About 500 people honoured Palestinian journalists in the heart of the New Zealand city of Auckland today for their brave coverage of Israel’s War on Gaza, now in its seventh month with almost 35,000 people killed, mostly women and children.
Marking the annual May 3 World Press Freedom Day “plus two”, the crowd also strongly applauded UNESCO’s Guillermo Cano Award being presented to the Palestinian journalists for their “courage and commitment”.
Several speakers gave tributes to the journalists, the more than 100 Gazan news workers killed had their names read out and put on display, and cellphones were lit up due to the breeze preventing candle flames.
Part of the crowd at the New Zealand rally in Auckland today honouring the Palestinian journalists for their Media Freedom Day award for their coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Activist MC Anna Lee, wo represents several groups including NZEI Te Riu Roa Educators for Gaza/Palestine, praised the journalists and said they set an example to the world.
“Journalists there have experienced a prolonged onslaught against press freedom with the arbitrary killings, arrests and intimidation,” she said.
“These acts have also restricted the world’s ‘right to know’ what has been happening in Palestine.”
She said they stood in solidarity with the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions-Gaza.
Bex Silver, a young New Zealand Jewish woman, spoke about how she experienced first hand the disinformation in Israeli news media and the oppression of Palestinians when she visited the Occupied West Bank last year and “found out what was really happening”.
Shut the Gaza war down chants in Auckland. Video: Café Pacific
He paid tribute to several individual journalists as well as the group, including Shireen Abu Akleh, shot by an Israeli sniper more than a year before the October 7 war outbreak, and Hind Khoudary, a young journalist who had inspired people around the world.
He also shared Hind’s message to the world: “Don’t forget Palestine. We are weary, and your voice is our strength. Remember our voices, remember our faces.”
Nasser Abu Baker, president of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS) and vice-president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), received the UNESCO prize on behalf of his colleagues in Gaza.
Candles for the Palestinian journalists – named those who have been killed. Image: Asia Pacific Report
‘Unique suffering, fearless reporting’
The UN cultural agency has recognised the “unique suffering and fearless reporting” of Gaza’s journalists by awarding them the freedom prize.
Apart from those journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza since October 7, nearly all the rest have been injured, displaced or bereaved.
From the start of the conflict, Israel closed Gaza’s borders to international journalists, and none have been allowed free access to the enclave since.
A thousand Gazan journalists were working at the start of the war, and more than a 100 of them have been killed.
“As a result,” reports the IFJ, “the profession has suffered a mortality rate in excess of 10 percent — about six times higher than the mortality rate of the general population of Gaza and around three times higher than that of health professionals.
PJS president Baker said: “Journalists in Gaza have endured a sustained attack by the Israeli army of unprecedented ferocity — but have continued to do their jobs, as witnesses to the carnage around them.
“It is justified that they should be honoured on World Press Freedom Day.
Naming the martyred Gaza journalists. Video: Café Pacific
‘Most deadly attack on press freedom’
“What we have seen in Gaza is surely the most sustained and deadly attack on press freedom in history. This award shows that the world has not forgotten and salutes their sacrifice for information.”
IFJ general secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “This prize is a real tribute to the commitment to information of journalists in Gaza.
“Journalists in Gaza are starving, homeless and in mortal danger. UNESCO’s recognition of what they are still enduring is a huge and well-deserved boost.”
Kia Ora Gaza – doctors speak out. Video: Café Pacific
Gaza Freedom Flotilla blocked
Also at the rally today were Kia Ora Gaza’s organiser Roger Fowler and two of the three New Zealand doctors who travelled to Turkiye to embark on the Freedom Flotilla which was sending three ships with humanitarian aid to break the Gaza siege.
Israel thwarted the mission for the time being by pressuring the African nation of Guinea-Bissau to withdraw the maritime flag the ships would have been sailing under.
However, flotilla organisers are working hard to find another flag country for the ships and the doctors vowed to rejoin the mission.
Palestinian children at today’s Auckland rally . . . one girl is holding up an image of an old pre-war postage stamp from the country called Palestine with the legend “We are coming back”. Image: David Robie/Cafe Pacific Report
Part of the crowd paying tribute to the Gazan journalists who have been awarded the 2024 Guillermo Cano Media Freedom Award for their coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza. Image: David Robie/Pacific Media Watch
Along with the devastating death toll — now almost 35,000 people, hundreds of aid workers and hundreds of medical staff have been killed in the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza — journalists have also paid a terrible price.
By far the worst of any war.
In Vietnam, 63 journalists were killed in two decades.
Part of the crowd paying tribute to the Gazan journalists who have been awarded the 2024 Guillermo Cano Media Freedom Award for their coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza. Image: David Robie/Pacific Media Watch
The Second World War was worse, with 67 journalists killed in seven years.
But now in the war on Gaza, we have had 143 journalists killed in seven months.
That’s the death toll according to Al Jazeera and the Gaza Media Office. (Western media freedom monitoring usually cite a lower figure, around the 100 plus mark, but the higher figure is more accurate).
And these journalists — sometimes their whole families as well – have been deliberately targeted by the Israeli “Offensive” Force – I call it “offensive” rather than what it claims to be, defensive (IDF).
‘Kill off’ journalists
Assassination by design. Clearly the Israeli policy has been to kill off the journalists, silence the messengers, whenever they can.
Try to stifle the truth getting out about their war crimes, their crimes against humanity.
But it has failed. Just like the humanity of the people of Gaza has inspired the world, so have the journalists.
Their commitment to truth and justice and to telling the world their horrendous story has been an exemplary tale of bravery and courage in the face of unspeakable horror.
But there has been a glimmer of hope in spite of the gloom. On Friday — on World Press Freedom Day, May 3 — UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency, awarded all Palestinian journalists covering the war in Gaza the annual Guillermo Cano Award for media freedom.
This award is named in honour of Guillermo Cano Isaza, a Colombian investigative journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper El Espectador in Bogotá, Colombia on 17 December 1986.
Announcing the Gaza award in the capital of Chile, Santiago, in an incredibly emotional ceremony, Mauricio Weibel, chair of the international jury of media professionals, declared:
“In these times of darkness and hopelessness, we wish to share a strong message of solidarity and recognition to those Palestinian journalists who are covering this crisis in such dramatic circumstances.
“As humanity, we have a huge debt to their courage and commitment to freedom of expression.”
Ultimate price
For those of us who watch Al Jazeera every day to keep up with developments in Palestine and around the world — and thank goodness we have had that on Freeview to balance the pathetic New Zealand media coverage — I would like to acknowledge some of their journalists who have paid the ultimate price.
First, I would like to acknowledge the assassination of American-Palestinian Shireen Abu Akleh, who was murdered by Israeli military sniper while reporting on an army raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on 11 May 2022.
Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh . . . killed by an Israeli sniper in 2022 with impunity. Image:
A year later there was still no justice, and the Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders issued a protest, saying:
“The systematic Israeli impunity is outrageous and cannot continue.”
