Search here...
Home Blog

Gaza: A girl burned inside the school she had escaped to

By
Cafe Pacific Publisher
-
0
Fires engulfed classrooms at the Fahmi Al-Jargawi School in Gaza City on 26 May 2025 following Israel's latest attack on shelters
Fires engulfed classrooms at the Fahmi Al-Jargawi School in Gaza City on 26 May 2025 following Israel's latest attack on shelters. Image: Screengrab

CREATIVE WRITING: By Amal Rostom

She was not asking for comfort, or classrooms with painted walls, or teachers who called her name in morning roll call.

All she wanted — in the moments before she burned — was to wake up to a morning without missiles, to nibble on the leftover bread from last night’s distribution, and to survive the day without anyone screaming, “Run, the fire is coming.”

In Gaza, schools become shelters, and shelters become tombs.

And on this particular day, a school became an inferno.

Not from a candle, not from a faulty wire — but from a missile dropped by an aircraft that knew exactly what was inside: the displaced, the exhausted, the hungry, the frightened, the forgotten.

She was either sleeping when it hit, or maybe she was awake.

Maybe she saw the flame crawling up the wall.

Maybe she heard her mother’s voice cracking through the smoke.

Maybe she tried to run.

But the smoke got there first.

And the fire moved faster than her legs ever could.

Her full name was never confirmed.

Her face was never shown on international broadcasts.

No journalist mentioned her in nightly reports.

No NGO flashed her image on a slideshow in Geneva.

No resolution was drafted in her memory.

But she died.

Her body ignited,

her skin blistered,

her heat rose high enough to melt metal,

while the moral temperature of the world remained cold.

By the time they reached her,

there was only a black imprint on the wall —

the kind you see in forensic photos.

The kind that says:

Someone was here,

and then… was not.

She wasn’t a combatant.

She wasn’t a headline.

She was a girl.

Displaced with her mother.

Asleep on a school floor under a flickering light.

Dreaming, maybe, of a home.

Of a notebook.

Of a corner where she used to scribble her name in blue ink.

But she never made it back.

Her body was never recovered whole.

What remained was a scorched remnant,

and the smell that refused to leave the walls.

This is not a death report.

This is a report on the silence that followed.

This is not an isolated tragedy.

This is a documented crime.

And every hand that shook from calling it what it is… is complicit.

In the final moments, there was no one to lift her.

No angel.

No medic.

No camera.

No conscience.

She died alone,

surrounded by fire,

while the sky — they say it’s wide — only opened when she left the earth.

Amal Rostom is a content writer at the Palestinian Authority.

Motarilavoa Hilda Lini – strong, passionate fighter for decolonisation, nuclear-free Pacific

By
Cafe Pacific Publisher
-
0
"On top of her bold activism, Hilda Lini was also a mother to us. She was kind and caring and always pushed the importance of family and indigenous values." Image: Vanuatu Daily Post

By Stanley Simpson in Suva

I am saddened by the death of one of the most inspirational Pacific women and leaders I have worked with — Motarilavoa Hilda Lini of Vanuatu.

She was one of the strongest, most committed passionate fighter I know for self-determination, decolonisation, independence, indigenous rights, customary systems and a nuclear-free Pacific.

Hilda coordinated the executive committee of the women’s wing of the Vanuatu Liberation Movement prior to independence and became the first woman Member of Parliament in Vanuatu in 1987.

Hilda Lini - Vanuatu Daily Post
“On top of her bold activism, Hilda Lini was also a mother to us. She was kind and caring and always pushed the importance of family and indigenous values.” Image: Vanuatu Daily Post

Hilda became director of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) in Suva in 2000. She took over from another Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) giant Lopeti Senituli, who returned to Tonga to help the late ‘Akilisi Poviha with the pro-democracy movement.

I was editor of the PCRC newsletter Pacific News Bulletin at the time. There was no social media then so the newsletter spread information to activists and groups across the Pacific on issues such as the struggle in West Papua, East Timor’s fight for independence, decolonisation in Tahiti and New Caledonia, demilitarisation, indigenous movements, anti-nuclear issues, and sustainable development.

On all these issues — Hilda Lini was a willing and fearless chief taking on any government, corporation or entity that undermined the rights or interests of Pacific peoples.

Hilda was uncompromising on issues close to her heart. There are very few Pacific leaders like her left today. Leaders who did not hold back from challenging the norm or disrupting the status quo, even if that meant being an outsider.

Banned over activism
She was banned from entering French Pacific territories in the 1990s for her activism against their colonial rule and nuclear testing.

She was fierce but also strategic and effective.

"Hilda Lini was a willing and fearless chief taking on any government, corporation or entity
“Hilda Lini was a willing and fearless chief taking on any government, corporation or entity that undermined the rights or interests of Pacific peoples.” Image: Stanley Simpson/PCRC

We brought Jose Ramos Horta to speak and lobby in Fiji as East Timor fought for independence from Indonesia, Oscar Temaru before he became President of French Polynesia, West Papua’s Otto Ondawame, and organised Flotilla protests against shipments of Japanese plutonium across the Pacific, among the many other actions to stir awareness and action.

On top of her bold activism, Hilda was also a mother to us. She was kind and caring and always pushed the importance of family and indigenous values.

Our Pacific connections were strong and before our eldest son Mitchell was born in 2002 — she asked me if she could give him a middle name.

She gave him the name Hadye after her brother — Father Walter Hadye Lini who was the first Prime Minister of Vanuatu. Mitchell’s full name is Mitchell Julian Hadye Simpson.

Pushed strongly for ideas
We would cross paths several times even after I moved to start the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) but she finished from PCRC in 2004 and returned to Vanuatu.

She often pushed ideas on indigenous rights and systems that some found uncomfortable but stood strong on what she believed in.

Hilda had mana, spoke with authority and truly embodied the spirit and heart of a Melanesian and Pacific leader and chief.

Thank you Hilda for being the Pacific champion that you were.

Stanley Simpson is director of Fiji’s Mai Television and general secretary of the Fijian Media Association. Father Walter Hadye Lini wrote the foreword to Asia Pacific Media editor David Robie’s 1986 book Eyes Of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.

Jonathan Cook: Ignore Starmer’s theatrics. Gaza’s trail of blood leads straight to his door

By
Cafe Pacific Publisher
-
0
In truth, burying nearly two years of a genocide all too visible to large swathes of Western publics will be a far trickier task
In truth, burying nearly two years of a genocide all too visible to large swathes of Western publics will be a far trickier task. Image: www.jonathan-cook.net

Western capitals are still coordinating with Israel and the US on their “criticisms” of the genocide — just as they earlier coordinated on their support for the slaughter

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

After 19 months of being presented with dissembling accounts of Gaza from their governments, Western publics are now being served up a different — but equally deceitful — narrative.

With the finishing line in sight for Israel’s programme of genocidal ethnic cleansing, the West’s Gaza script is being hastily rewritten. But make no mistake: it is the same web of self-serving lies.

As if under the direction of a hidden conductor, Britain, France and Canada — key US allies — erupted last week into a chorus of condemnation of Israel.

They called Israel’s plans to level the last fragments of Gaza still standing “disproportionate”, while Israel’s intensification of its months-long starvation of more than two million Palestinian civilians was “intolerable”.

The change of tone was preceded, as I noted in these pages earlier this month, by new, harsher language against Israel from the Western press corps.

The establishment media’s narrative had to shift first, so that the sudden outpouring of moral and political concern at Gaza’s suffering from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — after more than a year and a half of indifference — did not appear too abrupt, or too strange.

They are acting as if some corner has been turned in Israel’s genocide. But genocides don’t have corners. They just progress relentlessly until stopped.

Managing any cognitive dissonance
The media and politicians are carefully managing any cognitive dissonance for their publics.

But the deeper reality is that Western capitals are still coordinating with Israel and the US on their “criticisms” of Israel’s genocide in Gaza — just as they earlier coordinated their support for it.

As much was conceded by a senior Israeli official to Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper. Referring to the sudden change of tone, he said: “The past 24 hours were all part of a planned ambush we knew about. This was a coordinated sequence of moves ahead of the EU meeting in Brussels, and thanks to joint efforts by our ambassadors and the foreign minister, we managed to moderate the outcome.”

The handwringing is just another bit of stagecraft, little different from the earlier mix of silence and talk about Israel’s “right to defend itself”. And it is to the same purpose: to buy Israel time to “finish the job” — that is, to complete its genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

The West is still promoting phoney “debates”, entirely confected by Israel, about whether Hamas is stealing aid, what constitutes sufficient aid, and how that aid should be delivered.

It is all meant as noise, to distract us from the only pertinent issue: that Israel is committing genocide by slaughtering and starving Gaza’s population, as the West has aided and abetted that genocide.

With stocks of food completely exhausted by Israel’s blockade, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the BBC last Tuesday that some 14,000 babies could die in Gaza within 48 hours without immediate aid reaching them.

The longer-term prognosis is bleaker still.

