SPECIAL REPORT: By Eugene Doyle

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, even Australia has, on instruction from Winston’s counterpart Penny Wong, launched an investigation into testimonies of rape and torture by Australian members of the Global Sumud Flotilla.
France, Italy, Poland, Türkiye and others have launched investigations over crimes including unlawful interception and piracy, rape and other sexual violence, torture, systematic abuse and illegal detention.
Countries such as Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have issued stinging rebukes. Malaysia is taking Israel to the International Court of Justice over the kidnapping and violence dished out to their citizens.
Surprise for Global Sumud Delegation
Just the day before, to the surprise of the Global Sumud Delegation, the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs (after having done absolutely nothing since Israeli forces attacked the flotilla in international waters) sent them an email offering to pass on any information about mistreatment to the Israelis.
It triggered suspicion as to motives. Today’s exchange reveals that MFAT and its minister had already made up their minds.
Rana Hamida of Global Sumud Aotearoa said: “Knowing we were coming to Wellington, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent us an email yesterday asking us to provide information on what happened to our activists. The message was that they would put this to the Israelis — in other words: they will leave it to Israel to be both the criminal and the judge. That’s not good enough.”
I tell Hāhona Ormsby’s story in detail in “He’s Māori!” Hāhona Ormsby – a New Zealander in the gruesome Israeli prison system”.

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

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) June 18, 2026

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

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

Asia Pacific Report

A member of the Aotearoa delegation on the Global Sumud flotilla humanitarian aid mission seeking to break the illegal Gaza enclave blockade imposed by Israel since 2007 clashed with New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters in a parliamentary hearing yesterday.
Peters was attempting to defend his heavily criticised government response to Israel’s war on Gaza that has killed more than 75,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children — while speaking to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee yesterday.
Peters was answering a line of questions from MPs on whether New Zealand had spoken strongly enough against Israel, when Hāhona Ormsby — a flotilla activist who was brutally abused by Israeli military after being kidnapped in the Mediterranean sea near Cyprus last month and detained — stood up and interrupted him.

READ MORE: A world first: Australia will now investigate Israel over Gaza flotilla brutality
France opens ‘war crimes’ probe into Israel’s treatment of Gaza activists
Other allegations of Israeli brutality against Gaza flotilla activists
The Global Sumud Aotearoa dossier answering Israeli claims

“Is it New Zealand First, Winston? Or is it Israel First?” Ormsby asked.
He then asked whether New Zealand would sanction Israel, or “investigate Israel for the people that were on the flotilla who were brutally beaten and tortured?”
Ormsby and his fellow activists were then ordered by committee chair Tim van de Molen to leave the room. The video livestream feed was also cut during the protest.
Global Sumud Aotearoa Delegation activists came to Wellington this week to challenge Peters over what they condemned as “government inaction following the abduction and mistreatment of New Zealand citizens” by the Israeli military forces in both May and last year.
Australia, France, other countries investigating
Unlike Australia, France, Spain, Malaysia, Türkiye and several other countries, New Zealand and Peters have failed to launch a government investigation into the mistreatment of New Zealand citizens.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP), under instruction from Foreign Minister Penny Wong have now launched an investigation into rape and torture by Israeli forces on Australian citizens who were detained in international waters.

“Knowing we were coming to Wellington, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent us an email yesterday asking us to provide information on what happened to our activists,” a spokesperson for Global Sumud Aotearoa, Rana Hamida, said.
‘Israel both criminal and judge’
“The message was that they would put this to the Israelis — in other words: they will leave it to Israel to be both the criminal and the judge. That’s not good enough.
“Malaysia, for example, is taking Israel to the International Court of Justice over the kidnapping and violence dished out to their citizens.”
Hāhona Ormsby, who endured multiple beatings by the Israelis after being seized in international waters and taken to Israel, said: “Calling in the Israeli ambassador and slapping him with a wet bus ticket over tea and scones does not count as meaningful action.”
The government has treated people like Ormsby as a “threat” while doing nothing to hold Israel to account, Global Sumud Aotearoa said in a statement.
“I had two detectives come and interview me this week to assess if I was a ‘threat’. Imagine that? I joined the Sumud flotilla armed with nothing other than aroha and I — a New Zealand citizen — get treated as the problem,” Ormsby said.
“But some Israeli soldier fresh from killing women, children, and babies in Gaza and Lebanon knows they can holiday in New Zealand with no questions asked.”
Global Sumud Aotearoa is demanding that the NZ government launch its own “non-Israeli-led investigation”. New Zealand should coordinate with other governments who had already launched inquiries into the attack on their citizens, the group said in its statement.
“A first step would be for the government to formally interview our returning activists. Second, the government should liaise with the Turkish authorities who sent planes to Israel to bring over 400 detained Sumud activists to safety in Istanbul.
“It should be noted New Zealand provided absolutely no support whatsoever to their citizens,” the statement said.
All the Sumud people who were flown out of Israel, including the New Zealand citizens, were given medical examinations and forensic interviews in Türkiye.
Some, including Hāhona Ormsby and fellow Kiwi Mousa Taher, received hospital treatment for their injuries.
“MFAT requesting medical records from Türkiye would be a useful place to start,” the Sumud statement said.
Global Sumud Aotearoa has widely distributed a detailed response to “Israeli propaganda that ludicrously suggested that the black eyes, broken noses and ribs inflicted on citizens from over 40 countries was an elaborate hoax”.
“The photo of the damaged face of New Zealand citizen Julien Blondel, beaten by Israelis in an attack in international waters on April 29, should have triggered immediate action by the NZ government,” the statement said.
“The Israelis, realising that New Zealand and other Western governments stood with them, not their own citizens, increased the level of violence in their June attack on over 50 vessels.”

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/is-it-nz-first-or-israel-first-hahona-challenges-nz-foreign-minister-peters/

RNZ Pacific

A Pacific politics expert and ni-Vanuatu woman has become the first woman to be appointed to lead the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) Secretariat.

Anna Naupa, described by the Vanuatu government as “one of the nation’s finest minds”, is the new director-general of the sub-regional bloc, which is headquartered in Port Vila.
The MSG is made up of Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji and the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) of New Caledonia.

READ MORE: Other MSG reports

In a statement yesterday, Vanuatu’s Office of the Prime Minister said Naupa’s appointment was “a historic moment”.
“Since the MSG was founded in 1986 by the giants of Melanesia — Paias Wingti of Papua New Guinea, Father Walter Lini of Vanuatu, Ezekiel Alebua of Solomon Islands, and our brothers from the FLNKS [Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front] — Vanuatu has waited 40 years to lead this organisation.
“Today, that wait ends,” it said.
It said Naupa’s appointment sends a clear message to every young ni-Vanuatu girl to “aspire for the best, because the highest offices in our region are within your reach”.
Inspiring new generation
Naupa’s leadership will inspire a new generation to dream bigger and serve boldly, it added.
The Vanuatu government said it holds immense confidence in Naupa’s capabilities, leadership, and integrity, and commended the MSG and the selection team for a transparent process “that has delivered the right leader for this moment”.
Vanuatu Prime Minister Jotham Napat congratulated Naupa.
“We know the MSG was born from struggle — its heart has always been the political aspirations of the Kanak people and the big issues facing Melanesia,” the Office of the Prime Minister’s statement said.
“Over the years the organisation has grown, expanding its focus to trade, sports, culture, and other areas of common interest that bind our nations. Vanuatu believes the success of the MSG under Dr Naupa’s leadership will depend on never losing sight of that founding spirit — solidarity, justice, and self-determination for our peoples.
“Anna, you carry not just a title, but the hopes of a region. You carry Vanuatu’s pride, Melanesia’s trust, and the spirit of Father Walter Lini’s vision.”
Naupa replaces Papua New Guinea’s Leonard Louma, who was appointed in February 2022 and finished his term in late 2024.
Solomon Islander Ilan Kiloe, who is the political and security affairs programme manager, was acting in the role following Louma’s departure.
The MSG Secretariat has not made any official announcements on Naupa’s appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/vanuatus-anna-naupa-becomes-first-woman-to-lead-msg-secretariat/

Kindness in Power Media Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has donated her personal income from speaking engagements, book projects, and community initiatives over recent years — estimated at NZ$3.8 million — to a nationwide homelessness support initiative across Aotearoa.