Well it did, right until the war on Gaza began five months later.
But I am citing this here and now because Shireen’s sacrifice has been a personal influence on me, and inspired me to take a closer look into Israel’s history of impunity over the killing of journalists — and just about every other crime. (It has violated 62 United Nations resolutions without consequences).
I have this photo of her on display in my office, thanks to the Palestinian Youth Aotearoa, and she constantly reminds me of the cruelty and lies of the Israeli regime.
Now moving to the present war, last December, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh was wounded in an Israeli strike in which his colleague and Al Jazeera Arabic’s cameraman Samer Abudaqa was killed, while they were reporting in southern Gaza.
Dahdouh’s wife Amna, son Mahmoud, daughter Sham and grandson Adam were previously killed in an attack in October after an Israeli air raid hit the home they were sheltering in at the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Then the veteran journalist’s eldest son, Hamza Dahdouh, also an Al Jazeera journalist, was killed in January by an Israeli missile attack in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
News media reports said he was in a vehicle near al-Mawasi, an Israel-designated safe area, with journalist Mustafa Thuraya, who was also killed in the attack.
According to reports from Al Jazeera correspondents, their vehicle was targeted as they were trying to interview civilians displaced by previous bombings.
In February, Mohamed Yaghi, a freelance photojournalist who worked with multiple media outlets, including Al Jazeera, was also killed in an Israeli air strike in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.
The names of the killed journalists in the Gaza war as at 5 April 2024. Image: AJ/CC
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet has voted unanimously to close Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel.
Vote comes after the Knesset passed a law allowing the temporary closure of foreign broadcasters considered a threat to national security ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/zFDPQdowXG
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu branded Al Jazeera as a “terrorist channel”. Why? Because it broadcasts the truth about Israel’s genocidal war and Netanyahu threatened to ban the channel from Israel under a new law to control foreign media.
“I am a daughter, a sister to eight brothers, and a wife.
“Choosing to stay here is a choice to witness and report on the unbearable reality my city endures. Forced from my home, alongside countless Palestinians, we strive for the basics – clean food and water – without transportation or electricity.
“I am not a superhero; I am shattered from the inside. The loss of relatives, friends, and colleagues weighs heavy on my soul. Israeli forces ravaged my city, reducing homes to rubble. [Thousands of] civilians still lie beneath the remnants.
“My heart is aching, and my spirit is fragile. Since October 7, journalists have been targets; Israel seeks to stifle our voices.
“I miss my family.
“But surrender is not an option. I will continue to report, to breathe life into the stories of my people until my last breath. Please, do not let the world forget Palestine. We are weary, and your voice is our strength.
“Remember our voices, remember our faces.”
Pacific Media Watch convenor Dr David Robie delivering a speech on media freedom at the Palestinian rally at Auckland today. Image: Del Abcede/Pacific Media Watch
This article is adapted from a media freedom speech by Pacific Media Watch convenor Dr David Robie at the Palestine rally today calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza war.
New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders 2024 World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3.
This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its usual place in the top 10.
However, New Zealand is still the Asia-Pacific region’s leader in a part of the world that is ranked as the second “most difficult” with half of the world’s 10 “most dangerous” countries included — Myanmar (171st), North Korea (172nd), China (173rd), Vietnam (175th) and Afghanistan (178th).
Freelance Gaza journalist Moussa Al Zaanoun talks to RSF about the problems of reporting from the besieged enclave under fire . . . “There was no transportation, no microphone, no camera, not even electricity to charge your phone to film. We were always looking for places with electricity or internet to continue our work.” Image: RSF screenshot APR
New Zealand is 20 places above Australia, which fell 12 places and is ranked 39th.
However, NZ is closely followed in the Index by one of the world’s newer nations, Timor-Leste (20th) — among the top 10 last year — and Samoa (22nd).
Fiji was 44th, one place above Tonga, and Papua New Guinea had dropped 32 places to 91st. Other Pacific countries were not listed in the survey which is based on media freedom performance through 2023.
Scandinavian countries again fill four of the world’s top countries for press freedom.
RSF’s World Press Freedom Index 2024 – press freedom threatened. Video: RSF
No Asia-Pacific nation in top 15
No country in the Asia-Pacific region is among the Index’s top 15 this year. In 2023, two journalists were murdered in the Philippines (134th), which continues to be one of the region’s most dangerous countries for media professionals.
The United States dropped 10 places from 45th to 55th.
In the survey’s overview, the RSF researchers said press freedom around the world was being “threatened by the very people who should be its guarantors — political authorities”.
This finding was based on the fact that, of the five indicators used to compile the ranking, it is the ‘political indicator’ that has fallen the most , registering a global average fall of 7.6 points.
Covering the war from Gaza. Video: RSF
“As more than half the world’s population goes to the polls in 2024, RSF is warning of a
worrying trend revealed by the Index — a decline in the political indicator, one of five indicators detailed,” said editorial director Anne Bocandé.
“States and other political forces are playing a decreasing role in protecting press freedom. This disempowerment sometimes goes hand in hand with more hostile actions that undermine the role of journalists, or even instrumentalise the media through campaigns of harassment or disinformation.
“Journalism worthy of that name is, on the contrary, a necessary condition for any democratic system and the exercise of political freedoms.”
Record violations in Gaza
At the international level, says the Index report, this year is notable for a “clear lack of political will on the part of the international community” to enforce the principles of protection of journalists, especially UN Security Council Resolution 2222 in 2015.
“The war in Gaza has been marked by a record number of violations against journalists and media since October 2023. More than 100 Palestinian reporters have been killed by the Israeli Defence Forces, including at least 22 in the course of their work.”
“In these times of darkness and hopelessness, we wish to share a strong message of solidarity and recognition to those Palestinian journalists who are covering this crisis in such dramatic circumstances,” said Mauricio Weibel, chair of the international jury of media professionals.
“As humanity, we have a huge debt to their courage and commitment to freedom of expression.”
Criticism of NZ
Although the Index overview gives no detailed explanation on this year’s decline in New Zealand’s Index ranking, it nevertheless gives an overview of the media freedom status and then concludes that the country had “retained its role as a press freedom model”.
While the NZ status had declined, many other comparable nations had deteriorated further.
Last December RSF condemned Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters in the newly elected rightwing coalition government for his “repeated verbal attacks on the media” and called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to reaffirm his government’s support for press freedom.
“Just after taking office . . . Peters declared in an interview that he was ‘at war’ with the media. A statement that he accompanied on several occasions with accusations of corruption among media professionals,” said RSF in its public statement.
“He also portrayed a journalism support fund set up by the previous [Labour] administration as a ’55 million dollar bribe’. The politician also questioned the independence of the public broadcasters Television New Zealand (TVNZ) and Radio New Zealand (RNZ).
“These verbal attacks would be a cause of concern for the sector if used to support a policy of restricting the right to information.”