A trickle of aid
Last Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to let in a trickle of aid, releasing five trucks, some containing baby formula, from the thousands of vehicles Israel has held up at entry points for nearly three months. That was less than one percent of the number of trucks experts say must enter daily just to keep deadly starvation at bay.

Last Tuesday, as the clamour grew, the number of aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza reportedly climbed to nearly 100 — or less than a fifth of the bare minimum. None of the aid was reported to have reached the enclave’s population by the time of writing.

Netanyahu was clear to the Israeli public — most of whom appear enthusiastic for the engineered starvation to continue — that he was not doing this out of any humanitarian impulse.

This was purely a public relations exercise to hold Western capitals in check, he said. The goal was to ease the demands on these leaders from their own publics to penalise Israel and stop the continuing slaughter of Gaza’s population.

Or as Netanyahu put it: “Our best friends worldwide, the most pro-Israel senators [in the US] . . . they tell us they’re providing all the aid, weapons, support and protection in the UN Security Council, but they can’t support images of mass hunger.”

Israel’s Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, was even clearer: “On our way to destroying Hamas, we are destroying everything that’s left of the [Gaza] Strip.” He also spoke of “cleansing” the enclave.

Western publics have been watching this destruction unfold for the past 19 months — or at least they’ve seen partial snapshots, when the West’s establishment media has bothered to report on the slaughter.

Systematically eradicated everything
Israel has systematically eradicated everything necessary for the survival of Gaza’s people: their homes, hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries, water systems and community kitchens.

Israel has finally implemented what it had been threatening for 20 years to do to the Palestinian people if they refused to be ethnically cleansed from their homeland. It has sent them “back to the Stone Age”.

A survey of the world’s leading genocide scholars published last week by the Dutch newspaper NRC found that all conclusively agreed Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Most think the genocide has reached its final stages.

This week, Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s main centrist party and a former deputy head of the Israeli military, expressed the same sentiments in more graphic form. He accused the government of “killing babies as a hobby”. Predictably, Netanyahu accused Golan of “antisemitism”.

The joint statement from Starmer, Macron and Carney was far tamer, of course — and was greeted by Netanyahu with a relatively muted response that the three leaders were giving Hamas a “huge prize”.

Their statement noted: “The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable.” Presumably, until now, they have viewed the hellscape endured by Gaza’s Palestinians for a year and a half as “tolerable”.

David Lammy, Britain’s Foreign Secretary who in the midst of the genocide was happy to be photographed shaking hands with Netanyahu, opined in Parliament last week that Gaza was facing a “dark new phase”.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted on an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for war crimes . . . says Gaza is facing a “dark new phase”. Image: www.jonathan-cook.net

Convenient interpretation
That’s a convenient interpretation for him. In truth, it’s been midnight in Gaza for a very long time.

A senior European diplomatic source involved in the discussions between the three leaders told the BBC that their new tone reflected a “real sense of growing political anger at the humanitarian situation, of a line being crossed, and of this Israeli government appearing to act with impunity”.

This should serve as a reminder that until now, Western capitals were fine with all the other lines crossed by Israel, including its destruction of most of Gaza’s homes; its eradication of Gaza’s hospitals and other essential humanitarian infrastructure; its herding of Palestinian civilians into “safe” zones, only to bomb them there; its slaughter and maiming of many tens of thousands of children; and its active starvation of a population of more than two million.

The three Western leaders are now threatening to take “further concrete actions” against Israel, including what they term “targeted sanctions”.

If that sounds positive, think again. The European Union and Britain have dithered for decades about whether and how to label goods imported from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The existence of these ever-expanding settlements, built on stolen Palestinian territory and blocking the creation of a Palestinian state, is a war crime; no country should be aiding them.

In 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that it must be made clear to European consumers which products come from Israel and which from the settlements.

In all that time, European officials never considered a ban on products from the settlements, let alone “targeted sanctions” on Israel, even though the illegality of the settlements is unambiguous. In fact, officials have readily smeared those calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel as “Jew haters” and “antisemites”.

Playing us for fools
The truth is that Western leaders and establishment media are playing us for fools once again, just as they have been for the past 19 months.

“Further concrete actions” suggest that there are already concrete actions imposed on Israel. That’s the same Israel that recently finished second in the Eurovision Song Contest. Protesters who call for Israel to be excluded from the competition — as Russia has been for invading Ukraine — are smeared and denounced.

When Western leaders can’t even impose a meaningful symbolic penalty on Israel, why should we believe they are capable of taking substantive action against it?

Last Tuesday, it became clearer what the UK meant by “concrete actions”. The Israeli ambassador was called in for what we were told was a dressing down. She must be quaking.

And Britain suspended — that is, delayed — negotiations on a new free trade agreement, a proposed expansion of Britain’s already extensive trading ties with Israel. Those talks can doubtless wait a few months.

Meanwhile, 17 European Union members out of 27 voted to review the legal basis of the EU–Israel Association Agreement — providing Israel with special trading status — though a very unlikely consensus would be needed to actually revoke it.

Such a review to see if Israel is showing “respect for human rights and democratic principles” is simple time-wasting. Investigations last year showed it was committing widespread atrocities and crimes against humanity.

Speaking to the British Parliament, Lammy said: “The Netanyahu government’s actions have made this necessary.”

More serious “concrete actions”
There are plenty of far more serious “concrete actions” that Britain and other western capitals could take, and could have taken many months ago.

A flavour was provided by Britain and the EU on Tuesday when they announced sweeping additional sanctions on Russia — not for committing a genocide, but for hesitating over a ceasefire with Ukraine.

Ultimately, the West wants to punish Moscow for refusing to return the territories in Ukraine that it occupies — something Western powers have never meaningfully required of Israel, even though Israel has been occupying the Palestinian territories for decades.

The new sanctions on Russia target entities supporting its military efforts and energy exports — on top of existing severe economic sanctions and an oil embargo. Nothing even vaguely comparable is being proposed for Israel.

The UK and Europe could have stopped providing Israel with the weapons to butcher Palestinian children in Gaza. Back in September, Starmer promised to cut arms sales to Israel by around eight percent — but his government actually sent more weapons to arm Israel’s genocide in the three months that followed than the Tories did in the entire period between 2020 and 2023.

Britain could also stop transporting other countries’ weapons and carrying out surveillance flights over Gaza on Israel’s behalf. Flight tracking information showed that on one night this week, the UK sent a military transport plane, which can carry weapons and soldiers, from a Royal Air Force base on Cyprus to Tel Aviv, and then dispatched a spy plane over Gaza to collect intelligence to assist Israel in its slaughter.

Britain could, of course, take the “concrete action” of recognising the state of Palestine, as Ireland and Spain have already done — and it could do so at a moment’s notice.

Turning Israel into a pariah state
The UK could impose sanctions on Israeli government ministers. It could declare its readiness to enforce Netanyahu’s arrest for war crimes, in line with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant, if he visits Britain. And it could deny Israel access to sporting events, turning it into a pariah state, as was done to Russia.

It could announce that any Britons returning from military service in Gaza risk arrest and prosecution for war crimes.

And of course, the UK could impose sweeping economic sanctions on Israel, again as was done to Russia.

All of these “concrete actions”, and more, could be easily implemented. The truth is there is no political will to do it. There is simply a desire for better public relations, for putting a better gloss on Britain’s complicity in a genocide that can no longer be hidden.

The problem for the West is that Israel now stands stripped of the lamb’s clothing in which it has been adorned by Western capitals for decades.

Israel is all too evidently a predatory wolf. Its brutal, colonial behaviours towards the Palestinian people are fully on show. There is no hiding place.

This is why Netanyahu and Western leaders are now engaged in an increasingly difficult tango. The colonial, apartheid, genocidal project of Israel — the West’s militarised client-bully in the oil-rich Middle East — needs to be protected.

Endless, mindless recitations
Until now, that had involved Western leaders like Starmer deflecting criticism of Israel’s crimes, as well as British complicity. It involved endlessly and mindlessly reciting Israel’s “right to defend itself”, and the need to “eliminate Hamas”.

But the endgame of Israel’s genocide involves starving two million people to death — or forcing them out of Gaza, whichever comes first. Neither is compatible with the goals Western politicians have been selling us.

So the new narrative must accentuate Netanyahu’s personal responsibility for the carnage — as though the genocide is not the logical endpoint of everything Israel has been doing to the Palestinian people for many decades.

Most Israelis are on board, too, with the genocide. The only meaningful voices of dissent are from the families of the Israeli hostages — and then chiefly because of the danger posed to their loved ones by Israel’s assault.

The aim of Starmer, Macron and Carney is to craft a new narrative, in which they claim to have only belatedly realised that Netanyahu has “gone too far” and that he needs to be reined in. They can then gradually up the noise against the Israeli prime minister, lobby Israel to change tack, and, when it resists or demurs, be seen to press Washington for “concrete action”.

The new narrative, unlike the worn-thin old one, can be spun out for yet more weeks or months — which may be just long enough to get the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza either over the finish line, or near enough as to make no difference.

That is the hope – yes, hope – in Western capitals.