The project helps fund 60 transitional housing units and more than 120 emergency shelter beds for families in need. “I have witnessed firsthand the impact that homelessness can have on families and communities across New Zealand,” Dame Jacinda Ardern said during a charity event in Auckland.

READ MORE:Former NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern donates personal income to homeless project Jacinda Ardern on Australia: ‘It’s a wonderful place to be’ Other Jacinda Ardern reports “I have always believed that if we have the ability to help others, we should do so in a way that creates meaningful and lasting change.

No one deserves to live without safety, dignity, or a place to call home.” According to organisations involved in the project, the funding will be used to expand long-term housing assistance programmes, emergency accommodation services, community food initiatives, counselling support, and resources for families facing financial hardship.

Project coordinators said the initiative will focus particularly on helping families with children, single parents, and individuals experiencing housing insecurity rebuild stable and independent lives. Supporters across New Zealand have praised Ardern for what many are calling one of the most compassionate and impactful humanitarian gestures she has made since leaving office.

Messages of support quickly spread across social media, with many people saying the donation reflected the values of empathy, kindness, and community responsibility that have long been associated with her public service career. Â

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/17/former-nz-pm-jacinda-ardern-donates-book-media-earnings-to-homelessness-project/

COMMENTARY: By Lim Tean

Two days ago, I wrote an article and posted on FaceBook describing the US-Iran ceasefire as a surrender document. That article has since been viewed more than 4.5 million times, liked 56,000 times, and shared more than 11,000 times.
The response confirmed what many already sensed but could not yet prove: that something was deeply wrong with the terms America had accepted.
Now, with the full text of the 14-point Memorandum of Understanding obtained by Al Arabiya English, we no longer have to speculate. The document speaks for itself — and it confirms everything I said.

READ MORE: Trump, Pezeshkian sign US-Iran MoU to end war, both sides confirm
Other War on Iran reports

As a lawyer, I have spent a 35 year career parsing legal language with precision. Reading this MOU, my conclusion is unequivocal: this is not a peace agreement between equals.
This is a surrender document. The Americans did not want the world to see this text, and reading it, it is not difficult to understand why.
I will now explain in detail why that is so. Let me set out all 14 clauses in full, and then explain what they mean.
The 14 clauses of the Iran MOU:

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States, together with their allies in the current war, declare upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and undertake that from now on they will not launch any hostile action against each other, and will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other. The final agreement will confirm the provisions of this Article and the remaining Articles.
The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States undertake to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.
The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States undertake to negotiate and reach a final agreement within a maximum period of 60 days, extendable by mutual h a final agreement within a maximum period of 60 days, extendable by mutual consent.
Immediately upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, the United States will lift the naval blockade and prevent any interference or obstruction against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and restore traffic within a maximum of 30 days to its full capacity; the traffic of ships shall be proportional to the pre-war volume of traffic on the part of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States also undertakes to withdraw its forces from the surrounding areas within 30 days after the final agreement.
Upon signing this Memorandum of Understanding, the Islamic Republic of Iran will immediately take steps to ensure that the movement of merchant ships from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa is resumed within 30 days to the pre-war volume, taking into account the need for the removal of technical obstacles and the neutralisation of mines by Iran.
The United States undertakes, together with its regional partners, to create a comprehensive plan agreed upon by both parties for the rehabilitation and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran, while ensuring financing of at least $300 billion. The implementation mechanism of this plan, as part of the final agreement, will be formulated within 60 days.
The United States commits to ending, on a schedule to be agreed upon as part of the final agreement, all types of sanctions currently facing the Islamic Republic of Iran, including resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and all unilateral US sanctions, both primary and secondary.
The Islamic Republic of Iran reiterates that it will never produce nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States have agreed that the fate of enriched material and the fate of all other mutually agreed nuclear-related issues, including Iran’s nuclear needs, will be adequately addressed in a final agreement; the final agreement will confirm the provisions of this Article.
The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States agree that, pending a final agreement, they will maintain the status quo: Iran will maintain the status quo on its nuclear programme, and the United States will not impose new sanctions on Iran or strengthen its forces in the region.
The United States undertakes that immediately after the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, and until the date of the lifting of sanctions, the United States Treasury Department will issue waivers for exports of Iranian crude oil, petrochemical products and their derivatives, and all related services, including banking, insurance, transportation, and the like.
The United States undertakes that, in light of the progress of negotiations towards a final agreement, frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be released and made fully available. These funds, whether held in the master account or transferred, will be used for any final beneficiary payment determined by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran and will be fully available for use. The United States undertakes to issue all necessary permits and licenses on this basis.
The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States agree that an implementation mechanism will be established to oversee the successful implementation of and future commitment to the Final Agreement.
Following the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, and upon receipt of assurances regarding the commencement of implementation of Articles 4, 5, 10, and 11 of this Memorandum of Understanding, and the continued implementation of these steps, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States will enter into negotiations for a Final Agreement solely with respect to the remaining Articles.
The final agreement will be approved through a binding resolution of the UN Security Council.

Why this is a surrender document — and worse than Obama’s JCPOA:
Reading this MOU as a lawyer, the conclusion is clear beyond peradventure. Let me explain why, point by devastating point:
First: The $300 billion.
Clause 6 commits the United States and its regional partners to finance Iran’s rehabilitation and economic development to the tune of at least $300 billion. Let us call this what it is — reparations. The victor does not pay the defeated party $300 billion. The party that initiated a war, prosecuted it, and lost pays the winner. The Obama JCPOA involved releasing approximately $100–150 billion in frozen Iranian assets — money that was already Iran’s. This MOU commits the United States to generating $300 billion in fresh financing for Iranian development. Trump went to war and came back owing Iran more than twice what Obama ever conceded.
Second: The Strait of Hormuz remains in Iranian hands.
Clause 5 requires Iran to clear its own mines and restore shipping — a technical concession that actually confirms something extraordinary: Iran controls the waterway. The MOU contains not a single provision preventing Iran from later imposing transit fees, “environmental levies,” or “navigational service charges” on vessels passing through. It is tolls under a different name. The Strait of Hormuz, the jugular vein of global energy supply, remains firmly within Iran’s sovereign grip. The United States went to war and lost the Strait, which had been open to the world before then.
Third: The nuclear question is left wide open — and Trump’s bombast about Iran’s enriched uranium is flatly contradicted by the text.
This is perhaps the most legally significant point of all. Clause 8 states that Iran “reiterates” it will never produce nuclear weapons. The word “reiterates” is not accidental — it is a diplomatic term of art meaning Iran is simply repeating a prior position, not making a fresh, legally binding, verifiable commitment. There is no dismantlement of centrifuges. No reduction in enrichment levels. No breakout timeline. No snap inspections. The fate of enriched material is merely deferred to the final agreement. Compare this to the JCPOA, which at least imposed specific caps on enrichment, reduced Iran’s stockpile by 98 percent, limited centrifuges, and established a 15-year timeline with IAEA verification. This MOU gives America nothing comparable.
Trump has boasted publicly that under this deal, America will be able to seize and destroy Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium. This is pure fantasy. Read Clause 8 again: the fate of enriched material is to be “adequately addressed in a final agreement”. That is all. There is no mechanism for seizure, no timeline for removal, no verification procedure, and no enforcement clause. The enriched uranium remains in Iran’s possession, on Iranian soil, under Iranian control — today, tomorrow, and until such time as a final agreement is reached, if one ever is. Indeed, Clause 8 explicitly acknowledges “Iran’s nuclear needs,” a formulation that implicitly recognises Iran’s right to continue developing its nuclear programme as it sees fit. Far from constraining Iran’s nuclear ambitions, this MOU hands Iran enormous residual power over the direction and pace of its own nuclear development. The deal does not strip Iran of its nuclear leverage — it leaves that leverage entirely intact while America pays the bills.
I make no judgment on whether Iran should or should not possess nuclear weapons — my longstanding view has always been that if Iran is not to have them, Israel, which possesses an undeclared arsenal, should not have them either.
But the point is this: it is pure hyperbole for Trump to claim that under this deal Iran cannot acquire nuclear weapons. The MOU does not prevent it. And given that the Iranian President Pezeskian, in a recent call with the Pakistani Prime Minister, reportedly threatened to detonate a nuclear device if America remained intransigent — and given that Pakistan has given assurances to Turkey of nuclear cover in the event of an Israeli threat — who is to say a similar assurance will not be extended to Iran by Pakistan, China, Russia, or North Korea? The MOU provides no answer.
Fourth: The sequencing reveals everything.
Clause 13 is perhaps the most telling of all. It provides that Iran and the United States will enter final agreement negotiations only after America has commenced implementation of Articles 4, 5, 10, and 11 — meaning the naval blockade is lifted, frozen assets are released, oil export waivers are issued, and shipping is restored — all before a final deal is concluded. America gives first. Iran negotiates later. This is the logic not of a victor extracting concessions, but of a supplicant purchasing the right to sit at the table.
The bottom line
Donald Trump launched military strikes on Iran, deployed carrier battle groups, imposed a naval blockade, and subjected Iranian infrastructure to sustained bombardment. He did so with maximalist rhetoric about preventing Iran from ever obtaining nuclear weapons and forcing Iran’s unconditional surrender. The MOU he has now signed delivers: a $300 billion development commitment, no structural nuclear dismantlement, Iranian retention of effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, immediate American concessions before final negotiations even begin, and a nuclear clause so weak that the word “reiterates” does all the work of what should have been a cast-iron prohibition.
Obama’s JCPOA, whatever its imperfections, at least contained specific, measurable nuclear rollbacks, independent verification mechanisms, and phased sanction relief tied to verified Iranian compliance. This MOU contains none of that structural architecture.
Trump tore up the JCPOA calling it the worst deal in history. He then went to war. And he came home with something worse.
And here is a modest suggestion for the occasion. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles — a document that imposed such punishing reparations and national humiliation on Germany that it gave rise to Adolf Hitler and delivered the world into the catastrophe of the Second World War.
President Macron is now set to dine President Trump in that same Hall of Mirrors during the G7 summit. How fitting it would be — how perfectly, poetically fitting — if Trump were to stay on and sign the final MOU with Iran on June 19 in that very same Hall. After all, a room that once witnessed one great power reduce another to humiliating reparations is precisely the right setting for a document in which the self-proclaimed world’s greatest dealmaker has somehow managed to be the one paying them.
The mirrors — 357 in total, at least, would reflect the moment with perfect clarity.
Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/17/trump-went-to-war-against-iran-and-got-a-deal-far-worse-than-obama/