Cédric Alviani, RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director, also noted at the time: “By making irresponsible comments about journalists in a context of growing mistrust of the New Zealand public towards the media, Deputy Prime Minister Peters is sending out a worrying signal about the newly-appointed government’s attitude towards the press.
“We call on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to reaffirm his government’s support for press freedom and to ensure that all members of his cabinet follow the same line.”
Pacific Media Watch compiled this summary from the RSF World Press Freedom Index.
🔴 #RSFIndex | RSF unveils the 2024 World Press Freedom Index
1: Norway🇳🇴
2: Denmark🇩🇰
3: Sweden🇸🇪
10: Germany🇩🇪
21: France🇫🇷
55: United States🇺🇸
101: Israel🇮🇱
162: Russia🇷🇺
172: China🇨🇳
178: Afghanistan🇦🇫
179: Syria🇸🇾
180: Eritrea🇪🇷https://t.co/fdZ3RWSFjNpic.twitter.com/y30fUGVUQ2
An unknown Papuan artist's depiction of the graphic torture videos . . . These videos are just the latest chapter in a long history of atrocities inflicted upon Papuans in the name of suppressing their cries for freedom. Image: APR
A West Papuan resistance leader has condemned the United Nations role in allowing Indonesia to “integrate” the Melanesian Pacific region in what is claimed to be an “egregious act of inhumanity” on 1 May 1963.
In an open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Organisasi Papua Merdeka-OPM (Free Papua Organisation) leader Jeffrey P Bomanak has also claimed that this was the “beginning of genocide” that could only have happened through the failure of the global body to “legally uphold its decolonisation responsibilities in accordance with the UN Charter”.
Bomanak says in the letter dated yesterday that the UN failed to confront the “relentless barbarity of the Indonesian invasion force and expose the lie of the fraudulent 1969 gun-barrel ‘Act of No Choice’”.
The open letter follows one released on the eve of Anzac Day last month which strongly criticised the role of Australia and the United States, accusing both countries of “betrayal” in Papuan aspirations for independence.
According to RNZ News today, an Australian statement in response to the earlier OPM letter said the federal government “unreservedly recognises Indonesia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over the Papua provinces”.
The White House has not responded.
The OPM says it has compiled a “prima facie pictorial ‘integration’ history” of Indonesia’s actions in integrating the Pacific region into an Asian nation. It plans to present this evidence of “six decades of crimes against humanity” to Secretary-General Guterres and new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.
I am addressing you in an open letter which I will be releasing to media and governments because I have previously brought to your attention the history of the illegal annexation of West Papua on May 1st, 1963, and the role of your office in the fraudulent UN referendum in 1969, called an Act of Free Choice and I have never received a reply.
Part of the opening page of the five-page OPM open letter to the United Nations. Image” Screenshot APR
After six decades of OPM letters and Papuan appeals to the UN Secretariat, I am providing the transparency and accountability of an “open letter”, so that historians of the future can investigate the moral and ethical credibility of the UN Secretariat.
May 1st is a day of mourning for Papuans. A day of grief over the illegal annexation of our ancestral Melanesian homeland by a violent occupation force from Southeast Asia.
An invasion and an illegal annexation not unlike Nazi Germany’s annexation in 1938 of its neighbouring country, Austria. The difference for Papuans is that the UN and the USA were co-conspirators in preventing our right to determine a future that was our right to have under the UN decolonisation process: independence and nation-state sovereignty.
A very chilling contradiction — the Allies we fought alongside, nursed back to life, and died with during WWII had joined forces with a mass-murderer not unlike Hitler — the Indonesian president Suharto (see Photo collage #2: Axis of Evil).
Some scholars have called the May 1, 1963 annexation “Indonesia’s Anschluss”. Suharto and the conspirators goal of colonial invasion and conquest had been achieved through the illegal annexation of my people’s ancestral homeland, my homeland.
General and president-in-waiting Suharto signed a contract in 1967 with American mining giant Freeport, another company associated with David Rockefeller, two years before we were to determine our future through the aforementioned gun-barrel UN referendum project-managed by a brutal occupation force. Our future had already been determined by Suharto, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and Suharto’s friend, UN secretary-General U Thant. U Thant had succeeded Dag Hammarskjöld who had been assassinated for his controversial view that human rights and freedom were absolutely universal and should not be subjected to the criminal whims of either tyrants like Suharto or a resource industry with views on human rights and freedom that resembled Suharto’s.
I do not need to give you a blow-by-blow history for your edification — you already know the entire history and the victim tally — 350,000 adults and 150,000 children and babies. And rising. You are, after all, a man of some principle — Portugal’s former prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, as well as a member of the Portuguese Socialist Party. And presiding as Portuguese prime minster during the final years of Fretilin’s war of liberation in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony invaded by Indonesia in 1975 with anywhere up to 250,000 victims of genocide. Please explain to me the difference between the Indonesia’s invasion and “integration” of East Timor and Indonesia’s invasion and “integration” of my homeland, Western New Guinea (West Papua).
Apart from the oil in the Timor Gap and the gold and copper all over my homeland — the wealth of someone else’s resources promoting the “integration” policies pictured over these pages.
As a member of a socialist party, you might be attending May Day ceremonies today. I will be counselling victims and the families of loved ones who have been “integrated” today. Yes, the freedom-loving Papuans are holding rallies to protest the annexation of our homeland . . . to protest the failure — your failure — to apply justice and to end this nightmare.
The cost of the UN-approved annexation to Papuans in pain and suffering: massacres, torture, systemic rape by TNI and Polri, mutilation and dismemberment as a signature of your barbarity. Relentless barbarity causing six decades of physical and cultural genocide, ethnocide, infanticide, and wave after wave of ethnic cleansing.
The cost to Papuans in the theft and plunder of our natural resources: genocide by starvation and famine.
The cost to Papuans from the foreign resource industry plundering our natural resources: the devastation of pristine environments, whole ecosystems poisoned by the resource industry’s chemical toxicity, called tailings, released into rivers thereby destroying whole riverine catchments along with food sources from fishing and farming — catchment rivers and nearby farming lands contaminated by Freeport, and other’s. A failure to apply any international standards for risk management to prevent the associated birth defects in villages now living in contaminated catchments.
That we would choose to become part of any nation so brutal defies credibility. That the UN approved integration should have been impossible based on the evidence of the ever-increasing numbers of defence and security forces landing in West Papua and undertaking military campaigns that include ever-increasing victims and internally displaced Papuans, the bombing of central highland villages a current example? Such courage! Why are foreign media not allowed into my people’s homeland?
Secretary-General Guterres, future historians will judge the efficacy of the United Nations. The integrity. West Papua will feature as a part the UN Secretariat’s legacy. To this endeavour, as the leader of Organisasi Papua Merdeka, I ask, and demand that you comply with your obligations under article 85 part 2 and sundry articles of your Charter of United Nations which requires that you inform the Trusteeship Council about your General Assembly resolution 1752, with which you are subjugating our people and homelands of West New Guinea which we call West Papua.