New make-believe narrative
Starmer, Macron and Carney’s new make-believe narrative has several advantages. It washes Gaza’s blood from their hands. They were deceived. They were too charitable. Vital domestic struggles against antisemitism distracted them.

It lays the blame squarely at the feet of one man: Netanyahu.

Without him, a violent, highly militarised, apartheid state of Israel can continue as before, as though the genocide was an unfortunate misstep in Israel’s otherwise unblemished record.

New supposed “terror” threats — from Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran — can be hyped to draw us back into cheerleading narratives about a plucky Western outpost of civilisation defending us from barbarians in the East.

The new narrative does not even require that Netanyahu face justice.

As news emerges of the true extent of the atrocities and death toll, a faux-remorseful Netanyahu can placate the West with revived talk of a two-state solution — a solution whose realisation has been avoided for decades and can continue to be avoided for decades more.

We will be subjected to yet more years of the Israel-Palestine “conflict” finally being about to turn a corner.

Other supremacist, genocidal monsters
Even were a chastened Netanyahu forced to step down, he would pass the baton to one of the other Jewish supremacist, genocidal monsters waiting in the wings.

After Gaza’s destruction, the crushing of Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem will simply have to return to an earlier, slower pace — one that has allowed it to be kept off the Western public’s radar for 58 years.

Will it really work out like this? Only in the imaginations of Western elites. In truth, burying nearly two years of a genocide all too visible to large swathes of Western publics will be a far trickier task.

Too many people in Europe and the US have had their eyes opened over the past 19 months. They cannot unsee what has been live-streamed to them, or ignore what it says about their own political and media classes.

Starmer and co will continue vigorously distancing themselves from the genocide in Gaza, but there will be no escape. Whatever they say or do, the trail of blood leads straight back to their door.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years and returned to the UK in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, including Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011, Cook was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism for his work on Palestine and Israel. This article was first published in Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.

Asia Pacific Report editor honoured for contribution to Pacific journalism

By
Cafe Pacific Publisher
-
0

Pacific Media Watch

Asia Pacific Report editor David Robie was honoured with Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) at the weekend by the Governor-General, Dame Cindy Kiro, in an investiture ceremony at Government House Tāmaki Makaurau.

He was one of eight recipients for various honours, which included Joycelyn Armstrong, who was presented with Companion of the King’s Service Order (KSO) for services to interfaith communities.

Dr Robie’s award, which came in the King’s Birthday Honours in 2024 but was presented on Saturday, was for “services to journalism and Asia-Pacific media education”.

New Zealand's Governor-General, Dame Cindy Kiro, with journalist and educator Dr David Robie at the investiture ceremony
New Zealand’s Governor-General, Dame Cindy Kiro, with Dr David Robie at the investiture ceremony on Saturday. Image: Office of the Governor-General

His citation reads:

Dr David Robie has contributed to journalism in New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region for more than 50 years.

Dr Robie began his career with The Dominion in 1965 and worked as an international journalist and correspondent for agencies from Johannesburg to Paris. He has won several journalism awards, including the 1985 Media Peace Prize for his coverage of the Rainbow Warrior bombing.

He was Head of Journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea from 1993 to 1997 and the University of the South Pacific in Suva from 1998 to 2002. He founded the Pacific Media Centre in 2007 while professor of journalism and communications at Auckland University of Technology.

He developed four award-winning community publications as student training outlets. He pioneered special internships for Pacific students in partnership with media and the University of the South Pacific. He has organised scholarships with the Asia New Zealand Foundation for student journalists to China, Indonesia and the Philippines.

He was founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review journal in 1994 and in 1996 he established the Pacific Media Watch, working as convenor with students to campaign for media freedom in the Pacific.

He has authored 10 books on Asia-Pacific media and politics. Dr Robie co-founded and is deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network/Te Koakoa NGO. 

In an interview with Global Voices last year, Dr Robie praised the support from colleagues and student journalists and said:

“There should be more international reporting about the ‘hidden stories’ of the Pacific such as the unresolved decolonisation issues — Kanaky New Caledonia, ‘French’ Polynesia (Mā’ohi Nui), both from France; and West Papua from Indonesia.

“West Papua, in particular, is virtually ignored by Western media in spite of the ongoing serious human rights violations. This is unconscionable.”


Dr David Robie’s investiture.         Video: Office of the Governor-General

‘Starving’ masked Palestine protesters condemn Luxon’s Gaza ‘appeasement’

By
Cafe Pacific Publisher
-
0
Starvation masks, banners, placards and mock bodies make a dramatic street theatre scene in Auckland’s Takutai Square today in protest over Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Image: Del Abcede/APR
Starvation masks, banners, placards and mock bodies make a dramatic street theatre scene in Auckland’s Takutai Square today in protest over Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Image: Del Abcede/APR

Asia Pacific Report

Protesting New Zealanders donned symbolic masks modelled on a Palestinian artist’s handiwork in Auckland’s Takutai Square today to condemn Israel’s starvation as war weapon against Gaza and the NZ prime minister’s weak response.

Coming a day after the tabling of Budget 2025 in Parliament, peaceful demonstrators wore hand-painted masks inspired by Gaza-based Palestinian artist Reem Arkan, who is fighting for her life alongside hundreds of thousands of the displaced Gazans.

The “bodies” represented more than 53,000 Palestinians killed by Israel’s brutal 19-month war on Gaza.

"Israel is starving us"
“Israel is starving us” in Gaza, says the protest placard – one of many – in Aucklsnd’s Takutai Square as NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon also faced condemnation at the pro-Palestine demonstration today. Image: Del Abcede/APR

The protest coincided with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon addressing the Trans-Tasman Business Circle in Auckland.

The demonstrators said they chose this moment and location to “highlight the alarmingly tepid response” by the New Zealand government to what global human rights organisations — such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — have branded as war crimes and acts of collective punishment amounting to genocide.

“This week, we heard yet another call for Israel to abide by international law. This is not leadership. It’s appeasement,” said a spokesperson, Olivia Coote.

“The time for statements has long passed. What we are witnessing in Gaza is a humanitarian catastrophe, and New Zealand must impose meaningful sanctions.

“Israel’s actions, including the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, forced displacement, and obstruction of humanitarian aid, constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of which we are signatories.”

A self-portrait by Palestinian artist Reem Arkan who depicts the suffering of Gaza - and the beauty - in spite of the savagery of the Israel attacks
A self-portrait by Palestinian artist Reem Arkan who depicts the suffering of Gaza – and the beauty – in spite of the savagery of the Israel attacks. Image: Insta/@artist_reemarkan

Green Party Co-Leader Chlöe Swarbrick challenged Prime Minister Luxon in Parliament over his government’s response earlier this week, saying: “We’ve had lots of words. We need action.”

Luxon claimed that sanctions were in place — but the only measure taken has been a travel ban on 12 extremist Israeli settlers from the West Bank.

“This is an action that does nothing to protect the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza who face daily bombardment, siege, and starvation,” Coote said.

The protesters are calling on the New Zealand government to act immediately by:

  • Imposing sanctions on Israel; and
  • Suspending all diplomatic and trade relations with Israel until there is an end to hostilities and full compliance with international humanitarian law.

“This government must not be complicit in atrocities through silence and inaction,” Coote said.

An effigy of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon
An effigy of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon . . . he faced condemnation for New Zealand’s “weak response” to the Gaza starvation crisis. Image: Del Abcede/APR

“The people of Aotearoa New Zealand demand leadership as the world watches a genocide unfold in real time.”

Al Jazeera reports that Israeli strikes have killed at least 85 people in Gaza since the early hours of Thursday, according to medical sources, and casualties are continuing to mount amid unrelenting bombardments.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said 29 children and elderly people who had died in recent days in Gaza had been registered as “starvation-related deaths”, and thousands more were at risk of starving.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military has said it is preparing to demolish the occupied West Bank homes of two Palestinian men, Maher Samara and Jamil Samara, it has accused of assisting in the killing of an Israeli settler earlier this month.

"My family have been killed" in Gaza says the placard
“My family have been killed” in Gaza says the placard with this masked protester. Many families have been completely wiped out in the Israeli attacks. Image: Del Abcede/APR

Starvation masks, banners, placards and mock bodies make a dramatic street theatre scene in Auckland’s Takutai Square today in protest over Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza
Starvation masks, banners, placards and mock bodies make a dramatic street theatre scene in Auckland’s Takutai Square today in protest over Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Image: Del Abcede/APR

40 years on – reflecting on Rainbow Warrior’s legacy, fight against nuclear colonialism

By
Cafe Pacific Publisher
-
0

A forthcoming new edition of David Robie’s Eyes of Fire honours the ship’s final mission and the resilience of those affected by decades of radioactive fallout.

PACIFIC MORNINGS: By Aui’a Vaimaila Leatinu’u

The Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior III ship returns to Aotearoa this July, 40 years after the bombing of the original campaign ship, with a new edition of its landmark eyewitness account.

On 10 July 1985, two underwater bombs planted by French secret agents destroyed the Rainbow Warrior at Marsden Wharf in Auckland, killing Portuguese-born Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira and sparking global outrage.

The Rainbow Warrior was protesting nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific, specifically targeting French atmospheric and underground nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls.

The vessel drew international attention to the environmental devastation and human suffering caused by decades of radioactive fallout.

Eyes of Fire - the cover for the 30th anniversary edition in 2015
Eyes of Fire – the cover for the 30th anniversary edition in 2015. Image: Little island Press

The 40th anniversary commemorations include a new edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior by journalist David Robie, who was on board the ship during its historic mission in the Marshall Islands.

The Rainbow Warrior’s final voyage, Operation Exodus, helped evacuate the people of Rongelap after years of US nuclear fallout made their island uninhabitable. The vessel arrived at Rongelap Atoll on 15 May 1985.

Dr Robie, who joined the Rainbow Warrior in Hawai‘i as a journalist at the end of April 1985, says the mission was unlike any other.

“The fact that this was a humanitarian voyage, quite different in many ways from many of the earlier protest voyages by Greenpeace, to help the people of Rongelap in the Marshall Islands . . . it was going to be quite momentous,” Dr Robie says.

PMN is US
PMN NEWS

“A lot of people in the Marshall Islands suffered from those tests. Rongelap particularly wanted to move to a safer location. It is an incredible thing to do for an island community where the land is so much part of their existence, their spirituality and their ethos.”

He says the biggest tragedy of the bombing was the death of Pereira.

“He will never be forgotten and it was a miracle that night that more people were not killed in the bombing attack by French state terrorists.

“What the French secret agents were doing was outright terrorism, bombing a peaceful environmental ship under the cover of their government. It was an outrage”.

PMN News interview with Dr David Robie
PMN News interview with Dr David Robie on 20 May 2025.

Russel Norman, executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa, calls the 40th anniversary “a pivotal moment” in the global environmental struggle.

“Climate change, ecosystem collapse, and accelerating species extinction pose an existential threat,” Dr Norman says.

“As we remember the bombing and the murder of our crew member, Fernando Pereira, it’s important to remember why the French government was compelled to commit such a cowardly act of violence.

“Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective. We posed a very real threat to the French Government’s military programme and colonial power.”

As the only New Zealand journalist on board, Dr Robie documented the trauma of nuclear testing and the resilience of the Rongelapese people. He recalls their arrival in the village, where the locals dismantled their homes over three days.

“The only part that was left on the island was the church, the stone, white stone church. Everything else was disassembled and taken on the Rainbow Warrior for four voyages. I remember one older woman sitting on the deck among the remnants of their homes.”

Robie also recalls the inspiring impact of the ship’s banner for the region reading: “Nuclear Free Pacific”.

One of the elderly Rongelap Islanders with her home and possessions on the deck of the Rainbow Warrior in May 1985
One of the elderly Rongelap Islanders with her home and possessions on the deck of the Rainbow Warrior in May 1985. Image: David Robie/Eyes of Fire

“That stands out because this was a humanitarian mission but it was for the whole region. It’s the whole of the Pacific, helping Pacific people but also standing up against the nuclear powers, US and France in particular, who carried out so many tests in the Pacific.”

Originally released in 1986, Eyes of Fire chronicled the relocation effort and the ship’s final weeks before the bombing. Robie says the new edition draws parallels between nuclear colonialism then and climate injustice now.

“This whole renewal of climate denialism, refusal by major states to realise that the solutions are incredibly urgent, and the United States up until recently was an important part of that whole process about facing up to the climate crisis.


Nuclear Exodus: The Rongelap Evacuation.      Video: In association with TVNZ

“It’s even more important now for activism, and also for the smaller countries that are reasonably progressive, to take the lead. It looks at what’s happened in the last 10 years since the previous edition we did, and then a number of the people who were involved then.

“I hope the book helps to inspire others, especially younger people, to get out there and really take action. The future is in your hands.”

Aui’a Vaimaila Leatinu’u is a multimedia journalist at Pacific Media Network. Republished with permission.

Islanders with their belongings approach the Rainbow Warrior in May 1985
Islanders with their belongings approach the Rainbow Warrior in May 1985 with its striking nuclear-free banner. Image: David Robie/Eyes of Fire

Why the wall of silence on the Gaza genocide is finally starting to crack

By
Cafe Pacific Publisher
-
0
About 2000 protesters took part in a demonstration against Israel's Gaza genocide and ethnic cleansing in New Zealand's largest city Auckland yesterday
About 2000 protesters took part in a demonstration against Israel's Gaza genocide and ethnic cleansing in New Zealand's largest city Auckland yesterday, sparking the global Nakba Day rallies across the world. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report

As Israel unveils its final genocide push, and mass death from starvation looms in Gaza, Western media and politicians are tentatively starting to speak up

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

Who could have imagined 19 months ago that it would take more than a year and a half of Israel slaughtering and starving Gaza’s children for the first cracks to appear in what has been a rock-solid wall of support for Israel from Western establishments.

Finally, something looks like it may be about to give.

The British establishment’s financial daily, The Financial Times, was first to break ranks last week to condemn “the West’s shameful silence” in the face of Israel’s murderous assault on the tiny enclave.

In an editorial — effectively the paper’s voice– the FT accused the United States and Europe of being increasingly “complicit” as Israel made Gaza “uninhabitable”, an allusion to genocide, and noted that the goal was to “drive Palestinians from their land”, an allusion to ethnic cleansing.

Of course, both of these grave crimes by Israel have been evidently true not only since Hamas’ violent, single-day breakout from Gaza on 7 October 2023, but for decades.

So parlous is the state of Western reporting, from a media no less complicit than the governments berated by the FT, that we need to seize on any small signs of progress.

Next, The Economist chimed in, warning that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers were driven by a “dream of emptying Gaza and rebuilding Jewish settlements there”.

‘Deafening silence on Gaza’
At the weekend, The Independent decided the “deafening silence on Gaza” had to end. It was “time for the world to wake up to what is happening and to demand an end to the suffering of the Palestinians trapped in the enclave”.

Actually much of the world woke up many, many months ago. It has been the Western press corps and Western politicians slumbering through the past 19 months of genocide.

Then on Monday, the supposedly liberal Guardian voiced in its own editorial a fear that Israel is committing “genocide”, though it only dared do so by framing the accusation as a question.

It wrote of Israel: “Now it plans a Gaza without Palestinians. What is this, if not genocidal? When will the US and its allies act to stop the horror, if not now?”

The paper could more properly have asked a different question: Why have Israel’s Western allies — as well as media like The Guardian and FT — waited 19 months to speak up against the horror?

And, predictably bringing up the rear, was the BBC. On Wednesday, the BBC Radio’s PM programme chose to give top billing to testimony from Tom Fletcher, the United Nation’s humanitarian affairs chief, to the Security Council. Presenter Evan Davis said the BBC had decided to “do something a little unusual”.

Unusual indeed. It played Fletcher’s speech in full — all 12 and a half minutes of it. That included Fletcher’s comment: “For those killed and those whose voices are silenced: what more evidence do you need now? Will you act — decisively — to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law?”

‘Genocide’ from taboo to mainstream
We had gone in less than a week from the word “genocide” being taboo in relation to Gaza to it becoming almost mainstream.

Cracks are evident in the British Parliament too. Mark Pritchard, a Conservative MP and life-long Israel supporter, stood up from the back benches to admit he had been wrong about Israel, and condemned it “for what it is doing to the Palestinian people”.

He was one of more than a dozen Tory MPs and peers in the House of Lords, all formerly staunch defenders of Israel, who urged British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to immediately recognise a Palestinian state.

Their move followed an open letter published by 36 members of the Board of Deputies, a 300-member body that claims to represent British Jews, dissenting from its continuing support for the slaughter. The letter warned: “Israel’s soul is being ripped out.”

Pritchard told fellow MPs it was time to “stand up for humanity, for us being on the right side of history, for having the moral courage to lead.”

Sadly, there is no sign of that yet. Research published last week, based on Israeli tax authority data, showed Starmer’s government has been lying even about the highly limited restrictions on arms sales to Israel it claimed to have imposed last year.

Despite an ostensible ban on shipments of weapons that could be used in Gaza, Britain has covertly exported more than 8500 separate munitions to Israel since the ban.

More weapons details
This week more details emerged. According to figures published by The National, the current government exported more weapons to Israel in the final three months of last year, after the ban came into effect, than the previous Conservative government did through the whole of 2020 to 2023.

So shameful is the UK’s support for Israel in the midst of what the International Court of Justice — the World Court — has described as a “plausible genocide” that Starmer’s government needs to pretend it is doing something, even as it actually continues to arm that genocide.

More than 40 MPs wrote to Foreign Secretary David Lammy last week calling for him to respond to allegations that he had misled the public and Parliament. “The public deserves to know the full scale of the UK’s complicity in crimes against humanity,” they wrote.

There are growing rumblings elsewhere. This week French President Emmanuel Macron called Israel’s complete blockade on aid into Gaza “shameful and unacceptable”. He added: “My job is to do everything I can to make it stop.”

“Everything” seemed to amount to nothing more than mooting possible economic sanctions.