By Keiller MacDuff of RNZ

Police have paid $10,000 to veteran activist John Minto after he was unlawfully arrested and pepper-sprayed at a pro-Palestinian protest in Christchurch in 2024.
The Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) last year found Minto’s arrest was unlawful and an officer used excessive and unjustified force.
The payout follows negotiations between police and Minto following the authority’s findings.

READ MORE: Other pro-Palestine protest reports

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national organiser Minto, then 70, was charged with obstructing and resisting police during a protest in Lyttelton on Waitangi Day 2024. Charges were later dropped.
Minto said he would donate the money to the group.
He said he was concerned police still disputed the authority’s findings.
A police investigation concluded the officer’s actions were lawful, but he had failed in his duty to provide aftercare after pepper-spraying Minto.
“I’m pleased this issue is now resolved but disturbed that even after the IPCA report, the police have not accepted responsibility for what in this instance was thuggish behaviour,” Minto said.
Writing to minister
He would write to Police Minister Mark Mitchell calling for law changes to make IPCA findings legally binding on police.
IPCA chair Judge Kenneth Johnston KC wrote to Minto last year and said the authority had found inconsistencies between the arresting officer’s account and video footage, which led the authority to “doubt the genuineness” of the officer’s version.
The authority did not accept the police explanation that Minto had moved from where he was standing or that the officer could have perceived Minto as a real threat.
Johnston said the authority considered the possibility of police charging the officer with assault, but could not rule out self-defence. Instead, the authority asked police to consider an employment process for the officer involved. Police declined to do so.
Minto was pepper-sprayed as police arrested another protester. Half an hour later he was himself arrested ostensibly for obstructing the earlier arrest.
The IPCA found there was no case for the obstruction charge and no grounds to suspect Minto had hindered the arrest of the other protester, “or indeed showed any intention of doing so”.
‘Standing lawfully’
“Our view is that you were standing lawfully on the footpath both prior and during the other protester’s arrest. The evidence does not show you advancing past where you were originally standing after being pushed by the officer who pepper sprayed you, and that you were not paying any attention to the arrest.”
Canterbury District Commander Superintendent Tony Hill said, at the time of the authority’s findings, that police were satisfied there were no employment or criminal matters to address.
“It is important to note that the officer involved was one of a group of other officers dealing with policing a large group of people, in a heightened and dynamic environment,” he said.
Police have been approached for comment on the payment to Minto.

This story was first published on

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/17/veteran-activist-john-minto-gets-10000-from-nz-police-after-unlawful-pro-palestine-arrest/

The Australian government has committed to an independent investigation into the assaults, sexual assaults and torture of the Gaza Flotilla humanitarians. Michael West Media reports.

By Andrew Brown in Sydney
This is the biggest story most Australians have not yet grasped.
Australian survivors of physical, psychological and sexual abuse by Israeli authorities met with Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Dr Anne Aly MP, a Deputy Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP), and a senior DFAT official on Monday.
As a result, the Australian government has committed to an independent investigation into the assaults, sexual assaults and torture of the Gaza Flotilla humanitarians.

READ MORE: Family welcomes Australian investigation into IDF abuse claims
France opens ‘war crimes’ probe into Israel’s treatment of Gaza activists
Other allegations of Israeli brutality against Gaza flotilla activists

Read that again. Not an internal Israeli review. Not a department preparing a briefing note. Not a politician expressing concern.

An independent Australian investigation,
with the AFP at the table, into the conduct of the military and prison personnel of one of this country’s closest allies.
That is not normal. There is no comparable moment in the modern history of the relationship. A Western democracy, a reliable friend of Israel, has committed to formally investigating the Israeli state over what it did to that democracy’s own citizens.
That has not happened before. Anywhere.
Eleven Australians
The Australians were among humanitarian volunteers detained by Israel after attempting to deliver food, medicine and aid to starving civilians in Gaza. Eleven of them came home with allegations of physical abuse, assault and, in several cases, sexual assault.
And the investigation did not happen by accident. It happened because a handful of Australians refused to let it be buried.
Juliet Lamont and Neve O’Connor came home injured and traumatised, and instead of retreating into private recovery they kicked the door of the national conversation off its hinges. They put their names to sworn testimony. They sat through Senate estimates. They took their case to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
And when their own prime minister declined to meet them, Lamont’s response was devastating in its simplicity. If Australian survivors can be heard in The Hague but not in Canberra, something has gone badly wrong.

Today they were heard.
“We came here seeking justice for survivors of Israel’s abuse of Australian citizens,” Lamont said after the meeting. “Today we secured an Australian investigation. Believing survivors is the first step. Investigation is the second. Justice is the third.
“There must be consequences for Israel’s brutality.”
O’Connor put the stakes in their proper, global frame. “What happened to us is what Palestinians have been warning the world about for decades. The same methods. The same perpetrators. The same chain of command.
“This investigation matters not only because Australians were harmed. It matters because it exposes the nature of the state responsible.”
That is the heart of it. And it is why this is much bigger than 11 Australians and one flotilla.

Will Israel cooperate?
A credible investigation will need operational footage, body camera recordings, communications records, detention logs, medical records and witness statements. Material capable of establishing exactly what happened.
And this is where Israel is trapped. There are only two paths, and both are damning.
It can cooperate. Hand over the footage, open the logs, produce the records, name the personnel. If its account is true, that material exonerates it completely. A government confident in its own conduct does not hide the evidence. It rushes to produce it.
Or it can refuse. And if it refuses, every Australian is entitled to ask one question. Why? Why would a state that insists it did nothing wrong withhold the one thing capable of proving it? There is only one honest answer, and Israel knows it. You do not bury evidence that vindicates you.