The agreement which your resolution 1752 is authorising, begins with the words “The Republic of Indonesia and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, having in mind the interests and welfare of the people of the territory of West New Guinea (West Irian)”
Your agreement is clearly a trusteeship agreement written according to your rules of Chapter XII of your Charter of the United Nations.
The West Papuan people have always opposed your use of United Nations military to make our people’s human rights subject to the whim of your two administrators, UNTEA and from 1st May 1963 the Republic of Indonesia that is your current administrator.
We refer to your organisation’s last official record about West Papua which still suffers your ongoing unjust administration managed by UNTEA and Indonesia:
Because you also used article 81 and Chapter XII of your Charter to seize control of our homelands when you created your General Assembly resolution 1752, the Netherlands was excused by article 73(e), “to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information purposes, subject to such limitation as security and constitutional considerations may require, statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories for which they are respectively responsible other than those territories to which Chapters XII and XIII apply”, from transmitting further reports about our people and the extrajudicial killings that your new administrators began using to silence our demands for our liberty and independence.
We therefore demand your Trusteeship Council begin its unfinished duty of preparing your United Nations reports as articles 85 part 2, 87 and 88 of your Charter requires.
West Papua is entitled to independence, and article 76 requires you assist. It is illegal for Indonesia to invade us and to impede our independence, and to subsequently subject us to six decades of every classification for crimes against humanity listed by the International Criminal Court.
We know this trusteeship agreement was first proposed by the American lawyer John Henderson in 1959, and was discussed with Indonesian officials in 1961 six months before the death of your Dag Hammarskjöld. We think it is shameful that you then elected Indonesia’s friend U Thant as Secretary-General, and we demand that you permit the Secretariat to perform its proper duty of revealing your current annexation of West Papua (Resolution 1752) to your Trusteeship Council.
I look forward to your reply.
Yours sincerely,
Jeffrey P Bomanak Chairman-Commander OPM Markas Victoria, May 1, 2024
CNN’s Dana Bash launched into a fire-and-brimstone sermon on 1 May 2024 comparing anti-genocide university protesters in the US to the brownshirts of Nazi Germany. Image: caitlinjohnstone.com.au
COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
In one of the most appalling propaganda segments I have ever seen in my life, CNN’s Dana Bash launched into a fire-and-brimstone sermon on Wednesday comparing anti-genocide university protesters to the brownshirts of Nazi Germany — doing so in defense of a fascistic police crackdown against those very same protesters.
After playing a clip of Zionist activist Eli Tsives theatrically claiming campus protesters at UCLA were blocking him from his classroom, Bash solemnly said, “Again, what you just saw is 2024 in Los Angeles. Hearkening back to the 1930s in Europe, and I do not say that lightly. The fear among Jews in this country is palpable right now.”
According to journalist Jeremy Lindenfeld — who happens to be Jewish — Tsives wasn’t even being denied access to his classroom, but was only being denied access to the protesters’ encampment which he’d conveniently decided he wanted to walk through in order to get there. Dana Bash makes no mention of this, framing this instead as a terrifying attack on Jews which could soon see them being loaded onto trains headed for extermination camps.
Bash played a clip of New York City Mayor Eric Adams saying “There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I’m not going to wait until it’s done,” as though preventing the spread of radical political opinions is something a mayor is elected to do in the United States.
“They’re calling for a ceasefire,” says Bash. “Well, there was a ceasefire on October 6, the day before Hamas terrorists brutally murdered more than a thousand people inside Israel and took hundreds more as hostages.”
“This hour, I’ll speak to an American Israeli family whose son is still held captive by Hamas since that horrifying day, that brought us to this moment,” said Bash, adding, “You don’t hear the pro-Palestinian protesters talking about that. We will.”
Ah yes, such brave, up-punching journalistic integrity for you to talk about the Israeli hostages, Dana.
Not like we haven’t been hearing about them every single day from the imperial media for the last seven months while orders of magnitude more Palestinians are butchered by US-supplied war machinery.
“At UCLA, pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups were attacking each other, hurling all kinds of objects, a wood pallet, fireworks, parking cones, even a scooter,” Bash says.
Later on in the same segment of Bash’s own show, CNN’s Stephanie Elam contradicts Bash’s both-sides lie by commenting on some of this footage, saying, “And you can see that in the video, it looked like people from this side were breaking down the encampment from the pro-Palestinian side last night, throwing objects in there.
“As well as it looks like some sort of maybe pepper spray or something coming from the other side over here.”
It should here be noted that Dana Bash gets her surname from her first husband Jeremy Bash, who went on to serve as the chief-of-staff for both the CIA and the Pentagon. The woman is pure swamp.
It should also be noted that CNN’s own staff recently leaked to The Guardian that they have been pressured to report on the Gaza onslaught with an extreme pro-Israel bias, attributing the pressure to the network’s new CEO Mark Thompson.
I for one think it’s great that the imperial media are becoming so transparently obvious about their propagandistic nature, and I hope they keep exposing mainstream Westerners to the fact that the primary purpose of these outlets is to promote the information interests of the US and its allies.
Propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you, so hopefully they keep going mask-off like this for everyone to see.
AMY GOODMAN: As the official death toll in Gaza nears 35,000, ceasefire talks are continuing this week with Hamas officials in Cairo, Egypt, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in now in Israel. Meanwhile, Israel’s military’s chief-of-staff has approved the continuation of war, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to call off the expected ground invasion of Rafah.
This comes as the International Criminal Court (ICC) could reportedly issue arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, over the war on Gaza and for Israel’s blocking of humanitarian aid. Israel has also targeted humanitarian workers in deadly attacks.
Hundreds of aid workers have been killed by Israel since October 7, including seven members of the international organisation World Central Kitchen, which is resuming food distribution in Gaza today, nearly four weeks after its convoy came under attack.
Amidst the mounting humanitarian disaster in Gaza, hundreds of activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla were blocked in Turkey on Saturday as they attempted to set sail for the besieged Palestinian territory. Organisers say Guinea-Bissau withdrew its flagged ships under pressure from Israel, but vowed to overcome this latest challenge.
A group of UN experts called for safe passage of the vessels, writing:
“The Flotilla is a material manifestation of international support for the ongoing Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination, and the internationally recognised right to receive humanitarian aid without interference or hindrance.
“Support for the Palestinian people’s human rights is acute under the current conditions of genocide, domicide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.”
For more, we’re joined in Istanbul by Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian American human rights attorney, organizer with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. She was also part of the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which Israel attacked, killing 10 activists on the Mavi Marmara.
Welcome to Democracy Now! again, Huwaida. If you can talk about what this Freedom Flotilla is and the obstacles it has faced leaving Turkey?
HUWAIDA ARRAF: Thank you. It’s good to be with you, Amy.
The Freedom Flotilla is a continuation of the effort of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to confront and challenge and, indeed, break Israel’s unlawful siege on Gaza. It has been in place since 2007.
It is a form of collective punishment, which is not only unlawful, it is a war crime, and yet our governments have not been doing anything about it. And, in fact, the very fact that for decades our governments have been allowing Israel impunity is what has brought us to this point where Israel for seven months can commit live-streamed genocide and the world doesn’t — the “world” meaning our governments; of course — people are mobilising, but we’re not stopping it, because Israel is so used to this impunity.
We have come together, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, and announced that we are going to sail an emergency flotilla in light of the dire situation in Gaza, which includes mass starvation and now famine that has set in — again, war crimes, but our governments aren’t doing anything about it.
What do they do? Pay lip service to Palestinian human rights, airdrop food or talk about a maritime corridor which leaves Israel in control of what, if any, aid at all gets to a people trying to survive a genocide.
It’s absolutely obnoxious. And one of the things that the UN special rapporteurs, that you mentioned, in their statement said, that our Freedom Flotilla is legitimately challenging Israel’s control over the entry of aid, which no government is doing. And that’s what needs to be done.
How can we be in the state where a country that has been found to be plausibly committing a genocide by the World Court is allowed to control what, if any, aid gets to a people trying to survive a genocide? It is unconscionable.
And so we have come together. We are now, and have been, in Istanbul, Turkey, Türkiye. We have ships ready to go. We have one cargo ship loaded with over 5000 tonnes of humanitarian aid, largely food, clean water, medicines, baby formula, nutrition for children, diapers. That was all ready to go.
Hundreds of activists from 40 countries were here, knowing that Israel has killed activists before in such a mission, and yet still willing to risk it to do what no government has done. And yet, instead of our governments supporting our efforts, they have conspired to actually block us.
And so, what happened on Friday is we received a surprise communiqué from the Guinea-Bissau International Ship Registry saying that they have withdrawn their flag from two of our ships — the cargo ship and the main passenger vessel. Now, we cannot sail without a flag.
It was clear to us that the withdrawal of this flag was under pressure, likely from the United States and Israel, because the way that they communicated to us was highly unusual, if not unprecedented.
In their communication to us, they specifically referenced our trip to Gaza, and they had demanded from us a number of things, which were impossible to meet in the two-hour timeframe that they gave us, which some of those things included a complete manifesto of our cargo, all of the ports we were going to sail in, a letter from the receiving port where we were going to arrive saying that our arrival and carry of humanitarian aid is welcome. They gave us a two-hour window.
This is never done. It’s like when you go to register your car at the DMV, they don’t ask you everywhere you’re going and who is going to be in your car. I don’t know of a situation where this has been done before. And yet, because we did not meet these and were not able to submit all of this information within a two-hour window, they informed us that our flag has been withdrawn. This is not the end.
AMY GOODMAN: What made you believe that Israel put . . .
HUWAIDA ARRAF: We are pursuing this legally and politically . . .
AMY GOODMAN: What made you believe that Israel had put pressure on Guinea-Bissau to remove its flags?
HUWAIDA ARRAF: Again, because the demands that they made of us specifically referencing our planned trip to confront Israel’s siege and our intent to arrive in Gaza, and giving us a two-hour window to submit all of this documentation about our journey, and knowing that Israel has done this before. It has tried all kinds of methods in order to sabotage our missions. It has sabotaged our boats before. It has attempted to get various — and succeeded, in getting various countries to block us from leaving port.
And it was being reported that the United States specifically was putting pressure on Türkiye, the government here, to block us from leaving. But we were sure we were going to be able to leave from Türkiye, because the support here is so great.
So, Israel has tried all of these efforts. It actually boasts about these efforts. But if Israel thinks that this is the end of our effort to break the unlawful siege of Gaza, they are sadly mistaken.
A lot of the activists who were here are fired up. They are determined. They are going back home at this point, until we can reflag our ships, which will hopefully be in the coming weeks, and coming back with even more people and more determination.
So this is a minor setback, but it’s certainly not the end. And we will not . . .
AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida Arraf . . .
HUWAIDA ARRAF: We will not stop in our efforts . . .
AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida . . .
HUWAIDA ARRAF: . . . to break the siege . . .
AMY GOODMAN: If you can tell us . . .
HUWAIDA ARRAF: . . . and get to the people of Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: . . . who the activists are, the doctors, the nurses, the lawyers, who are on board this ship?
HUWAIDA ARRAF: I would love to. They are amazing people from all over the world, who have left their families, who have left their jobs, who have left the comforts of their own home to undertake a mission where we could not guarantee their safety. So, we had doctors coming from as far as New Zealand.
We’ve had activists from South Africa. We had truck drivers from Ireland. We have mental health and social workers from the United States, students, professors, retired US military, retired US active combat, former FBI agents. We had parliamentarians, the former mayor of Barcelona, European parliamentarians, Algerian and Jordanian parliamentarians . . . really, a cross-section of humanity that is sick and tired of our governments allowing the ongoing persecution, and now genocide of the Palestinian people.
And we are determined to stop this by direct action, which is . . . of course, goes along with all of the other efforts that have been taking place all around the world. And we also want to send our respect, admiration and solidarity with the student movement across the United States and now spreading across the world.
This is what’s needed. We are going to bring about the change our governments have sadly failed. They only pay lip service to democracy, freedom and human rights.
AMY GOODMAN: Among the high-profile activists . . .
HUWAIDA ARRAF: The people are going to force this to happen.
AMY GOODMAN: . . . that are part of the Freedom Flotilla is Nkosi “Mandla” Mandela, South African member of Parliament and the grandson of Nelson Mandela. He spoke to Al Jazeera last week.
NKOSI ZWELIVELILE ”MANDLA” MANDELA: I am a living example of the efforts of the International Solidarity Movement. I am free. South Africa is free. We were able to defeat apartheid South Africa because of the support that we had from the international community. And therefore we want to thank them for taking this stand and for ensuring that they will not be complicit, they will no longer be silent, they will be the voice for the Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, in the summer of 2010, the Israeli military attacked a Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing 10 people, including an American citizen. It was the Mavi Marmara that they attacked, the ship. Then Vice-President Joe Biden defended the raid in an interview on PBS shortly afterward.
VICE-PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: You can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not and the rest, but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know. They’re at war with Hamas, has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in.
And up to now, Charlie, what’s happened? They’ve said, “Here we go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship, if you divert — divert slightly north, you can unload it, and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.”
So, what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza?
AMY GOODMAN: [Vice] President Joe Biden in 2010. Huwaida Arraf, this shows the stakes. Ten people were killed. Yet you’re willing to go on this ship to try to challenge the Gaza blockade. As we wrap up, you have 30 seconds. Talk about that risk.
HUWAIDA ARRAF: Yeah. First of all, I need to say that Joe Biden is absolutely mistaken. Israel has no right — had no right to intercept and attack our ships, because it has no right to place the Palestinian people under collective punishment. Again, it is a war crime, and a UN panel, an independent investigation, found the very same thing.
Amy, it’s a sad thing that people — it has to be a life-or-death situation to deliver food to people who are being deliberately starved. But that is what we have here, because our governments have continued to allow Israel to do this. I left my two kids at home, and I promised them that I would come back.
I know they need their mother. And I hoped to be able to fulfill my promise to come back, but I didn’t know. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I can’t leave to them a world where this can happen, where people can be slaughtered for months on end, oppressed for years, and the world does nothing.
So, my action here, and a lot of the activists that have joined us, and the many, many more who want to join us now, do it with the same conviction that we have to act to change the world that we went to live in and that we want to pass on to generations to come, and we are willing to risk our lives to do that.
AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian-American human rights attorney, one of the organisers of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, speaking to us from Istanbul, Turkey.
The original content of this programme is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence and was originally published here on 29 April 2024
French policies over Kanaky under fire . . . Pacific alliance says Paris has shown no interest in respecting the Noumea Accords or in granting the Kanak people their "right to be free". Image: @KanakySuport
A Pacific civil society alliance has condemned French neocolonial policies in Kanaky New Caledonia, saying Paris is set on “maintaining the status quo” and denying the indigenous Kanak people their inalienable right to self-determination.
The Pacific Regional Non-Governmental Organisations (PRNGOs) alliance, representing some 15 groups, said in a statement that it reaffirmed its solidarity with the Kanaks in a bid to to expose ongoing efforts by the French government to “derail a decolonisation process painstakingly pursued in this Pacific Island territory for the last 30 years”.
It said that France — especially under the Macron government — as the colonial power administering this UN-sanctioned process of decolonisation had repeatedly shown that it
could not remain a “neutral party” to the Noumea Accords.
French policies over Kanaky under fire . . . Pacific alliance says Paris has shown no interest in respecting the Noumea Accords or in granting the Kanak people their “right to be free”. Image: @KanakySuport
The 1998 pact was designed specifically to hand sovereignty back to the people of Kanaky New Caledonia and end French colonial rule, said PRNGOs.
“In recent months, the Macron government [has] forced through proposed constitutional
amendments aimed at changing voting eligibility rules for local elections in the French
territory,” said the statement.
“These eligibility provisions have been preserved and protected under the [Noumea] Accords as a safeguard for indigenous peoples against demographic changes that could make them a minority in their own land and block the path to freedom.”
The electoral amendments were passed by the French Senate in early April and
will be voted on in Parliament this month.
Elections deferred
“The Macron government has, in a parallel move, also managed to defer local elections,
initially scheduled for mid-May, to mid-December at the latest, to allow voting under new
provisions that would favour pro-French parties,” the statement said.
In 2021, President Macron unilaterally called for the third independence referendum to be
held in December that year amid the covid-19 pandemic that “heavily affected the
ability of indigenous communities to organise and participate”.
Although it was a “no” vote, only 43.87 percent of the 184,364 registered voters exercised their right to vote.
“Express reservations and requests by Kanak leaders and representatives for a later date were ignored, casting serious doubt on genuine representation and participation,” said PRNGOs.
A Pacific Islands Forum Mission sent to observe proceedings concluded in its report that “the self-determination referendum that took place 12 December 2021 did so with the non-participation of the overwhelming majority of the indigenous people of New Caledonia.
“The result of the referendum is an inaccurate representation of the will of registered voters . . . ”
The alliance said that in all of these actions, the French government had shown no interest at all in respecting the Noumea Accords or in granting the Kanak people their most fundamental rights — “particularly the right to be free”.
‘Democracy’ link claimed
Macron’s allies and pro-French advocates have claimed that these initiatives by the
French government are more consistent with democratic principles and the rule of law.
The aspirations of the Kanak people for self-determination had been
“mischaracterised as being ethno-nationalistic, akin to the ‘far-right’, and racist,” PRNGOs said.
The alliance said that if the vote on May 13 succeeded in removing the electoral roll restrictions succeed, it would be seen as a direct attack on the principle of the right to self-determination enshrined in the UN Charter and its Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.
“That the evil of colonialism can continue unchecked in this manner, and in this 21st century, is not only an insult to the Pacific region but to the international system,” the statement said.
“The Pacific is not distracted by French false narratives. The Kanak, as people, are the rightful inhabitants of what is present day New Caledonia still under enduring French colonial rule.”
The alliance called on President Macron to withdraw the constitutional changes on electoral roll provisions protecting the rights of the indigenous people of Kanaky, and it appealed to France to send a neutral high-level mission to resume dialogue between pro-independence parties and local anti-independence groups over a new political agreement.
It also called for another independence referendum that “genuinely reflects their will”.
The Koi Tū 2024 media report . . . sweeping changes needed in Aotearoa New Zealand to deal with the wide impacts of digital transformation and alarmingly low levels of trust in news. Image: Koi Tū
Koi Tū
New Zealand cannot sit back and see the collapse of its Fourth Estate, the director of Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures, Sir Peter Gluckman, says in the foreword of a paper published today.
The paper, “If not journalists, then who?” paints a picture of an industry facing existential threats and held back by institutional underpinnings that are beyond the point where they are merely outdated.
It suggests sweeping changes to deal with the wide impacts of digital transformation and alarmingly low levels of trust in news.
He is a former newspaper editor and media studies lecturer, and also a member of Asia Pacific Media Network. The paper was developed following consultation with media leaders.
“We hope this paper helps open and expand the conversation from a narrow focus on the viability of particular players,” Sir Peter said, “to the needs of a small liberal democracy which must face many challenges in which citizens must have access to trustworthy information so they can form views and contribute appropriately to societal decision making.
“Koi Tū’s core argument, along with that of many scholars of democracy, is that democracy relies on honest information being available to all citizens. It needs to be provided by trustworthy sources and any interests associated with it must be transparently declared.
Decline in trust
“The media itself has contributed much to the decline in trust. This does not mean that there is not a critical role for opinion and advocacy — indeed democracy needs that too. It is essential that ideas are debated.
“But when reliable information is conflated with entertainment and extreme opinion, then citizens suffer and manipulated polarised outcomes are more likely.”
Dr Ellis said both news media and government were held to account in the paper for the state in which journalism in New Zealand now found itself. The mixing of fact and opinion in news stories was identified as a cause of the public’s low level of trust, and online analytics were found to have aberrated news judgement previously driven by journalistic values.
For their part, successive governments have failed to keep pace with changing needs across a very broad spectrum that has been brought about by digital transformation.
Changes suggested in the paper include voluntary merger of the two news regulators (the statutory Broadcasting Standards Authority and the industry-supported Media Council) into an independent body along lines recommended a decade ago by the Law Commission.
The new body would sit within a completely reorganised — and renamed — Broadcasting Commission, which would also be responsible for the day-to-day administration of the Classifications Office, NZ On Air and Te Māngai Pāho.
An administrative umbrella
The reconstituted commission would become the administrative umbrella for the following autonomous units:
Media accountability (standards and complaints procedures)
Funding allocation (direct and contestable, including creative production)
Promotion and funding of Māori culture and language.
Content classification (ratings and classification of film, books, video gaming)
Review of media-related legislation and regulation, and monitoring of common law development, and
Research and advocacy (related civic, cultural, creative issues).
The paper also favours dropping the Digital News Fair Bargaining Bill (under which media organisations would negotiate with transnational platforms) and, instead, amending the Digital Services Tax Bill, now before the House, under which the proposed levy on digital platforms would be increased to provide a ring-fenced fund to compensate media for direct and indirect use of their content.
It also suggests changes to tax structures to help sustain marginally profitable and non-profit media outlets committed to public interest journalism.
Seventeen separate Acts of Parliament affecting media are identified in the paper as outdated — “and the list is nor exhaustive”. The paper recommends a comprehensive and closely coordinated review.
The Broadcasting Act is currently under review, but the paper suggests it should not be re-evaluated in isolation from other necessary legislative reforms.
The paper advises individual media organisations to review their editorial practices in light of current trust surveys and rising news avoidance. It says these reviews should include news values, story selection and presentation.
They should also improve their journalistic transparency and relevance to audiences.
Collectively, media should adopt a common code of ethics and practice and develop campaigns to explain the role and significance of democratic/social professional journalism to the public.
Statement of principles
A statement of journalistic principles is included in the paper:
“Support for democracy sits within the DNA of New Zealand media, which have shared goals of reporting news, current affairs, and information across the broad spectrum of interests in which the people of this country collectively have a stake.
“Trained news media professionals, working within recognised standards and ethics, are the only group capable of carrying out the functions and responsibilities that have been carved out for them by a heritage stretching back 300 years.
“They must be capable of holding the powerful to account, articulating many different voices in the community, providing meeting grounds for debate, and reflecting New Zealanders to themselves in ways that contribute to social cohesion.
“They have a duty to freedom of expression, independence from influence, fairness and balance, and the pursuit of truth.”
Republished from Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures.
Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti . . . “Resistance is a holy right for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli occupation." Image: The New Arab
SPECIAL REPORT: By Eugene Doyle
He is the most popular Palestinian leader alive today — and yet few people in the West even know his name. Absolutely no one in Gaza or the West Bank does not know him.
That difference speaks volumes about who dominates the media narrative that we are spoon-fed every day.
Marwan Barghouti — known to many as “the Palestinian Mandela” — has spent more time in captivity than Nelson Mandela did.
Barghouti, the “terrorist”, rotting in jail. Barghouti, the indomitable leader who has not given up on peace. Barghouti, loved by ordinary people as “a man of the street”. Barghouti, supporter of the Oslo Accords.
Barghouti, the 15-year-old youth leader standing beside Yasser Arafat. Barghouti, once a member of Parliament and Fatah secretary-general. Barghouti, leader of Tanzim, a PLO military wing, choosing militancy after the betrayal of the Oslo promise by the Americans and Israelis became fully clear.
Barghouti, a leader of the intifada that restored hope to a broken people. Barghouti, the scholar and thinker. Barghouti, the political strategist and unifier.
Marwan Barghouti is also that most powerful thing: a living symbol of an oppressed people. Why do so few in the West even know his name? He declared:
“Resistance is a holy right for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli occupation.
“Nobody should forget that the Palestinian people negotiated for 10 years and accepted difficult and humiliating agreements, and in the end didn’t get anything except authority over the people, and no authority over land, or sovereignty.”
Prison a defining part of Palestinian national consciousness
Researcher-writer Emad Moussa says imprisonment has become a defining part of the Palestinian national consciousness. In a 2021 article for The New Arab, he says that Marwan Barghouti proves you can imprison the Palestinians but not their struggle.
It’s not hard to understand why imprisonment is a central part of Palestinian consciousness.
Norman Finkelstein describes October 7 as more like a slave revolt than a terrorist attack.
Fellow Jewish scholar Masha Gessen likens Gaza to a Nazi-era Jewish ghetto.
In fact, all 7.5 million Palestinians are prisoners of the Zionist state. They are all prisoners of the history imposed on them by the powerful white nations of the West. Between 1967 and 2015 over 850,000 Palestinians had been detained by the Israelis.
According to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem more than 8000 Palestinians are held by the Israelis. Many are held in secret Israeli Defence Force (IDF) facilities and there have been verified cases of torture, sexual abuse and limb amputations due to prolonged shackling.
Barghouti, returned to jail in 2002, and was convicted by an Israeli court on five counts of murder in 2004. He denies the charges and does not recognise the court.
Like many who see all non-violent avenues to peace shut off, Barghouti watched the Israelis relentlessly steal more and more Palestinian land and Palestinian homes, build hundreds of illegal settlements in defiance of international law and strangle his people with draconian controls — all while America and the powerful Western countries turned a blind eye.
“How would you feel if on every hill in territory that belongs to you a new settlement would spring up? I reached a simple conclusion. You, Israel, don’t want to end the occupation and you don’t want to stop the settlements — so the only way to convince you is by force.”
Lawyer and activist Fadwa Barghouti, Marwan’s wife, says: “Marwan’s goal has always been ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories.
“Marwan Barghouti believes in politics. He’s a political and national leader loved by his people.
“He fought for peace with bravery and spent time on the Palestinian street advocating for peace. But he also believes in international law, which gives the occupied people the right to fight for their independence and freedom.”
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy at Haaretz agrees: “Marwan was not born to kill . . . because he is not a violent person, but Israel pushed him and the entire Palestinian people.”
‘The ultimate leader’
Alon Liel, formerly Israel’s most senior diplomat, proposed freeing Barghouti because he is “the ultimate leader of the Palestinian people,” and “he is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in.”
He is not alone in this view. Jerome Karabel, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, details Netanyahu’s support for Hamas (for example, facilitating money via Qatar to Hamas) as a way to neutralise the threat posed by pro-peace, pro-two-state figures like Barghouti to the Zionists’ own single Jewish supremacist state solution.
“In this context, the popular and charismatic Barghouti has posed a unique threat to Israel and its persistent claim that it had no plausible interlocutor with whom to negotiate,” Karabel says.
Was Barghouti involved in terror attacks? Quite possibly.
He rejects such a label: “My crime is not “terrorism” — a term apparently only used to describe the deaths of Israeli civilians but never the deaths of Palestinians. My crime is that I insist on my freedom, freedom for my children, freedom for the entire Palestinian people.
“And if indeed that is a crime, I proudly plead guilty.”
