israel is in a weak position and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremism knows no bounds. The only other way around an eventual regional war is the ousting of the Israeli prime minister.

US President Donald Trump has closed his line of communication with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to various reports citing officials.

This comes amid alleged growing pressure on Israel regarding Gaza and the abrupt halt to American operations against Ansarallah in Yemen. So, is this all an act or is the US finally pressuring Israel?

On May 1, news broke that President Donald Trump had suddenly ousted his national security advisor Mike Waltz. According to a Washington Post article on the issue, the ouster was in part a response to Waltz’s undermining of the President, for having engaged in intense coordination with Israeli PM Netanyahu regarding the issue of attacking Iran prior to the Israeli Premier’s visit to the Oval Office.

Some analysts, considering that Waltz has been pushing for a war on Iran, argued that his ouster was a signal that the Trump administration’s pro-diplomacy voices were pushing back against the hawks.

This shift also came at a time when Iran-US talks had stalled, largely thanks to a pressure campaign from the Israel Lobby, leading US think tanks and Israeli officials like Ron Dermer.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Trump publicly announced the end to a campaign designed to destroy/degrade Yemen’s Ansarallah-led government in Sana’a on May 6.

Israeli leadership shocked
According to Israeli media, citing government sources, the leadership in Tel Aviv was shocked by the move to end operations against Yemen, essentially leaving the Israelis to deal with Ansarallah alone.

After this, more information began to leak, originating from the Israeli Hebrew-language media, claiming that the Trump administration was demanding Israel reach an agreement for aid to be delivered to Gaza, in addition to signing a ceasefire agreement.

The other major claim is that President Trump has grown so frustrated with Netanyahu that he has cut communication with him directly.

Although neither side has officially clarified details on the reported rift between the two sides, a few days ago the Israeli prime minister released a social media video claiming that he would act alone to defend Israel.

On Friday morning, another update came in that American Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth would be cancelling his planned visit to Tel Aviv.

Can Trump and Netanyahu remake the Middle East?       Video: Palestine Chronicle

Is the US finally standing up to Israel?
In order to assess this issue correctly, we have to place all of the above-mentioned developments into their proper context.

The issue must also be prefaced on the fact that every member of the Trump government is pro-Israeli to the hilt and has received significant backing from the Israel Lobby.

Mike Waltz was indeed fired and according to leaked AIPAC audio revealed by The Grayzone, he was somewhat groomed for a role in government by the pro-Israel Lobby for a long time.

Another revelation regarding Waltz, aside from him allegedly coordinating with Netanyahu behind Trump’s back and adding journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a private Signal group chat, was that he was storing his chats on an Israeli-owned app.

Yet, Waltz was not booted out of the government like John Bolton was during Trump’s first term in office, he has instead been designated as UN ambassador to the United Nations.

The UN ambassador position was supposed to be handed to Elise Stefanik, a radically vocal supporter of Israel who helped lead the charge in cracking down on pro-Palestine free speech on university campuses. Stefanik’s nomination was withdrawn in order to maintain the Republican majority in the Congress.

If Trump was truly seeking to push back against the Israel Lobby’s push to collapse negotiations with Iran, then why did Trump signal around a week ago that new sanctions packages were on the way?

He announced on Friday that a third independent Chinese refiner would be hit with secondary sanctions for receiving Iranian oil.

Israeli demands in Trump’s rhetoric
The sanctions, on top of the fact that his negotiating team have continuously attempted to add conditions the the talks, viewed in Tehran as non-starters, indicates that precisely what pro-Israel think tanks like WINEP and FDD have been demanding is working its way into not only the negotiating team, but coming out in Trump’s own rhetoric.

There is certainly an argument to make here, that there is a significant split within the pro-Israel Lobby in the US, which is now working its way into the Trump administration, yet it is important to note that the Trump campaign itself was bankrolled by Zionist billionaires and tech moguls.

Miriam Adelson, Israel’s richest billionaire, was his largest donor. Adelson also happens to own Israel Hayom, the most widely distributed newspaper in Israel that has historically been pro-Netanyahu, it is now also reporting on the Trump-Netanyahu split and feeding into the speculations.

As for the US operations against Yemen, the US has used the attack on Ansarallah as the perfect excuse to move a large number of military assets to the region.