Still, the rhetorical shift was striking. Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, similarly denounced the blockade, calling it “unjustifiable”. She added: “I have always recalled the urgency of finding a way to end the hostilities and respect international law and international humanitarian law.”

“International law”? Where has that been for the past 19 months?

Similar change of priorities
There was a similar change of priorities across the Atlantic. Democratic Senator Chris van Hollen, for example, recently dared to call Israel’s actions in Gaza “ethnic cleansing”.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, a bellwether of the Beltway consensus, gave Israel’s deputy Foreign Minister, Sharren Haskel, an unusually tough grilling. Amanpour all but accused her of lying about Israel starving children.

Meanwhile, Josep Borrell, the recently departed head of European Union foreign policy, broke another taboo last week by directly accusing Israel of preparing a genocide in Gaza.

“Seldom have I heard the leader of a state so clearly outline a plan that fits the legal definition of genocide,” he said, adding: “We’re facing the largest ethnic cleansing operation since the end of the Second World War.”

Borrell, of course, has no influence over EU policy at this point.

This is all painfully slow progress, but it does suggest that a tipping point may be near.

If so, there are several reasons. One — the most evident in the mix — is US President Donald Trump.

It was easier for The Guardian, the FT and old-school Tory MPs to watch the extermination of Gaza’s Palestinians in silence when it was kindly Uncle Joe Biden and the US military industrial complex behind it.

Trump forgets ‘his bit’
Unlike his predecessor, Trump too often forgets the bit where he is supposed to put a gloss on Israeli crimes, or distance the US from them, even as Washington ships the weapons to carry out those crimes.

But also, there are plenty of indications that Trump — with his constant craving to be seen as the top dog — is increasingly annoyed at being publicly outfoxed by Netanyahu.

This week, as Trump headed to the Middle East, his administration secured the release of Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, the last living US citizen in captivity in Gaza, by bypassing Israel and negotiating directly with Hamas.

In his comments on the release, Trump insisted it was time to “put an end to this very brutal war” — a remark he had very obviously not coordinated with Netanyahu.

Notably, Israel is not on Trump’s Middle East schedule.

Right now seems a relatively safe moment to adopt a more critical stance towards Israel, as presumably the FT and Guardian appreciate.

Then there is the fact that Israel’s genocide is reaching its endpoint. No food, water or medicines have entered Gaza for more than two months. Everyone is malnourished. It is unclear, given Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health system, how many have already died from hunger.

Skin-and-bones children
But the pictures of skin-and-bones children emerging from Gaza are uncomfortably reminiscent of 80-year-old images of skeletal Jewish children imprisoned in Nazi camps.

It is a reminder that Gaza — strictly blockaded by Israel for 16 years before Hamas’ 7 October 2023 breakout — has been transformed over the past 19 months from a concentration camp into a death camp.

Parts of the media and political class know mass death in Gaza cannot be obscured for much longer, not even after Israel has barred foreign journalists from the enclave and murdered most of the Palestinian journalists trying to record the genocide.

Cynical political and media actors are trying to get in their excuses before it is too late to show remorse.

And finally there is the fact that Israel has declared its readiness to take hands-on responsibility for the extermination in Gaza by, in its words, “capturing” the tiny territory.

The long-anticipated “day after” looks like it is about to arrive.

For 20 years, Israel and Western capitals have conspired in the lie that Gaza’s occupation ended in 2005, when Israel’s then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, pulled out a few thousand Jewish settlers and withdrew Israeli soldiers to a highly fortified perimeter encaging the enclave.

Always under Israeli occupation
In a ruling last year, the World Court gave this claim short shrift, emphasising that Gaza, as well as the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, had never stopped being under Israeli occupation, and that the occupation must end immediately.

The truth is that, even before the 2023 Hamas attacks, Israel had been besieging Gaza by land, sea and air for many, many years. Nothing — people or trade — went in or out without the Israeli military’s say-so.

Israeli officials instituted a secret policy of putting the population there on a strict “diet” – a war crime then as now — one that ensured most of Gaza’s young became progressively more malnourished.

Drones whined constantly overhead, as they do now, watching the population from the skies 24 hours a day and occasionally raining down death. Fishermen were shot and their boats sunk for trying to fish their own waters. Farmers’ crops were destroyed by herbicides sprayed from Israeli planes.

And when the mood took it, Israel sent in fighter jets to bomb the enclave or sent soldiers in on military operations, killing hundreds of civilians at a time.

When Palestinians in Gaza went out week after week to stage protests close to the perimeter fence of their concentration camp, Israeli snipers shot them, killing some 200 and crippling many thousands more.

Yet, despite all this, Israel and Western capitals insisted on the story that Hamas “ruled” Gaza, and that it alone was responsible for what went on there.

Fiction important to West
“That fiction was very important to the Western powers. It allowed Israel to evade accountability for the crimes against humanity committed in Gaza over the past two decades – and it allowed the West to avoid complicity charges for arming the criminals.

Instead, the political and media class perpetuated the myth that Israel was engaged in a “conflict” with Hamas — as well as intermittent “wars” in Gaza — even as Israel’s own military termed its operations to destroy whole neighbourhoods and kill their residents “mowing the lawn”.

Israel, of course, viewed Gaza as its lawn to mow. And that is precisely because it never stopped occupying the enclave.

Even today Western media outlets collude in the fiction that Gaza is free from Israeli occupation by casting the slaughter there — and the starvation of the population — as a “war”.

But the “day after” — signalled by Israel’s promised “capture” and “reoccupation” of Gaza — brings a conundrum for Israel and its Western sponsors.

Until now Israel’s every atrocity has been justified by Hamas’ violent breakout on 7 October 2023.

Israel and its supporters have insisted that Hamas must return the Israelis it took captive before there can be some undefined “peace”. At the same time, Israel has also maintained that Gaza must be destroyed at all costs to root out Hamas and eliminate it.

Goals never looked consistent
These two goals never looked consistent — not least because the more Palestinian civilians Israel killed “rooting out” Hamas, the more young men Hamas recruited seeking vengeance.

The constant stream of genocidal rhetoric from Israeli leaders made clear that they believed there were no civilians in Gaza — not “uninvolved” –– and that the enclave should be levelled and the population treated like “human animals”, punished with “no food, water or fuel”.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich reiterated that approach last week, vowing that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” and that its people would be ethnically cleansed — or, as he put it, forced to “leave in great numbers to third countries”.

Israeli officials have echoed him, threatening to “flatten” Gaza if the hostages are not released. But in truth, the captives held by Hamas are just a convenient pretext.

Smotrich was more honest in observing that the hostages’ release was “not the most important thing”. His view is apparently shared by the Israeli military, which has reportedly put that aim last in a list of six “war” objectives.

More important to the military are “operational control” of Gaza, “demilitarization of the territory” and “concentration and movement of the population”.

With Israel about to be indisputably, visibly in direct charge of Gaza again — with the cover stories stripped away of a “war”, of the need to eliminate of Hamas, of civilian casualties as “collateral damage” — Israel’s responsibility for the genocide will be incontestable too, as will the West’s active collusion.

Mossad agents’ letter
That was why more than 250 former officials with Mossad, Israel’s spy agency — including three of its former heads — signed a letter this week decrying Israel’s breaking of the ceasefire in early March and its return to “war”.

The letter called Israel’s official objectives “unattainable”.

Similarly, the Israeli media reports large numbers of Israel’s military reservists are no longer showing up when called for a return to duty in Gaza.

Israel’s western patrons must now grapple with Israel’s “plan” for the ruined territory. Its outline has been coming more sharply into focus in recent days.

In January Israel formally outlawed the United Nations refugee agency Unrwa that feeds and cares for the large proportion of the Palestinian population driven off their historic lands by Israel in earlier phases of its decades-long colonisation of historic Palestine.

Gaza is packed with such refugees – the outcome of Israel’s biggest ethnic cleansing programme in 1948, at its creation as a “Jewish state”.

Removing Unrwa had been a long-held ambition, a move by Israel designed to help rid it of the yoke of aid agencies that have been caring for Palestinians – and thereby helping them to resist Israel’s efforts at ethnic cleansing – as well as monitoring Israel’s adherence, or rather lack of it, to international law.

Private contractor scheme
For the ethnic cleansing and genocide programmes in Gaza to be completed, Israel has needed to produce an alternative system to Unrwa’s.

Last week, it approved a scheme in which it intends to use private contractors, not the UN, to deliver small quantities of food and water to Palestinians. Israel will allow in 60 trucks a day — barely a tenth of the absolute minimum required, according to the UN.

There are several catches. To stand any hope of qualifying for this very limited aid, Palestinians will need to collect it from military distribution points located in a small area at the southern tip of the Gaza strip.

In other words, some two million Palestinians will have to crowd into a location that has no chance of accommodating them all, and even then will have only a tenth of the aid they need.

They will have to relocate too without any guarantee from Israel that it won’t continue bombing the “humanitarian zones” they have been herded into.

These military distribution zones just so happen to be right next to Gaza’s sole, short border with Egypt — exactly where Israel has been seeking to drive the Palestinians over the past 19 months in the hope of forcing Egypt to open the border so the people of Gaza can be ethnically cleansed into Sinai.

Under Israel’s scheme, Palestinians will be screened in these military hubs using biometric data before they stand any hope of receiving minimum calorie-controlled handouts of food.

Once inside the hubs, they can be arrested and shipped off to one of Israel’s torture camps.

Torture and abuse rife
Just last week Israel’s Haaretz newspaper published testimony from an Israeli soldier turned whistleblower — confirming accounts from doctors and other guards — that torture and abuse are rife against Palestinians, including civilians, at Sde Teiman, the most notorious of the camps.

Last Friday, shortly after Israel announced its “aid” plan, it fired a missile into an Unrwa centre in Jabaliya camp, destroying its food distribution centre and warehouse.

Then on Saturday, Israel bombed tents used for preparing food in Khan Younis and Gaza City. It has been targeting charity kitchens and bakeries to close them down, in an echo of its campaign of destruction against Gaza’s hospitals and health system.

In recent days, a third of UN-supported community kitchens — the population’s last life line — have closed because their stores of food are depleted, as is their access to fuel.

According to the UN agency OCHA, that number is rising “by the day”, leading to “widespread” hunger.

Facing ‘catastrophic hunger’
The UN reported this week that nearly half a million people in Gaza — a fifth of the population — faced “catastrophic hunger”.

Predictably, Israel and its ghoulish apologists are making light of this sea of immense suffering. Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel, argued that critics were unfairly condemning Israel for starving Gaza’s population, and ignoring the health benefits of reducing “obesity” among Palestinians.

In a joint statement last week, 15 UN agencies and more than 200 charities and humanitarian groups denounced Israel’s “aid” plan. The UN children’s fund Unicef warned that Israel was forcing Palestinians to choose between “displacement and death”.

But worse, Israel is setting up its stall once again to turn reality on its head.

Those Palestinians who refuse to cooperate with its “aid” plan will be blamed for their own starvation. And international agencies who refuse to go along with Israeli criminality will be smeared both as “antisemitic” and as responsible for the mounting toll of starvation on Gaza’s population.

There is a way to stop these crimes degenerating further. But it will require Western politicians and journalists to find far more courage than they have dared muster so far. It will need more than rhetorical flourishes. It will need more than public handwringing.

Are they capable of more? Don’t hold your breath.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years and returned to the UK in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, including Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011, Cook was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism for his work on Palestine and Israel. This article was first published in Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.

 

‘Cracks are opening up’ in Western complicity over Gaza genocide, says John Minto

By
David Robie
-
0
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto surveys the protest march up Queen Street in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto surveys the protest march up Queen Street in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland today as part of the global Nakba Day demonstrations against Israel's war on Gaza. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacifc Report

By David Robie

About 2000 New Zealand protesters marched through the heart of Auckland city today chanting “no justice, no peace” and many other calls as they demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the Israeli atrocities in its brutal war on the besieged Palestinian enclave.

For more than 73 days, Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis with the Strip on the brink of a devastating famine.

Israel’s attacks killed more than 150 and wounded 450 in a day in a new barrage of attacks that aid workers described as “Gaza is bleeding before our eyes”.

The global Nakba Day protest with marchers today in Queen Street in New Zealand's largest city Auckland
The global Nakba Day protest with marchers today in Queen Street in New Zealand’s largest city Auckland in solidarity with the Gazan people who are being slaughtered in the Israeli war on the besieged Palestinian enclave. Image: Asia Pacific Report

in Auckland, several Palestinian and other speakers spoke of the anguish and distress of the global Gaza community in the face of Western indifference to the suffering in a rally before the march marking the 77th anniversary of the Nakba — the “Palestinian catastrophe”.

“There are cracks opening up all around the world that haven’t been there for 77 years,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto in an inspired speech to the protesters.

“Right through the news media, journalists are up in arms against their editors and bosses all around the world.

“We’ve got politicians in Britain speaking out for the first time. Some conservative politician got standing up the other day saying, ‘I supported Israel right or wrong for 20 years, and I was wrong.’

‘The world is coming right’
“Yet a lot of the world has been wrong for 77 years, but the world is coming right. We are on the right side of history, give us a big round of applause.”

Minto was highly critical of the public broadcasters, Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand, saying they relied too heavily on a narrow range of Western sources whose credibility had been challenged and eroded over the past 19 months.

PSNA co-chair John Minto
PSNA co-chair John Minto . . . .capturing an image of the march up Auckland’s Queen Street in protest over the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Image: APR

He also condemned their “proximity” news value, blaming it for news editors’ lapse of judgment on news values because Israelis “spoke English”.

Minto told the crowd that that they should be monitoring Al Jazeera for a more balanced and nuanced coverage of the war on Palestine.

His comments echoed a similar theme of a speech at the Fickling Centre in Three Kings on Thursday night and protesters followed up by picketing the NZ Voyager Media Awards last night with a light show of killed Gazan journalists beamed on the hotel venue.

Protesters at the NZ Voyager Media Awards protesting against unbalanced media coverage of Israel's genocide
Protesters at the NZ Voyager Media Awards protesting last night against unbalanced media coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Image: Achmat Eesau/PSNA

About 230 Gazan journalists have been killed in the war so far, many of them allegedly targeted by the Israeli forces.

Minto said he could not remember a previous time when a New Zealand government had remained silent in the face of industrial-scale killing of civilians anywhere in the world.

“We have livestreamed genocide happening and we have our government refusing to condemn any of Israel’s war crimes,” he said.

NZ ‘refusing to condemn war crimes’
“Yet we’ve got everybody in the leadership of this government having condemned every act of Palestinian resistance yet refused to condemn the war crimes, refused to condemn the bombing of civilians, and refused to condemn the mass starvation of 2.3 million people.

“What a bunch of depraved bastards run this country. Shame on all of them.”

Palestinian speaker Samer Almalalha
Palestinian speaker Samer Al Malalha . . . “Everything we were told about international law and human rights is bullshit.” A golden key symbolising the right of return for Palestinians is in the background. Image: APR

Palestinian speaker Samer Al Malalha spoke of the 1948 Nakba and the injustices against his people.

“Everything we were told about international law and human rights is bullshit. The only rights you have are the ones you take,” he said.

“So today we won’t stand here to plead, we are here to remind you of what happened to us. We are here to take what is ours. Today, and every day, we fight for a free Palestine.”

Nakba survivor Ghazi Dassouki
Nakba survivor Ghazi Dassouki . . . a harrowing story about a massacre village. Image: Bruce King survivor

Nakba survivor Ghazi Dassouki is now a 90-year-old and he told a harrowing story from his homeland. As a 14-year-old boy, he and his family were driven out of Palestine during the Nakba.

He described “waking up to to the smell of gunpowder” — his home was close to the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, when Zionist militias attacked the village killing 107 people, including women and children.

‘Palestine will be free – and so will we’
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said: “What we stand for is truth, justice, peace and love.

“Palestine will be free and, in turn, so will we.”

She said only six more MPs were needed to have the numbers to have the Greens’ Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill passed in Parliament.

Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis, with the integrated food security agency IPC warning that famine could be declared any time between now and September, reports Al Jazeera.

The head of the UN Children’s Fund, Catherine Russell, said the world should be shocked by the killing of 45 children in Israeli air strikes in just two days.

Instead, the slaughter of children in Gaza is “largely met with indifference”.

“More than 1 million children in Gaza are at risk of starvation. They are deprived of food, water and medicine,” Russell wrote in a post on social media.

“Nowhere is safe for children in Gaza,” she said.

“This horror must stop.”

"The coloniser lied" . . . a placard in today's Palestine rally in Auckland
“The coloniser lied” . . . a placard in today’s Palestine rally in Auckland. Image: APR

Famine worst level of hunger
Famine is the worst level of hunger, where people face severe food shortages, widespread malnutrition, and high levels of death due to starvation.

According to the UN’s criteria, famine is declared when:

  • At least 20 percent (one-fifth) of households face extreme food shortages;
  • More than 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition; and
  • At least two out of every 10,000 people or four out of every 10,000 children die each day from starvation or hunger-related causes.

Famine is not just about hunger; it is the worst humanitarian emergency, indicating a complete collapse of access to food, water and the systems necessary for survival.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), since Israel’s complete blockade began on March 2, at least 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition.

"Stop Genocide in Gaza"
“Stop Genocide in Gaza” . . . the start of the rally with PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal on the right. Image: APR

How should the media cover a genocide? New Zealand’s national broadcaster is failing in its duty

By
Cafe Pacific Publisher
-
0
Make it stand out
"The Israel-Palestine conflict touches both the credibility of the national broadcaster and our country’s tangential connection to major ongoing war crimes that many experts categorise as a textbook case of genocide." Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

ANALYSIS: By Jeremy Rose, Eugene Doyle and Ramon Das

Radio New Zealand’s decision to conduct a review of its Israel-Palestine coverage post-7 October 2023 is commendable.  It commissioned Colin Feslier, an experienced and respected communications expert to undertake this work.

Feslier delivered his report in March 2025. His brief was to assess complaints against the various standards, principles and codes, monitoring coverage outside this, and suggesting actions for improvement.

Feslier has a long and close affiliation with Radio New Zealand.  His remuneration, time allocation, and RNZ’s own requirements of him may have constrained the scope of his work.

However, the report, as presented, we believe, does not meet a credible standard in terms of breadth, methodology and analysis.  Unfortunately, the result — an assessment that the broadcaster was almost unswerving in meeting journalistic codes and standards — fails to do justice to the issue on numerous counts.

Genocide
“The Israel-Palestine conflict touches both the credibility of the national broadcaster and our country’s tangential connection to major ongoing war crimes that many experts categorise as a textbook case of genocide.” Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

Given its self-limiting scope and its conclusions (which we do not agree with), the report risks appearing to be a quick sanitising exercise that ended in a predictable finding of, “Nothing to see here; you’re doing a great job.”

Why deeper analysis is required
The issue of bias in Radio New Zealand’s coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict is too important to leave at that.  The Israel-Palestine conflict touches both the credibility of the national broadcaster and our country’s tangential connection to major ongoing war crimes that many experts categorise as a textbook case of genocide.

Missing the forest for the trees
Its most glaring failure is not to see the forest for the trees. By concentrating on complaints about individual stories and claiming that balance is achieved over time it avoids tackling the most serious complaint that RNZ has failed to cover the unfolding genocide in Gaza with anything like the attention it demands.

The report lacks any quantitative analysis, any comparison with coverage by other public broadcasters, and doesn’t tackle the question of whether enough attention has been given to what human rights groups like Amnesty International, Israel’s B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch, as well as leading academic authorities, have called an ongoing genocide.

Similarly, it fails to note an alarming absence of Palestinian voices in its coverage since 7 October 2023. Nor does it interrogate the reasons why Israeli and Palestinian voices are not given equal weight.

Remedying the inadequacies of the report is beyond the scope of this article but even a cursory look at the evidence suggests a far more rigorous investigation is needed.

Genocide avoidance on RNZ
The very first principle of the Media Council Principles (“Accuracy, Fairness and Balance”) states that broadcasters are not to “mislead or misinform readers by commission or omission.” In other words, the Principles explicitly recognise a positive duty to inform the public on matters that are in the public interest.

RNZ’s sparse and incomplete coverage of the Israeli genocide has, we submit, clearly failed to meet this positive duty to the public.

In November 2023, leading holocaust and genocide scholar Omer Bartov — an Israeli citizen — wrote a New York Times op-ed claiming Israeli leaders from the president and PM down were expressing genocidal intent. He has since become one of many prominent genocide scholars to say Israel has gone from expressing intent to carrying out a genocide.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation interviewed Bartov after his initial essay claiming there was genocidal intent was published, and he’s had two in-depth interviews since. Bartov has not appeared on Radio New Zealand since 2009.

The claim by leading human rights groups, genocide scholars, distinguished Israeli historians, such as Avi Shlaim, that a genocide is ongoing is unprecedented and has focussed the world’s attention on the issue of genocide like never before. South Africa taking a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), now supported by a growing number of countries, adds great weight to the issue.

A search of RNZ’s audio returns just one interview on the topic:  a 7-minute interview on Checkpoint with Amnesty International Aotearoa campaigns director Lisa Woods.

Absence of Palestinian voices
News items regularly feature either IDF spokespeople or clips of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges) but almost never clips of either Hamas or Palestinian Authority spokespeople.

The absence of feature interviews with either Palestinians or Israelis is a striking aspect of the last 19-months of coverage.

Rashid Khalidi, the author of The One Hundred Year War on Palestine, is a leading US-based Palestinian intellectual who has appeared on numerous media outlets since 7 October 2023, including twice on the ABC and once on RTE — but not once on RNZ.

He is, of course, just one example, and there are numerous other Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals and politicians who could provide useful context.

On two occasions when local Palestinians were interviewed, they were paired not with Israelis but Jewish New Zealanders

Crimes against Palestinians given less weight
The RNZ report refers to a listener’s complaint that BBC reports carried by RNZ are biased. In response it recommended that RNZ dedicate a section of its website explaining its choice of sources and why it trusts them.

It failed to note that more than 100 BBC staff as well as prominent historians and academics had raised similar concerns about the public broadcaster’s lack of balance in its coverage of Israel Palestine in an open letter published last November.

We are not suggesting RNZ ditch the BBC; but relying so heavily on a select few outlets, that may themselves lack balance when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict, is more likely to amplify a lack of balance than lessen it.

Some lives matter more than others
Establishing for a fact that less weight is given to the suffering of one group than others is extremely difficult but there’s reason to believe that this is the case in RNZ’s Palestine coverage.

To take just two recent examples. On Monday 14 April Morning Report ran a six-minute item on a Russian attack that killed 34 Ukrainian civilians. Israel’s attack on the last hospital left standing in Gaza the day before didn’t rate a mention.

According to Al Jazeera an average of 62 Palestinians were killed each day between March 18 and April 12. During that same period Morning Report ran just two stories on the bombing of civilians in Gaza totaling 9 minutes 42 seconds.

On Monday, May 5, the RNZ’s website ran a lengthy Reuters report and a Checkpoint report on a Houthi missile strike on Ben Gurion airport. A US strike on Yemen a week earlier that resulted in the killing of 68 civilians went unreported. This should be of interest to our national broadcaster as New Zealand has military targeting specialists working in the Red Sea to support the US-Israeli campaign against Yemen’s Houthis.

Israelis are ‘people like us’. Palestinians are not?
One of the more revealing parts of the report notes that the journalistic concept of “proximity” may influence RNZ’s news judgement. In essence the idea is that journalists give greater weight to a bus crash in their own city than to one on the other side of the world.

The report claims that: “Israel, as a result of tourism, trade, ‘western’ alignment and language (with English a common first and second language there) have a greater ‘news proximity’ to New Zealand than do Palestinians and Palestine. Stories may be chosen for these reasons and the inevitable result is a stronger perception of news relevance of Israeli stories. Coverage of stories with a Palestinian angle will tend to be less often reported. This tendency needs to be recognized.”

If that “tendency” has been in play in RNZ’s news judgement it has to be more than “recognised” it needs to be properly investigated and stamped out. The implication that RNZ listeners care more about the life of an Israeli baby than a Palestinian one is abhorrent.

But, having flagged that possibility, the report then fails to investigate whether RNZ’s coverage has favoured Israeli stories over Palestinian ones and simply recommends that the public broadcaster recognises the risk. This is unacceptable.

There is, as it happens, a stark illustration of RNZ providing more airtime to an Israeli spokesperson justifying the war crime of bombing a hospital than a leading UN expert on the war crimes being committed in Gaza.

In November 2023, Francesa Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, visited New Zealand. Her only appearance on RNZ to date was an interview of under a minute on Morning Report during her nationwide tour.

The 3 minute 52 second item consists of almost two minutes of IDF spokesperson Mark Regev justifying Israel’s bombing of the Al Shifa hospital followed by less than a minute of Albanese.

Normal practice would be to give more airtime to a visiting expert than a BBC recording of a government spokesperson spinning a line.

A search of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation website for Francesca Albanese returns 14 items including an 18-minute interview from the Australian leg of her speaking tour, and a 10-minute interview from earlier this year.

And it’s a similar story on the website of Irish public broadcaster RTE with around a dozen interviews since Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

Israeli-caused famine merits coverage
As we write Israel’s complete ban on food, medicine and other essentials of life entering the wasteland that is Gaza has passed the two-month mark. A search of RNZ’s audio items over that period shows that the starvation of Gaza has been touched on in six or seven crosses to correspondents in their summaries of the latest developments but there hasn’t been a single interview with legal or humanitarian experts.

An RNZ listener relying on the National programme as their main source of news would need to have been an avid listener of First Up, Morning Report, Checkpoint and Saturday Morning to have any idea of what is going on. (Sunday Morning has all but ignored the issue.)

RNZ is failing in its duty to inform the public of an entirely preventable humanitarian catastrophe.

A detailed investigation is required
Radio New Zealand is without a doubt one of our very best media outlets. We want it to be even better and a far more detailed investigation of its Israeli-Palestine coverage is needed. This would cover systemic bias, media sourcing and reliability, bias in coverage scale, compliance with code of ethics, comparative coverage analysis, cultural identification bias (proximity), other reasons why some stories aren’t told, the overall framing of the conflict, genocide recognition, and overall balance.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington based journalist. He spent a decade as a producer on RNZ’s Mediawatch, Ideas, and Sunday programmes. He is a member of Alternative Jewish Voices.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz. He worked for Radio New Zealand in the 1980s.

Ramon Das is senior lecturer in the Philosophy Programme at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. He has taught and written for many years on issues related to the Israel/Palestine conflict.

As Trump basks in Gulf Arab applause, Israel massacres children in Gaza

By
Cafe Pacific Publisher
-
0
How Palestine has been swallowed up by Greater Israel expansionism since the 1948 Nakba
How Palestine has been swallowed up by Greater Israel expansionism since the 1948 Nakba . . . the author describes Trump's Middle East visit "a grotesque spectacle of decadence, delusion and disgrace." Graphic: Visualizing Palestine

Nakba Day today marks 15 May 1948 — the day after the declaration of the State of Israel — when the Palestinian society and homeland was destroyed and more than 750,000 people forced to leave and become refugees.  The day is known as the “Palestinian Catastrophe”. 

ANALYSIS: By Soumaya Ghannoushi

US President Donald Trump’s tour of Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Doha is not diplomacy. It is theatre — staged in gold, fuelled by greed, and underwritten by betrayal.

A US president openly arming a genocide is welcomed with red carpets, handshakes and blank cheques. Trillions are pledged; personal gifts are exchanged. And Gaza continues to burn.

Gulf regimes have power and wealth. They have Trump’s ear. Yet they use none of it — not to halt the slaughter, ease the siege or demand dignity.

How Palestine has been swallowed up by Greater Israel expansionism since the 1948 Nakba
How Palestine has been swallowed up by Greater Israel expansionism since the 1948 Nakba . . . the author describes Trump’s Middle East visit “a grotesque spectacle of decadence, delusion and disgrace.” Graphic: Visualizing Palestine

In return for their riches and deference, Trump grants Israel bombs and sets it loose upon the region.

This is the real story. At the heart of Trump’s return lies a project he initiated during his first presidency: the erasure of Palestine, the elevation of autocracy, and the redrawing of the Middle East in Israel’s image.

“See this pen? This wonderful pen on my desk is the Middle East, and the top of the pen — that’s Israel. That’s not good,” he once told reporters, lamenting Israel’s size compared to its neighbours.

To Trump, the Middle East is not a region of history or humanity. It is a marketplace, a weapons depot, a geopolitical ATM.

His worldview is forged in evangelical zeal and transactional instinct. In his rhetoric, Arabs are chaos incarnate: irrational, violent, in need of control. Israel alone is framed as civilised, democratic, divinely chosen. That binary is not accidental. It is ideology.

Obedience for survival
Trump calls the region “a rough neighbourhood” — code for endless militarism that casts the people of the Middle East not as lives to protect, but as threats to contain.

His $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia in 2017 was marketed as peace through prosperity. Now, he wants trillions more in Gulf capital. As reported by The New York Times, Trump is demanding that Saudi Arabia invest its entire annual GDP — $1 trillion — into the US economy.

Riyadh has already offered $600 billion. Trump wants it all. Economists call it absurd; Trump calls it a deal.

This is not negotiation. It is tribute.

And the pace is accelerating. After a recent meeting with Trump, the UAE announced a 10-year, $1.4 trillion investment framework with the US.

This is not realpolitik. It is a grotesque spectacle of decadence, delusion and disgrace

Across the Gulf, a race is underway — not to end the genocide in Gaza, but to outspend one another for Trump’s favour, showering him with wealth in return for nothing.

The Gulf is no longer treated as a region. It is a vault. Sovereign wealth funds are the new ballot boxes. Sovereignty — just another asset to be traded.

Trump’s offer is blunt: obedience for survival. For regimes still haunted by the Arab Spring, Western blessing is their last shield. And they will pay any price: wealth, independence, even dignity.

To them, the true threat is not Israel, nor even Iran. It is their own people, restless, yearning, ungovernable.

Democracy is danger; self-determination, the ticking bomb. So they make a pact with the devil.

Doctrine of immunity
That devil brings flags, frameworks, photo ops and deals. The new order demands normalisation with Israel, submission to its supremacy, and silence on Palestine.

Once-defiant slogans are replaced by fintech expos and staged smiles beside Israeli ministers.

In return, Trump offers impunity: political cover and arms. It is a doctrine of immunity, bought with gold and soaked in Arab blood.

They bend. They hand him deals, honours, trillions. They believe submission buys respect. But Trump respects only power — and he makes that clear.

He praises Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Is Putin smart? Yes . . .  that’s a hell of a way to negotiate.” He calls Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “a guy I like [and] respect”. Like them or not, they defend their nations. And Trump, ever the transactional mind, respects power.

Arab rulers offer no such strength. They offer deference, not defiance. They don’t push; they pay.

And Trump mocks them openly. King Salman “might not be there for two weeks without us”, he brags. They give him billions; he demands trillions.

It is not just the US Treasury profiting. Gulf billions do not merely fuel policy; they enrich a family empire. Since returning to office, Trump and his sons have chased deals across the Gulf, cashing in on the loyalty they have cultivated.

A hotel in Dubai, a tower in Jeddah, a golf resort in Qatar, crypto ventures in the US, a private club in Washington for Gulf elites — these are not strategic projects, but rather revenue streams for the Trump family.

Reward for ethnic cleansing
The precedent was set early. Former presidential adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, secured $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund shortly after leaving office, despite internal objections.

The message was clear: access to the Trumps has a price, and Gulf rulers are eager to pay.

Now, Trump is receiving a private jet from Qatar’s ruling family — a palace in the sky worth $400 million.

This is not diplomacy. It is plunder.

And how does Trump respond? With insult: “It was a great gesture,” he said of the jet, before adding: “We keep them safe. If it wasn’t for us, they probably wouldn’t exist right now.”

That was his thank you to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar; lavish gifts answered with debasement.

And what are they rewarding him for? For genocide. For 100,000 tonnes of bombs dropped on Gaza. For backing ethnic cleansing in plain sight. For empowering far-right Israeli politicians, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as they call for Gaza’s depopulation.

For presiding over the most fanatically Zionist, most unapologetically Islamophobic administration in US history.

Still, they ask nothing, while offering everything. They could have used their leverage. They did not.

The Yemen precedent proves they can act. Trump halted the bombing under Saudi pressure, to Netanyahu’s visible dismay. When they wanted a deal, they struck one with the Houthis.

And when they sought to bring Syria in from the cold, Trump complied. He agreed to meet former rebel leader turned President Ahmed al-Sharaa — a last-minute addition to his Riyadh schedule — and even spoke of lifting sanctions, once again at Saudi Arabia’s request, to “give them a chance of greatness”.

No US president is beyond pressure. But for Gaza? Silence.

Price of silence
While Trump was being feted in Riyadh, Israel rained American-made bombs on two hospitals in Gaza. In Khan Younis, the European Hospital was reportedly struck by nine bunker-busting bombs, killing more than two dozen people and injuring scores more.

Earlier that day, an air strike on Nasser Hospital killed journalist Hassan Islih as he lay wounded in treatment.

As Trump basked in applause, Israel massacred children in Jabalia, where around 50 Palestinians were killed in just a few hours.

This is the bloody price of Arab silence, buried beneath the roar of applause and the glitter of tributes.

This week marks the anniversary of the Nakba — and here it is again, replayed not through tanks alone, but through Arab complicity.

With every cheque signed, Arab rulers do not secure history’s respect. They seal their place in its sordid footnotes of shame

The bombs fall. The Gaza Strip turns to dust. Two million people endure starvation. UN food is gone.

Hospitals overflow with skeletal infants. Mothers collapse from hunger. Tens of thousands of children are severely malnourished, with more than 3500 on the edge of death.

Meanwhile, Smotrich speaks of “third countries” for Gaza’s people. Netanyahu promises their removal.

And Trump — the man enabling the annihilation? He is not condemned, but celebrated by Arab rulers. They eagerly kiss the hand that sends the bombs, grovel before the architect of their undoing, and drape him in splendour and finery.

While much of the world stands firm — China, Europe, Canada, Mexico, even Greenland – refusing to bow to Trump’s bullying, Arab rulers kneel. They open wallets, bend spines, empty hands — still mistaking humiliation for diplomacy.

They still believe that if they bow low enough, Trump might toss them a bone. Instead, he tosses them a bill.

This is not realpolitik. It is a grotesque spectacle of decadence, delusion and disgrace.

With every cheque signed, every jet offered, every photo op beside the butcher of a people, Arab rulers do not secure history’s respect. They seal their place in its sordid footnotes of shame.

Soumaya Ghannoushi is a British Tunisian writer and expert in Middle East politics. Her journalistic work has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Corriere della Sera, aljazeera.net and Al Quds. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye. A selection of her writings may be found at: soumayaghannoushi.com and she tweets @SMGhannoushi.

123...99Page 1 of 99

Popular Posts

Twitter

Follow, subscribe, interact via Café Pacific's social platforms (below).

DavidRobie.nz

The latest

Gaza: A girl burned inside the school she had escaped to

Articles 0
CREATIVE WRITING: By Amal Rostom She was not asking for...

Motarilavoa Hilda Lini – strong, passionate fighter for decolonisation, nuclear-free Pacific

Articles 0
By Stanley Simpson in Suva I am saddened by the...

Jonathan Cook: Ignore Starmer’s theatrics. Gaza’s trail of blood leads straight to his door

Analysis 0
Western capitals are still coordinating with Israel and the...

Subscribe

© 2023 DavidRobie.nz. All Rights Reserved. Served by Multimedia Investments Ltd.