The standard he is held to — five life sentences — bears no comparison with the impunity that Israelis enjoy — settlers who kill Palestinians are often rewarded with stolen land, through to political leaders greenlighting mass killings, even genocide, with the support of the US and the white Western countries.
Abandon the myth
“Israelis must abandon the myth that it is possible to have peace and occupation at the same time; that peaceful coexistence is possible between slave and master.
“The lack of Israeli security is born of the lack of Palestinian freedom. Israel will have security only after the end of occupation, not before.”
Beaten and abused in captivity, now being shunted from prison to prison and held in solitary confinement, Barghouti’s name only grows in stature as the US-Israeli violence against his people becomes clearer and clearer to a hitherto uncaring world.
According to a March 2024 poll conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, “In presidential elections against current president Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’ leader Ismail Haniyeh, Barghouti wins the majority of those participating in the elections.”
It is the strange fate of the Palestinian people that most of their leaders — those that haven’t already been murdered — are either in Israeli jails, hiding from Israeli death squads or living in exile.
One of the most incredible — and for Westerners virtually unknown — political moments in the Israel-Palestinian conflict was the creation of The Prisoners’ Document in 2006 – a break-through in negotiations, led by Barghouti, between the fractious factions that divide the Palestinian polity.
In 18 points, the document calls for the unification of Palestinian factions and a revival of the PLO as the representative organisation of Palestine. It calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the 1967 borders, the right of return, and the release of prisoners.
Freedom fighter and the options
“The Palestinian Mandela” is a useful shorthand and there is some merit to the comparison. Nelson Mandela visited Gaza in 1999 and raised his voice to condemn racist, apartheid Israel.
The freedom fighter who was jailed for terrorism in his own country made clear what options lay before the Palestinian people. He told his audience, which included Yasser Arafat:
“Choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot move forward. Then, if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence.”
“I was called a terrorist yesterday,” Mandela once said, “but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists.”
Barghouti said: “Once Israel and the rest of the world understand this fundamental truth, the way forward becomes clear: End the occupation, allow the Palestinians to live in freedom and let the independent and equal neighbours of Israel and Palestine negotiate a peaceful future with close economic and cultural ties.”
The Mandela comparison has its limits. Ahmed Abu Artema, one of the organisers of the Great Marches of Return in 2018 and 2019 in which thousands of peaceful Palestinian protesters were shot and hundreds killed by Israeli snipers, replied when asked, ‘Where is the Palestinian Mandela?’: “The simple answer to that is that the Israelis have killed many Mandelas.”
Marwa Fatafta, a policy director at Access Now also dismisses the need for a Palestinian Mandela: “I don’t subscribe to the mythology. I don’t think Palestinians need a ‘saviour’ or one man to run the show. This Mandela idea dismisses the fact that Israel has one goal and one goal only: to establish an ethno-nationalist Jewish state — and that stands in complete contradiction with the idea of co-existence, peace and justice.
Building from ground up
“What we need on the Palestinian side is to build a movement from the ground up,” Fatafta said in 2022.
That said, Barghouti has an immense standing in the Palestinian community and, in a slightly kinder, saner world, could play a significant role.
In the racist narrative of Israel and the West, the only hostages are those held by Hamas. It’s time to free the Palestinian hostages, starting with Marwan Barghouti — the longest-suffering of thousands of hostages. All of the hostages should be freed — including the remaining 100 held by Hamas.
To riff on The Specials 1984 song ‘Free Nelson Mandela’:
“27 years in captivity
“His body abused but his mind is still free
“Are you so blind that you cannot see?
“Free Marwan Barghouti, I’m begging you”
Republished from Eugene Doyle’s website Solidarity with permission.
Protesters pose as Palestinian media casualties in Gaza surrounded by blue press protective jackets. The death toll of Gaza journalists since October 7 is 142. Image: Anatolu video screenshot APR
US President Joe Biden has spoken at the annual White House Correspondents’ dinner in Washington in spite of protests over alleged “complicity” of media about Israel’s war on Gaza, offering a toast to “press freedom and democracy” but ignoring the death toll of Palestinian journalists.
Demonstrators targeted the Washington Hilton hotel which hosted the dinner, denouncing the Biden administration’s handling of the war and urging guests — especially media — to boycott the event.
Media freedom watchdogs have cited varying death toll figures for Palestinian journalists killed since October 7 although Al Jazeera network news today reported 142 dead — more than double the number of journalists killed in each of the Second World War and the Vietnam War.
White House correspondents’ dinner with President Biden . . . allegations of US “media complicity” with genocide by protesters. “CNN” sign is translated as “Criminal News Network”. Image: Anatolu video screenshot APR
“It’s astonishing. We’ve never seen a White House correspondents’ dinner like this,” reported Al Jazeera’s Washington correspondent Shihab Rattansi.
“The President is here to speak while being warmly applauded by the national US press core.
“But these VIPs are all dressed up in the evening finery, and they have to run the gauntlet of hundreds of protesters out here who are shouting, ‘Shame on you’.
“‘Shame on you’ for breaking bread when there are [142] journalists dead as a result of, as far as they say, Biden’s complicity in their murder.”
Code Pink flag protest
Members of the feminist organisation Code Pink dropped a huge Palestinian flag from a top floor window of the Washington Hilton hotel.
The group said members involved in the action managed “to get out quickly and without arrest”.
The protesters were gathered outside the hotel to express solidarity with the dozens of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza.
NOW: Protestors have dropped a Palestinian flag out of the window of the Washington Hilton, where the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is being held tonight. pic.twitter.com/v8womcm8QP
The protest outside the White House correspondents’ dinner hotel. Image: Anatolu video screenshot APR
More than two dozen Palestinian journalists had called for a boycott of the dinner, writing an open letter urging their American colleagues not to attend.
“You have a unique responsibility to speak truth to power and uphold journalistic integrity,” said the letter from the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.
“It is unacceptable to stay silent out of fear or professional concern while journalists in Gaza continue to be detained, tortured, and killed for doing our jobs.”
‘It hurts our souls’
Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary was one of the signatories of the letter calling for the boycott.
“This isn’t something that has been ending. It has been continuous every single day for more than 200 days.
“We have been killed, displaced and homeless, and we’re not only reporting on this, but we’re also living it with every single detail.
Gaza journalist Hind Khoudary . . . Palestinian press plea to boycott the White House dinner. Image: @Hind_Gaza
“We’re living this war in all aspects of life. We have not seen our families as journalists. We have not been able to eat well. We have been dehydrated.
“We have been reporting in one of the harshest conditions any reporter can go through despite losing a lot of colleagues, and it hurts our souls and our hearts every single day.
“We have been constantly targeted by the Israeli air strikes and shelling.
“All of these daily things we have been living as journalists are overwhelming [and] exhausting, but we still continue because there have been at least 100 Palestinian journalists whom I personally know that have been killed since October 7.
“If they were here today with us, they would be reporting, and they would be raising the voice of the voiceless Palestinians.”