You bury evidence that convicts you.
This is established behaviour. When the United Nations investigated the 2010 Mavi Marmara raid, Israel refused to let its soldiers be interviewed and ran its own inquiry instead. The pattern is decades old. Deny everything, investigate nothing independently, wait for the world to lose interest.
Israel denies
Israel’s ambassador maintains that participants were treated appropriately. Its prison service has issued a flat denial.
Yet National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted footage of detained activists handcuffed and forced to crouch as guards waved Israeli flags in their faces, and called himself proud of it. Let the evidence speak. A state with nothing to hide would already be couriering the files to Canberra.
What makes this explosive is who is asking the questions. Australia is not Iran, not South Africa, not one of Israel’s usual critics. It has spent decades as one of Israel’s most dependable friends.
When a loyal friend opens a file on you, the findings carry a weight no critics ever could.
Remembering Zomi Frankcom
Australians remember Zomi Frankcom. When the aid worker was killed in Gaza, the government accepted an Israeli internal review where it should have demanded answers. That impression has not faded. This time the government has committed to something different,

and it will be held to it.
Penny Wong has told the Senate she believes the women, calling their treatment horrific and unacceptable. Today she went further and committed her government to act. The question is no longer whether the allegations are credible. It is what Australia does with what it finds.
Sanctions. Travel bans. And the bluntest instrument of all. Australia could expel Israel’s ambassador and declare implicated officials persona non grata, putting them on a plane.
A few years ago the idea was fantasy. It is now a live question, and it sharpens with every day Israel stonewalls.
Australia breaks ranks
Understand what is truly at stake. For decades Israel has acted in the settled expectation that it answers to no one, underwritten by the certainty that its Western friends would always look away.
That assumption is what is now on trial in Canberra. The moment a trusted ally follows the evidence wherever it leads, the spell breaks, and other capitals discover they can ask the question too.
This is why the world is watching a story that began with a few small boats.
The 11 Australians have names. Neve O’Connor, Juliet Lamont, Zack Schofield, Surya McEwen, Sam Woripa Watson, Anny Mokotow, Bianca Pullman Webb, Ethan Floyd, Violet Coco, Gemma O’Toole and Helen O’Sullivan. They are not going away.
The era of impunity rested on a single belief. That no friend would ever break ranks. A friend just did.
Asia Pacific Report notes: Three New Zealanders on the Global Sumud Flotilla had similar allegations of brutality and inhuman treatment by the Israeli security forces, along with more than 300 people from more that 40 countries. France has opened a ‘war crimes’ investigation into Israel after the brutality.

Andrew Brown is a Sydney businessman in the health products sector, former Deputy Mayor of Mosman and Palestine peace activist. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/17/a-world-first-australia-will-now-investigate-israel-over-gaza-flotilla-brutality/

By Kaya Selby of RNZ Pacific

A human rights activist in Fiji is calling for the joint police-military taskforce on drugs to be disbanded, but the Fijian government says it does not support the call.

It comes as the military revealed more than 60 witnesses have been spoken to in an investigation into the death of Jone Vakarisi, The Fiji Times reported.
Police have classified Vakarisi’s death as murder after the Republic of Fiji Military Forces had initially claimed that the notorious figure known to law enforcement had died of pre-existing conditions.

READ MORE: Other Fiji police brutality reports

Exactly two months have passed since his death and so far no one has been charged, but the Policing Ministry released a statement over the weekend, saying that the investigation into Vakarisi’s alleged murder was nearing completion.
It is also over a week since another man from a suburb about 15 minutes from the capital Suva, Sakiasi Ose Radravu, passed away following what his family says was a raid.
The raid resulted in an alleged severe beating and torture by police and military officers, which the family alleges led to Radravu’s death weeks later, though police claim a post-mortem links the death to a pre-existing condition.
This raid took place around the same time as Vakarisi’s alleged murder in a military cell. The official Fiji police post-mortem report released on June 6 stated that Radravu’s death was linked to a pre-existing medical condition.
Investigation nearly complete
“The independent investigation into the death of Mr Jone Vakarisi is nearing completion, while investigations into the death of Mr Sakiasi Radravu remain ongoing. These investigations must be allowed to proceed thoroughly, independently, and without prejudice,” Fiji’s Ministry of Policing and Communications said in a statement on Saturday, June 13.
The ministry said the joint police-military operations were making a real difference in disrupting illicit drug networks.
“Government does not support calls to terminate the Joint Police-Military Operations. However, operational success can never excuse human rights violations. Joint operations must continue lawfully, professionally, and with full accountability.”
Four police officers have been placed on leave while eight others are being investigated.
Police also confirmed over the weekend the Radravu family’s allegation that a military officer had instigated the raid.
Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) chief executive Shamima Ali claims that the security forces may be responsible — this year alone — for two deaths and countless more injuries.
“This [is] a historic pattern that is being repeated, whether it’s the police [or] the military,” she told RNZ Pacific.
“We need to know who are the people doing the investigations — we actually call for an independent investigation,” Ali said.
‘Not hard to find out’
“Two people have died, and where and what seems to be quite clear, so it’s not that hard to find out who [the perpetrators] are.”
Last week, Amnesty International also called for the suspension of implicated officers and the dismantling of the joint taskforce.
Ali said as a result of increased military involvement, and a diminishing degree of police transparency, it has become harder to advocate and protect the most vulnerable.
“Even with us at the Crisis Centre, we are having so many difficulties in bringing to light cases of rape, wife assault … [due to] the lack of knowledge, the lack of transparency, and so on.
“If Fiji had a robust, well-trained police force — that is what they are there for — we would not need the military to interfere.”
But unlike in the past, Ali noted the role of social media, where both the Vakarisi and Radravu cases emerged in the public consciousness.
“People are talking a lot more, and people are becoming a lot more aware of when a young, particularly Fijian, is being taken into custody.”

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/16/calls-to-dismantle-joint-taskforce-rejected-by-fiji-govt-despite-brutality-allegations/

COMMENTARY: By Tucker Carlson

So, the whole Iran war, like so much of life, has turned out to be exactly the opposite of what you thought: You initiate a regime change war against Iran. You kill its elderly cleric head of state. You blow up a girls’ school. You sink its ships. You decapitate its “Air Force,” whatever that was.
You unleash the full fury of the largest military in human history on this country and, in the end, almost inevitably, that country becomes stronger and the countries that attack it become weaker.
Again, only in real life do ironies like this exist, but they are everywhere. In fact, that is the story of life. The opposite happens.

READ MORE: Trump says Iran MoU signed electronically, Hormuz to open fully on
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Who could have called this? Well, certainly almost no one in Washington saw this coming, because they’ve been talking about this war with Iran and the need to decapitate Iran and the need to do something about Iran: “America’s biggest problem is Iran, and their proxies, and the Houthis and Hezbollah and Hamas.”
Whenever they gather in Washington to talk about the world, Iran is at the top of the list of problems we must solve.
And in almost none of these gatherings has anyone piped up to say, “Well, wait a second, if we do that, the opposite will happen. Iran will become more powerful, and we will become less powerful.”
Almost nobody said that in Washington. Literally almost nobody. And if there is somebody, who is that person? There wasn’t one.
At least one realist
But there was at least one person outside of Washington who said this. His name is John Mearsheimer. He’s been a professor at the University of Chicago since 1982, for over 40 years.
And he studies international relations, the way that countries get along with each other, the balances of power regionally and globally. And he’s smart and he’s erudite, but above all, he is wise.
He draws obvious conclusions from longitudinal data sets. He looks at what happens over time and tries to understand what this tells us about the way nations behave and about the way people behave, about human nature, which is constant, it doesn’t change.
And because he is one of the very few people in the field of international relations who has this ability, married to personal bravery, he’s willing to say things that are unpopular, which is the rarest of all qualities in academia.
Because he has these two qualities, he has been maybe the only guy, or one of the very few guys, to call it right.
Back in 2007, he and a friend of his from Harvard called Stephen Walt wrote a book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, on the so-called Jewish lobby, AIPAC, and the whole constellation of non-profits in Washington that seek to steer the US Congress and the executive of the White House to giving Israel more money and more military aid, to changing the inherent priorities of American foreign policy, which are to protect and enhance the United States and to do things that are good for the population of America, to change that priority to protect Israel, to do what Israel wants.
The two of them wrote this fairly famous book about it back in 2007 and were immediately attacked, can you guess, as Nazis and anti-Semites. Well, turns out neither of them was a Nazi or an anti-Semite, just the opposite.
Normal liberals
They’re kind of normal liberals, not racist in any sense.
The charge itself is ludicrous. You notice what AIPAC is doing, so you’re an anti-Semite? It doesn’t make any sense; it’s a slur.
It’s slander designed to make you be quiet. And in most cases it works, which is why they keep doing it.
But in this one specific case, it didn’t work. Professor John Mearsheimer, who had tenure at Chicago, did not lose his job. And not only did he keep speaking, he upped the volume of his speaking and kept telling the world, though most people didn’t listen, what he had personally seen and how he interpreted that.
Why does the United States military go to war?
Mearsheimer, through close observation, concluded, well, in the modern era, mostly it goes to war, big wars, on behalf of Israel.
Tucker Carlson is an American conservative political commentator who hosts The Tucker Carlson Show.

Professor John Mearsheimer on genocide in Gaza and the looming defeat in Iran — recorded just before the peace deal.        Video: The Tucker Carlson Show

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/16/tucker-carlson-facing-up-to-the-iran-war-irony-who-decapitated-who/

In October 2023, Israel found an excuse to breathe new life into an old story of slaughter and expulsion. The chief differences this time have been of scale and duration, writes Jonathan Cook.

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook
The truth slowly comes to light: Israel‘s genocide in Gaza was planned decades ago.
Listen to the testimonies of four Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza.
Soldier 1: “Human lives didn’t matter. You could kill, there was no law. No one would say a word to you. But it’s not a good feeling. It mainly kills your humanity.”
Soldier 2: “At first I wasn’t willing to execute Arabs who weren’t resisting [that is, civilians]. Then we came to the conclusion that we had to kill. We went through the process of ceasing to see them as human beings.”
Soldier 3: “We caught guys, lined them up and eliminated them. In retrospect, it looks like murder.”
Soldier 4: “We would roam through refugee camps in Gaza and carry out purges… Every soldier who was there created a ‘concentration camp’, and they didn’t hesitate to kill people who caused a slight disturbance.”
No, these testimonies are not new. The whistleblowers did not serve in Gaza during the current, ongoing genocide there. These accounts are nearly 60 years old, published last week by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz under the headline “We were ordered to kill”.

Israeli soldiers interviewed shortly after the 1967 war — often referred to as the Six-Day War — not only confessed that they and others routinely committed war crimes but they pointed out that they did so under orders from their commanders.
The accounts were compiled into a book, The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk About the Six-Day War, by Avraham Shapira, though many testimonies were not included because they were too shocking.
None of this should be simply of historical interest. These accounts are a vivid reminder that what Israel has been doing during its current, near three-year destruction of Gaza — levelling all homes, hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries and government offices; murdering tens of thousands, more likely hundreds of thousands, of Palestinian civilians; and blocking aid and starving the population — is part of a decades-old pattern of Israeli military conduct.
Nothing “started” on 7 October 2023, when Hamas broke out for a single day of the Gaza “concentration camp” — the plight of Gaza’s Palestinians noted 59 years ago by Soldier 4.
Rather, Israel found an excuse that day to breathe new life into an old story, one in which it has been slaughtering and expelling Palestinians for decades. The chief difference this time is simply one of scale and duration.
Washington and other Western capitals have given Israel the time and space to finish in Gaza what, earlier, it had only been able to achieve in part. Israel’s much greater firepower today, provided by modern munitions supplied by the United States, has allowed Israel to realise what before it could only dream of doing — wiping Gaza off the map.
Policy of starvation
The whistleblowing soldiers of 1967 admitted their job was not to “fight the enemy” — or “eradicate the terrorists”, as Israeli leaders now term it. It was to kill and terrorise Palestinian civilians under cover of war.
Few soldiers were shy of saying why they were committing atrocities. Their task was to create a reign of terror, integral to Israel’s efforts to expel as many Palestinians as possible from the last remaining parts of the Palestinian homeland, the territories captured by the Israeli military in 1967 and then illegally occupied.
This was seen as a new opportunity to complete the ethnic cleansing campaign begun by Zionist militias in earnest in 1947 and 1948 as the British Mandate authorities withdrew from Palestine. By the end of that campaign, some 80 percent of Palestinians had been expelled from their homes inside the borders of the newly declared Jewish state.
Many ended up in refugee camps in neighbouring states such as Lebanon and Syria. But some fled into the surviving pockets of historic Palestine in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — the 22 percent of their homeland that had been shielded from further Israeli advances in 1948 by Jordan and Egypt.
The 1967 war was seen by the Israeli leadership as a second bite of the cherry: a chance both to seize and colonise all of historic Palestine through military occupation and the establishment of Jewish militia settlements, and to expand the ethnic cleansing operation to rid historic Palestine of its native inhabitants.
Weeks after Israel seized the Palestinian territories, the prime minister of the time, Levi Eshkol, told his cabinet where the expulsions must begin. “We are interested in emptying out Gaza first,” he said.
Given international pressures, he was clear that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza would need to proceed by stealth, so as to attract less attention. Foreshadowing Israel’s 16-year siege of Gaza that started in 2007, he proposed that Palestinians could be forced out of Gaza “precisely because of the suffocation and imprisonment” Israel was imposing there.

The ethnic cleansing programme could be hastened, he suggested, by depriving the population of essentials like water. “Perhaps if we don’t give them enough water, they won’t have a choice, because the orchards will yellow and wither.”
In this spirit, 40 years later, Israel would go on to calculate the minimum number of calories to allow into Gaza so that the people there would grow steadily more malnourished. Or as senior government adviser Dov Weisglass explained in 2006: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”
Seventeen years after Gaza was forced on to its “diet”, when Hamas briefly broke out of the enclave, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his generals seized their moment.
They destroyed those “orchards” and transformed the “diet” into a full-blown starvation blockade — a crime against humanity for which Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Targeting innocents
The crimes of 1967 were understood long ago by Palestinian historians, who were, of course, not listened to. Israeli historians took much longer to start piecing together the story as they gained access to parts of Israel’s military archives.
Haaretz’s new investigation, based on research by the Akevot Institute, provides details of the ruthlessness of the mass expulsions of Palestinians beginning in 1967.
As the newspaper reports: “The historical inquiry shows that Israel expelled and drove out some 300,000 Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and the [Syrian] Golan Heights. And as in 1948, the expulsion included killing civilians, sowing terror in Arab communities, looting and ultimately, destruction.”
Having managed in 1967 to again expel large numbers of Palestinians, the next task — as in 1948 — was to prevent their return.
Uri Avnery, a journalist and member of the Israeli Parliament, recorded testimonies from soldiers stationed at the borders with Jordan and Egypt, into which Palestinians had been expelled. The soldiers’ job was to murder any Palestinian families trying to get back to their homes.
Here is one soldier’s testimony, reported by Haaretz, that Avnery noted in his autobiography:

We blocked these crossings and received orders to shoot to kill, without prior warning. Indeed, such shots were fired every night at men, women and children, even on moonlit nights when it was possible to identify those crossing. That is, to distinguish between men and women and children.
In the morning, we would go out to scan the area, and we would kill, by explicit order of the officer present, those who were alive, including those hiding and the wounded. After the killing was over, we would cover the bodies with dirt until a tractor arrived.
Today’s Israeli whistleblowers warn that this military doctrine is unchanged. Over the past three years, investigations have repeatedly shown Israel trying to conceal its crimes by secretly bulldozing its civilian victims into mass graves in violation of international law.
It did so, for example, when troops massacred Palestinians seeking aid a year ago, and again when soldiers executed 15 Palestinian emergency workers in an ambush on ambulances in March 2025.
Another soldier troubled by the 1967 shoot-to-kill policy recalled a conversation with his commander: “I asked the officer: And if I hear babies crying, should I shoot them too? The answer I received was: Don’t be a girl.”
There is nothing exceptional about this. Israel is known to have killed more than 1000 babies in Gaza under the age of one since 7 October 2023, not all of them anonymously in strikes from the air.
The Israeli military allowed a group of five premature babies in al-Nasser hospital to die and decompose in their incubators after its soldiers took over the building in late 2023.
Israeli commanders also knew that the first to die from a blockade of aid would be the most vulnerable. Babies froze or starved to death as the population was deprived of shelter, baby formula and food, with their mothers lacking sufficient nutrition to produce milk.
As Soldier 2 noted, Israeli military doctrine encourages soldiers to stop seeing Palestinians, even Palestinian babies, as “human”. Their lives are considered worthless.
Past familiar
Israeli soldiers murdered another Palestinian baby last week in the West Bank, after they ambushed a car driven by a lecturer from Bethlehem university, Fahd Abu Haikal, in the Palestinian city of Hebron, which is under particularly brutal occupation.
One of the soldiers fired into the car, as it was slowing to a halt, from only a few metres away, from where he must have been able to see the passengers inside. The bullet killed Abu Haikal’s seventh-month-old baby, Sam, and wounded his wife, who was holding the infant.
Abu Haikal’s 11-year-old son, also in the car, watched his baby brother bleed to death.
Israeli soldiers have been murdering Palestinian babies for decades. Yet none of it has roused an ounce of the outrage uniformly expressed by Western media and politicians at Israel’s entirely fabricated claim that Hamas killed 40 babies on 7 October 2023.
In fact, only one Israeli baby was killed that day: nine-month-old Mila Cohen, who, like Sam Abu Haikal, was shot in her mother’s arms.
Israel’s 1967 campaign of expulsions in Gaza and the West Bank was not improvised, nor was it done on the spur of the moment. According to Haaretz, the policy had been carefully planned many years in advance.
Since 1948, Israel had been waiting for a moment to carry out additional expulsions and seize the last parts of the Palestinian homeland, the territories it had been denied for the completion of its violent settler colonial project.
The 1967 war — against Egypt, Syria and Jordan — provided the pretext.
Ishai Amrami, a senior battalion commander in that war, later admitted: “This thing, which I experienced first hand, was an attempt at massive population transfer.”
As Haaretz observes: “The Palestinians were mere bystanders in this story. Defence Minister Moshe Dayan wrote in his memoirs that the Palestinians residing in the West Bank did not take part in the war, and that it was not their war. Nevertheless, they were the ones who paid its price.”
Israel began the mass destruction of Palestinian communities, as it had done after 1948, so there would be no homes for Palestinians to return to. But as Haaretz notes, Israel became a victim of its own rapid military success.
“This was one of the rare instances in the history of the conflict where Israel was forced to back down due to heavy international pressure.”
It hardly needs pointing out that, unlike 1967, such international pressure has been sorely missing over the past three years. The new cast of Western leaders, like Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer, once a noted human rights lawyer, have justified Israel’s explicitly exterminationist agenda against the Palestinians of Gaza, terming it “self-defence”.
Unlike their predecessors in the 1960s, today’s Western leaders and their media chose to buy Israel the diplomatic time and space it needed — as well as providing the weapons and intelligence — to destroy Gaza. The genocide would have been impossible without their assistance.
Buoyed by this impunity, Israel has tried to spread the destruction further afield, with limited success in Iran and much greater success in south Lebanon.
As Western politicians and media happily forget Gaza, Israel keeps up the relentless pressure and misery there. A so-called “Yellow Line”, demarcating Israeli military control over the destroyed enclave, an area off-limits to Palestinians, has gradually expanded from half the land to 70 percent.
The people of Gaza are quite literally being squeezed out of the ruins of their homeland, as Israel scrambles to find a third country — Egypt, or perhaps Somaliland — willing to take them in.
Excising context
As the US cosmologist Carl Sagan famously observed: “You have to know the past to understand the present.”
Which is precisely why Western politicians and media have been so careful to strip out the past, excising the context and background, such as Israel’s violent ethnic cleansing campaigns of 1948 and 1967, that explain Israel’s behaviour in the present — in Gaza, the West Bank and south Lebanon.
Western audiences, deprived of the region’s history, have been more easily manipulated into believing that Israeli atrocities are a response — and a supposedly “proportionate” one, at that — to Hamas’ one-day attack on Israel in late 2023.
An obvious truth has been obscured: that for at least eight decades, Israel has been exploiting any opportunity it could find to expel the Palestinians from their homeland.
The October 2023 Hamas attack was not a turning-point or a rupture, as it is so often presented in the West.
In 1967 — that is, 56 years before the Hamas attack — Eshkol advised that unforeseen events might accelerate Israel’s stealthy programme of ethnic cleansing. A moment might arrive in the future — what he called an “unexpected luxury solution” — when Israel could rapidly realise its dream of a Palestinian-free Palestine.
“Perhaps we can expect another war, and then this problem will be solved. But that’s a type of ‘luxury,’ an unexpected solution,” he explained to the cabinet.
With the missing context added, as Israel’s Haaretz has done with its new article, the story is transformed.
The events of 7 October 2023 look less like simple savagery and more like a desperate, last-roll-of-the-dice response to decades of Israeli atrocities designed to make conditions for Palestinians so miserable — through pauperisation, confinement, starvation, and murder — that they either flee their homeland or die in situ.
With the missing context added, Israel’s supposed “retaliation” in Gaza — its genocidal rampage — looks like what it actually is: a continuation of its eight-decade ethnic cleansing campaign.
In fact, its final instalment. Its denouement.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father, wrote to his son in 1937, 11 years before Israel’s creation: “We must expel the Arabs and take their places.”
In a diary entry during the mass expulsions of 1948, Ben-Gurion summarised the mood among his generals: “If we accuse a family — we need to harm them without mercy. Women and children without mercy. Otherwise this is not an effective reaction. During the operation, there is no need to distinguish between guilty and not guilty.”
The goal was the weaponisation of fear, making Palestinians too terrified to remain in their homeland.
Mordechai Maklef, a senior commander in the fledgling Israeli army, noted two years later, in 1950, the logic behind Israel’s policy: “It is impossible to expel 114,000 people who lived in the Galilee without terror.”
Even if we ignore Palestinian accounts from those times, the small sections of the Israeli archives that have so far been opened to Israeli historians document massacres and systematic rapes of Palestinians in 1948.
In recent Israeli films such as Tantura — the village where a terrible massacre of Palestinians was carried out — old men who served as Israeli soldiers at the time confirm the archival documents, recounting how they personally witnessed Palestinian girls being raped.

Tantura trailer.           Video: Journeyman Pictures
Let us note that weaponised rape continues to this day — in what the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem calls Israel’s “network of torture camps”.
These rapes — now often using dogs specially trained for the purpose — are so widespread that they have become impossible to conceal. They have even come, very belatedly, to the attention of mainstream media like The New York Times, provoking a cacophony of protest and threats from Netanyahu to sue.
So routine is the sexual abuse of those Israel detains that international peace activists suffered systematic rapes when hundreds of them were seized last month in international waters off Cyprus, as they began their journey to Gaza to break Israel’s genocidal blockade.
Israel wants the fear to spread, from Palestine itself to anyone who wishes to show solidarity with its people.
Western politicians and the media have barely referred to these horrific crimes against their own citizens. Why? Because to acknowledge those crimes would be to concede that even worse atrocities are being meted out to Palestinians under Israeli rule.
Prisons of complicity
Gaza is not an aberration. It is fully in accord with an eight-decade-long Israeli military strategy. Westerners aren’t aware of that only because their political and media class have worked strenuously to stop them from learning about it.
If Western publics knew what has really been happening to Palestinians for 80-plus years — first, from the Zionist movement and then from the Israeli state — they might swell further the ranks of the protest marches, making these demonstrations politically impossible to ignore.
If Westerners knew what has really been happening to Palestinians, they might join activists who have been trying to incapacitate Israeli weapons factories, like Elbit Systems, operating quite openly in Western countries such as Britain. They might, as a result, manage to smash the supply of drones and other weapons being used to massacre the people of Palestine and Lebanon.
Instead of thousands, there might be tens or hundreds of thousands of people willing to hold up a placard in the UK opposing genocide, and be arrested as a “terrorism supporter”, overwhelming the prison system and making a mockery of Britain’s supposed “justice” system.
Armed with knowledge rather dulled by ignorance, more Westerners might board boats, amassing an armada that it would be impossible for the Western media to disregard.
But most critically of all, were the real context understood — were Israel’s decades-long pattern of murdering, raping, and expelling Palestinians known — Western publics might wake up to the fact that their political and media class are not moral actors. They are not upholding the values of a superior civilisation. They are not the guardians of international law and a democratic liberal order.
They are imposters. Or more accurately, they are working within political and financial structures that make it impossible to tell truths that would rock a system of power in the West that enriches a tiny elite through a lucrative war machine used to protect the gargantuan profits of the fossil fuel industries.
That system of power drives some Palestinians into an early grave, and others into concentration camps, or exile, or penury.
Meanwhile, it drives us in the West into prisons without physical walls — prisons either of ignorance and complicity, or of knowledge and impotence.
Either way, like Soldier 1, we find our humanity deadened. Our hearts are hardened or broken. The challenge we face is the same as the Palestinians — to find a path out of our confinement.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published by Middle East Eye and republished from the author’s Substack permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/15/jonathan-cook-how-israel-planned-the-gaza-genocide-decades-ago/

ANALYSIS: By Colin Peacock of RNZ Mediawatch

Change is a constant in the tough world of digital-age news media these days and many old ways have fallen by the wayside.

But the appointment of Matthew Hooton, someone outside journalism — and also one of this country’s bluntest critics of it — to edit a major media outlet, The Post, is a first for New Zealand.
Likewise, handing the editorial reins to a former professional lobbyist.

READ MORE: Matthew Hooton, former National and ACT advisor, appointed editor of Wellington newspaper The Post
Other NZ media reports

The New Zealand Herald’s Media Insider reported the same response from two unnamed separate unnamed sources: “What the f***?”
The response may have been similar at The Herald, for whom Hooton currently writes a weekly column.
The Post says Hooton will give up his strategic consulting but his past work at his Exceltium company — on behalf of clients mostly unknown to the public — will inevitably raise suspicions of conflict of interest.
So will his past ties to the political right.
The Post today notes: “Hooton’s CV includes being a Young Nat, a press secretary in the Bolger Government, a strategist for National during the Don Brash years … an adviser for ACT, a strategic consultant for iwi, banks, most corporate sectors, government departments, and the ultra rich — and a short-lived stint as [Auckland mayor] Wayne Brown’s adviser.”
Prominent pundit
Hooton was also prominent pundit in various media, including RNZ — until he withdrew from commentary after controversially backing a doomed National Party leadership bid in 2018 without declaring his own involvement in it.
That too will cause some to question whether his loyalties and editorial judgment could compromise The Post’s coverage.

At the time, Hooton told RNZ Mediawatch he was “possibly one of the few political commentators” who clearly and proactively disclosed conflicts to editors.
“Commentary from people with historic involvement in politics and friends currently in politics . . . leads to a better informed public,” he insisted in 2018.
It’s an argument Stuff’s top brass now endorses.
“Few people understand power in New Zealand as well as Matthew does,” Stuff’s owner and CEO Sinead Boucher said in a statement which also made it clear she shoulder-tapped Hooton for the role.
It’s also a move that only makes sense in the context of Boucher’s recent re-invention of The Post as a newspaper and a “masthead” website for subscribers that zeroes in on national issues and politics.
The Post’s current business, economics and political editor — Luke Malpass — will become Hooton’s associate editor.
What are the risks? And rewards?
Claims of “left-leaning bias” directed at the media today may flip to claims of influence from the right at The Post, given Hooton’s past associations and opinions.
Hooton lauded Post journalists as “some of the most disciplined, fair and focused journalists in the country” in a statement today. Sinead Boucher also insisted he has “a clear understanding of the critical role independent journalism plays.”
But Post staff will need to be convinced.
In 2017, Hooton told RNZ the media “had decided to change the government” and called coverage of the 2017 election campaign “inaccurate”.
“New Zealand media is very dominated now by people who live in Auckland central and Wellington central. We’ve seen a very urban, liberal, under-40, probably female perspective of the election,” he told RNZ Nine to Noon.
And while Matthew Hooton understands “Wellington” in terms of power and politics, he isn’t a local.
The Post is a Wellington paper, printed in Christchurch and edited in Auckland. It’s not known whether Hooton will stay based in Auckland.
Forcefully-expressed opinions
The Post still has many rusted-on long-term customers who still expect the “paper” they’ve bought for decades to report local news and issues as well as national politics.
Hooton made a media name for himself with forcefully-expressed opinions, but surveys of trust in news routinely report that the public think there’s too much opinion in our media — and that it is blended with facts too often.
Stuff boss Sinead Boucher insisted Hooton knows the role of an editor is very different from a columnist — and he will abide by its code of ethics.
On the possibility of connections with power making it harder to hold power to account, Boucher told The Post: “There may be some discussion about that, but the proof will be in the pudding.”
She will also be aware some will be suspicious of her bold change to the recipe.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/15/stuff-stuns-with-bold-call-on-new-post-editor/

By Mark Rabago of RNZ Pacific

A conservation group has condemned Donald Trump’s decision to allow commercial fishing in parts of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument.

US President Trump signed an executive order on June 11 opening protected waters around Hawai’i, American Samoa and the Northern Marianas.
It totals nearly 1.3 million sq km of protected Pacific waters for commercial fishing.

READ MORE: Other Mariana Trench reports

Trump claims appropriately managed fishing will not put these areas at any risk.
In a statement, the Friends of the Mariana Trench said this threatened Pacific communities, cultural heritage, and local stewardship of the ocean.
It said the move undermined protections that were established to safeguard waters important to the Chamorro and Refaluwasch people.
“True conservation requires persistence. Since 2007, our advocacy for the Mariana Trench has been unyielding, and it will remain so,” the group said.
Standing in solidarity
“We stand in solidarity with Pacific communities whose cultural heritage is currently being eroded by the Trump administration-from the access granted to commercial vessels in sacred areas, to the leasing of our seabed for deep-sea mining and the threats of nuclear waste.”
The group said waters that were set aside to honour traditional fishing practices were now being “sacrificed for industrial gain”.
“While this is a significant setback, our fight for healthy oceans and the communities that depend on them is far from over.”
The statement was signed by board members Sheila Babauta, Franco Santos, Tina Sablan, Ignacio Cabrera, Angelo Villagomez, Romana Chong and Kina Rangamar.
Trump’s proclamation removes monument-based prohibitions on commercial fishing in the Islands Unit of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, as well as portions of marine monuments in Hawai’i and American Samoa.
The administration said existing federal fisheries laws and environmental protections provide sufficient safeguards for marine resources while allowing greater economic activity.
The proclamation argues that commercial fishing can be sustainably managed under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, as well as other federal laws protecting endangered species, marine mammals, habitats, and ocean resources.
White House signing
The action came after CNMI’s delegate to the US Congress, Kimberlyn King-Hinds, attended the White House signing ceremony.
She said any implementation must involve local fishermen, the CNMI government, scientists, environmental stakeholders, and the wider community.
“The CNMI respects the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument and the environmental importance of the waters around our islands,” King-Hinds said.
“At the same time, the people who live closest to these waters should have a meaningful voice in how they are managed.”
King-Hinds said the proclamation creates a path for American fishing activity under existing federal law while keeping science-based management and conservation requirements in place.
The proclamation limits commercial fishing within monument boundaries to US-flagged vessels, although permits may be issued for foreign-flagged vessels transporting fish harvested by American fishermen.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/15/trumps-fishing-decision-threatens-pacific-communities-ngo-warns/

COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone It’s so pathetic watching Elon Musk’s groveling bootlickers fall all over themselves on social media to defend their favorite oligarch from criticism as he becomes the world’s first trillionaire.

They’re like “Don’t be mean to the trillionaire, just become a trillionaire yourself!

All you need is luck, connections, wealthy parents, the ruthlessness to step on anyone who gets in your way, and a willingness to cooperate with murderous imperial institutions like the Pentagon and the CIA!” Elon Musk is a military-industrial complex plutocrat who is balls deep in the US intelligence cartel and recently facilitated the US-Israeli attempted regime change operation in Iran.

LISTEN: A reading by Tim Foley READ MORE: US, Iran edge closer to a deal, Trump says Hormuz will be ‘open to all’ You have infinitely more in common with the average person in Iran, Cuba, Lebanon or Palestine than you have with the world’s first trillionaire.

It’s so gross how many fawning admirers this freak still has. The trillionaire is not your friend. ❖ People who say “Zionism is just the belief that Jews should have a homeland” are hilarious. Zionism isn’t some abstraction; we can all see its material manifestations with our own eyes.

We can all see that Zionism means genocide, apartheid, and nonstop wars and abuse. This isn’t some kind of theoretical debate where we all get to have our own opinions about what Zionism is and what it entails.

It’s 2026, not 1890. The facts are in and the case is closed, kids. This is what Zionism is. This is the only Zionism in existence. What you see is what you get.