This has included air defence systems to the Gulf States and most importantly to Israel.

After claiming back in March to have already “decimated” Ansarallah, the Trump administration spent way in excess of US$1 billion dollars (more accurately over US$2 billion) and understood that the only way forward was a ground operation.

Meanwhile, the US has also moved military assets to the Mediterranean and is directly involved in intensive reconnaissance over Lebanese airspace, attempting to collect information on Hezbollah.

An Iran attack imminent?
While it is almost impossible to know whether the media theatrics regarding the reported Trump-Netanyahu split are entirely true, or if it is simply a good-cop bad-cop strategy, it appears that some kind of assault on Iran could be imminent.

Whether Benjamin Netanyahu is going to order an attack on Iran out of desperation or as part of a carefully choreographed plan, the US will certainly involve itself in any such assault on one level or another.

The Israeli prime minister has painted himself into a corner. In order to save his political coalition, he collapsed the Gaza ceasefire during March and managed to bring back his Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to his coalition.

This enabled him to successfully take on his own Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, in an ongoing purge of his opposition.

However, due to a lack of manpower and inability to launch any major ground operation against Gaza, without severely undermining Israeli security on other fronts, Netanyahu decided to adopt a strategy of starving the people of Gaza instead.

He now threatens a major ground offensive, yet it is hard to see what impact it would have beyond an accelerated mass murder of civilians.

The Israeli prime minister’s mistake was choosing the blocking of all aid into Gaza as the rightwing hill to die on, which has been deeply internalised by his extreme Religious Zionism coalition partners, who now threaten his government’s stability if any aid enters the besieged territory.

Netanyahu in a difficult position
This has put Netanyahu in a very difficult position, as the European Union, UK and US are all fearing the backlash that mass famine will bring and are now pushing Tel Aviv to allow in some aid.

Amidst this, Netanyahu made another commitment to the Druze community that he would intervene on their behalf in Syria.

While Syria’s leadership are signaling their intent to normalise ties and according to a recent report by Yedioth Ahronoth, participated in “direct” negotiations with Israel regarding “security issues”, there is no current threat from Damascus.

However, if tensions escalate in Syria with the Druze minority in the south, failure to fulfill pledges could cause major issues with Israeli Druze, who perform crucial roles in the Israeli military.

Internally, Israel is deeply divided, economically under great pressure and the overall instability could quickly translate to a larger range of issues.

Then we have the Lebanon front, where Hezbollah sits poised to pounce on an opportunity to land a blow in order to expel Israel from their country and avenge the killing of its Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah.

Trigger a ‘doomsday option’?
Meanwhile in Gaza, if Israel is going to try and starve everyone to death, this could easily trigger what can only be called the “doomsday option” from Hamas and other groups there. Nobody is about to sit around and watch their people starve to death.

As for Yemen’s Ansarallah, it is clear that there was no way without a massive ground offensive that the movement was going to stop firing missiles and drones at Israel.

What we have here is a situation in which Israel finds itself incapable of defeating any of its enemies, as all of them have now been radicalised due to the mass murder inflicted upon their populations.

In other words, Israel is not capable of victory on any front and needs a way out.

The leader of the opposition to Israel in the region is perceived to be Iran, as it is the most powerful, which is why a conflict with it is so desired. Yet, Tehran is incredibly powerful and the US is incapable of defeating it with conventional weapons, therefore, a full-scale war is the equivalent to committing regional suicide.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Israel’s assassination of the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, on yesterday is part of Tel Aviv’s overall desperate search for a wider conflict. It is a criminal act that reeks of desperation.

Almost immediately after the start of the Gaza war on October 7, Israel hoped to use the genocide in the Strip as an opportunity to achieve its long-term goal of a regional war — one that would rope in Washington as well as Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.

Despite unconditional support for its genocide in Gaza, and various conflicts throughout the region, the United States refrained from entering a direct war against Iran and others.

Although defeating Iran is an American strategic objective, the US lacks the will and tools to pursue it now.

After 10 months of a failed war on Gaza and a military stalemate against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel is, once more, accelerating its push for a wider conflict. This time around, however, Israel is engaging in a high-stakes game — the most dangerous of its previous gambles.