And what you see is quantifiably one of the most evil things happening on our planet. ❖ Some guy told me, “Why are you fine with the existence of approximately 50 Islamic nation-states, but the single Jewish one is apparently too many?” I showed him an illustration of a nail stuck in somebody’s foot and said, “Why are you fine with an entire foot made of flesh, but a single metal spike is too much?

The only possible explanation is that you have a seething hatred of metal.

It can’t possibly be that you object to a foreign object being violently forced into a region where it does damage.” He got upset and wound up telling me he hopes I get murdered by Mossad. ❖ Hasbara is so gross because it’s just Zionists throwing walls of language at you to convince you you’re not seeing what you’re seeing.

You see raw video footage of the most horrifying thing imaginable in Gaza, and then you see them in the replies going “This is actually fine and normal because words words words words words words words.” You see a news report about Israel doing something astonishingly evil in Lebanon, and there they are underneath it going “There’s actually a lot more to the story because words words words words words words words.” You see some far right Israeli minister spouting nakedly genocidal rhetoric, and they’re swarming all over it saying “Well this isn’t actually what it looks like because words words words words words words words.” You see every major human rights group on earth saying Israel is guilty of genocide and apartheid, and they’re running around frantically telling you it’s a giant conspiracy to frame Israel and the truth is that words words words words words words words.

You see more and more mainstream news institutions reporting on the mountains of evidence of widespread rape and torture in Israeli prisons, and they saturate the airwaves claiming it’s an antisemitic blood libel because words words words words words words words.

The idea is to just pound your intellect with a firehose of verbiage until your inner sensemaker has been shredded and you’re too confused to form a coherent picture of what’s actually going on.

It’s a disgusting, abusive, and profoundly unethical thing to do to people. But the good news is it’s not working anymore. Language is immensely powerful, but its power has its limits. Israel’s behavior has become so transparently unacceptable that no amount of word magic can manipulate people into seeing anything other than what’s happening in front of their face.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/14/caitlin-johnstone-the-worlds-first-trillionaire-is-not-your-friend/

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

Anti-War Aotearoa and Greenpeace are calling on Kiwis to join the March for Peace on June 20 in Auckland. I will be marching.
I will be marching for many of the same reasons that compelled me to march against the Vietnam war in 1973 as a 12-year old — opposition to New Zealand participation in wars of aggression, solidarity with humanity and a belief that peace trumps war.
Soon after that first march, I attended my first rallies outside the South African Consulate in Wellington to protest the Apartheid regime.

READ MORE: Trump says US-Iran peace deal to be signed today, Tehran disputes
The March for Peace — why Greenpeace Aotearoa is teaming up with Anti-War Aotearoa  for peaceful protest to demand an end to NZ’s complicity in Trump’s warmongering
Other peace reports

When history calls, you should answer the call
Two years later, as a 16-year-old, I marched on the final leg of the Te Hīkoi o te Motu, the Māori Land March led by the great Whina Cooper.

I vividly remember heading out into Wellington harbour in 1983 on a small yacht, part of a peace flotilla made up of kayakers, yachties and wind surfers, that tried to stop the USS Texas from berthing.
It won that battle that day but we won the war for a nuclear-free New Zealand.
Peace and Justice were the beating heart of all those causes.  It was about ordinary New Zealanders standing up and saying: Not in Our Name.
We didn’t want our soldiers killing Vietnamese people in Vietnam. We didn’t want our government or our sports people to support the racist South African regime.
We wanted to live in a New Zealand that honoured the Treaty of Waitangi and where both Māori and Pākehā stood shoulder-to-shoulder to build a better country for all New Zealanders.
The election of Norman Kirk’s government was made possible by the protest movement convincing enough New Zealanders that real change was needed.  One of the Kirk government’s first acts was to end our shameful participation in the Vietnam war.
We mobilised. We marched
After the sinking of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior by the French government in Auckland Harbour in 1985, the peace movement went into overdrive. We mobilised. We marched. We took part in campaigns that drove real societal change.
Many of these changes reach down to the present day through legislation like the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987, the 1985 revision to The Treaty of Waitangi Act, the Conservation Act 1987, the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1986 (that means the Crown must act in a manner consistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi), and the Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986.
Several of these gains are now under threat.
Marching for peace is a great way to show solidarity and to bring together great everyday New Zealanders.
As a side note: the greatest march I ever went on was the Wellington section of Te Hīkoi mō te Tiriti in 2024. Toitū Te Tiriti! It was as big a march as I ever attended in Aotearoa and it was for a cause that should matter deeply to us all.
No one should doubt that getting out and marching is also part of a process — sometimes long and hard — that can lead to powerful changes in national sentiment and put real pressure on political parties to return the country’s policy settings towards justice and a better, kinder, safer Aotearoa.
The organisers of the March for Peace are Greenpeace and Anti-War Aotearoa. They are united around respect for the United Nations Charter and rejection of any support whatsoever for US wars of aggression. I am proud to be counted in their numbers.

Gaza genocide ongoing
The genocide in Gaza and the West Bank has not stopped. The destruction of the communities of Lebanon is ongoing. The sovereign state of Iran is the subject of ongoing US-Israeli aggression in contravention of international law. Cuba is in danger.
We live under a government that has doubled spending on a war machine that — given our alliance with a rogue and hostile USA — will not make us safer. Global research shows the US is seen as the greatest risk to humanity today.
We live under a government that wants our military to be “interoperable” with the Americans. They are  negotiating with the US to give their war machine access to our critical minerals and allow foreign corporations to undertake seabed mining and other environmentally damaging activities.
We live under a government that has money for missiles but ignores the daily horror that 30,000 homeless New Zealand children must endure. Scrapping national subsidies for youth transport and getting rid of thousands of public service jobs whilst finding more and more money for a war on China is madness.
That needs to change. I feel exactly the same passion as I did as a 12-year-old whose political awakening was the US (and New Zealand) war of aggression against Vietnam — even if, at the time, I wasn’t exactly sure what the word “mobilisation” meant!
If you haven’t marched for a long time or if you have never marched but support this cause, here’s my invitation: head down to Aotea Square on June 20 and step forward to March for Peace.
Because marching matters.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and hosts solidarity.co.nz . This article was first published by Greenpeace Aotearoa.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/14/eugene-doyle-why-ill-be-marching-for-global-peace-on-june-20/

INTERVIEW: Dr Myriam François talks to Dr Mads Gilbert on The Tea

Eight months on from the so-called “ceasefire” in Gaza, the headlines may have moved on — but Israel’s assault has not.
The siege remains. The starvation continues. The displacement continues. The destruction continues.
“The Palestinian people, with their heroism and sacrifice, are fighting a struggle for all of us against a new wave of brutal colonialism.”

READ MORE: Israeli attacks kill three in Gaza as post-‘ceasefire’ deaths hit 983
Protesters at Auckland’s Defying Definitions of Woman and Man Bill prior to the Stop Wars Aotearoa rally
Other Palestine reports

This week on The Tea, we speak to Dr Mads Gilbert, the award-winning Norwegian doctor and long-standing advocate for Palestinian liberation.
Having worked in Gaza for decades, Dr Gilbert offers a devastating account of what he describes as a deliberate campaign of deprivation — one designed to destroy the very foundations of life.
Water and food supplies have been strangled. Hospitals have been besieged and bombed. Doctors have been detained and killed. Every university in Gaza has been attacked.
Schools, ambulances, and civilian infrastructure have all come under fire. This is not collateral damage. It’s a deliberate process of deprivation — one that has systematically targeted the very foundations of life.
Also in the show:

A remarkable story of survival: the world record in resuscitation from hypothermia;
The Oslo Accords: corruption allegations and links to Jeffrey Epstein;
The mystery of the missing Oslo documents;
The so-called ceasefire? It’s a re-occupation line;
UNRWA and the blockade preventing aid from reaching Gaza;
Israel’s impunity and the failure of Western governments to act;
The systematic targeting of hospitals, doctors and medical infrastructure;
Horror and abuse inside Israeli prisons;
Israel and the “weaponisation” of solidarity; and
Palestinian resistance and the right to resist occupation

“The Palestinian people, with their heroism and sacrifice, are fighting a struggle for all of us against a new wave of brutal colonialism,” says Dr Gilbert.
He argues that: “if we are to take our responsibility seriously, we have to stand with them.”

Inside Israel’s war on Gaza                    Video: The Tea

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/14/doctor-israel-banned-after-40-years-in-gazas-hospitals-speaks-out/