The current gamble involved the targeting of a top Hezbollah leader by bombing a residential building in Beirut on Tuesday — and, of course, the assassination of Palestine’s most visible, let alone popular political leader.

Successful Haniyeh diplomacy
Haniyeh, has succeeded in forging and strengthening ties with Russia, China, and other countries beyond the US-Western political domain.

Israel chose the place and timing of killing Haniyeh carefully. The Palestinian leader was killed in the Iranian capital, shortly after he attended the inauguration of Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The Israeli message was a compound one, to Iran’s new administration — that of Israel’s readiness to escalate further — and to Hamas, that Israel has no intentions to end the war or to reach a negotiated ceasefire.

The latter point is perhaps the most urgent. For months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done everything in his power to impede all diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the war.

By killing the top Palestinian negotiator, Israel delivered a final and decisive message that Israel remains invested in violence, and in nothing else.

The scale of the Israeli provocations, however, poses a great challenge to the pro-Palestinian camp in the Middle East, namely, how to respond with equally strong messages without granting Israel its wish of embroiling the whole region in a destructive war.

Considering the military capabilities of what is known as the “Axis of Resistance”, Iran, Hezbollah and others are certainly capable of managing this challenge despite the risk factors involved.

Equally important regarding timing: the Israeli dramatic escalation in the region, followed a visit by Netanyahu to Washington, which, aside from many standing ovations at the US Congress, didn’t fundamentally alter the US position, predicated on the unconditional support for Israel without direct US involvement in a regional war.

Coup a real possibility
Additionally, Israel’s recent clashes involving the army, military police, and the supporters of the far right suggest that an actual coup in Israel might be a real possibility. In the words of Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid: Israel is not nearing the abyss, Israel is already in the abyss.

It is, therefore, clear to Netanyahu and his far-right circle that they are operating within an increasingly limited time and margins.

By killing Haniyeh, a political leader who has essentially served the role of a diplomat, Israel demonstrated the extent of its desperation and the limits of its military failure.

Considering the criminal extent to which Israel is willing to go, such desperation could eventually lead to the regional war that Israel has been trying to instigate, even before the Gaza war.

Keeping in mind Washington’s weakness and indecision in the face of Israel’s intransigence, Tel Aviv might achieve its wish of a regional war after all.

Republished from The Palestine Chronicle with permission. The Chronicle is edited by Palestinian journalist and media consultant Ramzy Baroud, author of The Last Earth: A Palestine Story, who visited New Zealand in 2019.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

SPECIAL REPORT: By Roger Fowler

A delegation of the Miles of Smiles 41st solidarity aid convoy recently entered Gaza to deliver more than US$200,000 of much-needed medical supplies, including 250 new wheelchairs and walking frames, a range of crucial medical equipment such as monitors and defibrillators, and special equipment for people with disabilities.

This humanitarian convoy, hailed as an “important breakthrough”, is the first international civil society delegation to breach Israel’s illegal siege of the war-ravaged Gaza Strip via Egypt for many years.

Israel’s tight 15-year siege and naval blockade has resulted in a dire scarcity of vital medical equipment and other goods.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health will distribute the convoy’s supplies to health agencies throughout the impoverished enclave.

The Miles of Smiles 41st convoy has been organised in partnership with Turkiye-based Medics Worldwide, and supported by donor organisations in many countries including Algeria, Malaysia, Turkey, UK and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Convoy delegates, led by Dr Essam Youssef, visited many services in the Strip last weekend, including the Benevolent Society for People with Disabilities in Gaza City.

As shown in the video above, Dr Youssef viewed the society’s ambulance for disabled patients, which is one of 37 new ambulances delivered by the Miles of Smiles medical aid convoy to besieged Gaza in November 2021.

Kia Ora Gaza, which also raised NZ$10,000 towards the current MoS convoy, said that “the practical humanitarian responses of the international solidarity convoys and freedom flotillas are important components of the growing global movement to support the Palestinian struggle for human rights and to end Israel’s attacks and occupation of Palestine, and their illegal blockade of Gaza”.

Dr Essam Youssef said in a press conference after crossing into Gaza last week, that the campaign sought to express solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza.

“Our message is: Gaza is not alone,” he said.

Roger Fowler is the coordinator of Kia Ora Gaza (Aotearoa New Zealand), a member of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz