Children at the forefront of an Ōtautahi protest over the Israeli genocide in Gaza and calling for the temporary ceasefire that came into force last Sunday. Image: Saige England
COMMENTARY: By Saige England
Celebration time. Some Palestinian prisoners have been released. A mother reunited with her daughter. A young mother reunited with her babies.
Still in prison are people who never received a fair trial, people that independent inquirers say are wrongly imprisoned. Still in prison kids who cursed soldiers who walked into their villages wielding guns.
Still imprisoned far too many Palestinians who threw stones against bullets. Still imprisoned thousands of Palestinian hostages.
Children at the forefront of an Ōtautahi protest over the Israeli genocide in Gaza and calling for the temporary ceasefire that came into force last Sunday. Image: Saige England
Many of us never knew how many hostages had been stolen, hauled into jails by Israel before 7 October 2023. We only heard the one-sided story of that day. The day when an offence force on a border was taken by surprise and when it panicked and blasted and bombed.
When that army guarding the occupation did more to lose lives than save lives.
Many never knew and perhaps never will know how many of the Palestinians who were kidnapped before and after that day had been beaten and tortured, including with the torture of rape.
We do know many have been murdered. We do know that some released from prison died soon after. We do not know how many more Palestinians will be taken hostage and imprisoned behind the prison no reporter is allowed to photograph.
Israelis boast over prison crime
The only clue to what happens inside is that Israelis have boasted this crime on national television. The clue is that Israeli soldiers have been tried for raping their own colleagues.
Make no mistake, this is a mean misogynist mercantile army. No sensible rational caring person would wish to serve in it.
No mother on any side of this conflict should lose her child. No father should bury his daughter or son. No grandparent should grieve over the loss of a life that should outlive them.
The crimes need to be exposed. All of them. Our media filters the truth. It does not provide a fair or full story. If you want that switch for pity’s sake go to Al Jazeera English.
The Palestinian people were forced to flee their homes in Gaza. Those who were never responsible for any crime were bombed out of their homes, they fled as their families were murdered, burned to death, shot by snipers. They fled while soldiers mocked their dead children.
They return home to ashes. If we want peace we must face the truths that create conflict. We are all connected in peace and war and peace.
Peace is the strongest greeting. It sears the heart and soars the soul.
It can only be achieved when we recognise and stop the anguish that causes oppression.
Saige England is a freelance journalist and author living in the Aotearoa New Zealand city of Ōtautahi.
New Zealand’s One News interviewed a Gaza journalist last week who has called out the Western media for its complicity in genocide.
For some 15 months, the Western media have framed Israel’s genocidal rampage in Gaza as a “legitimate” war.
Pretending to provide an objective and impartial view of “the Gaza War”, the Western media has failed to report on the atrocities that the Israel has committed in Gaza. The true face of Israel’s genocidal assault has been hidden behind the Western media’s determination to sanitise genocide.
Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed’s appeal to the world and the Western media. Video: Dawn News
Even the deliberate targeting of journalists by the Israeli “Defence” Force (IDF), a war crime, has not moved the Western media to take action. More than 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza and the Western media has remained silent.
The New Zealand and Pacific media also have nothing to be proud of in their coverage of events in Gaza. They, too, have consistently framed Israel’s genocidal rampage as a legitimate war and swept Israel’s war crimes under the carpet.
Some news outlets, like NZ’s Newstalk ZB, have gone as far as to defend Israel’s actions.
With the announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza last week, One News, for the first time since Israel began its murderous assault, chose to talk live to a Palestinian journalist in Gaza. That journalist was 22-year-old Abubaker Abed.
Ignored by Western media
While One News introduced him as a reporter for the Associated Press, most of Abed’s reports have been for Palestinian news outlets like The Electronic Intifida.
On January 11, Abed made a speech condemning the Western media’s complicity in genocide. While the speech has been widely circulated in the social media, it has been ignored by the Western media.
In New Zealand, the important speech has failed to make it to the One News website.
One News interviewing Gaza journalist Abubaker Abed who has called out the Western media for its complicity in genocide.
This article was first published on Steven Cowan’s website Against The Current. Republished with permission.
A litmus test of Israel’s commitment to abandon genocide and start down the road towards lasting peace is whether they choose to release the most important of all the hostages, Marwan Barghouti.
During the past 22 years in Israeli prisons he has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken.
What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian — a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation and resist the genocidal forces of the US, Israel and their Western enablers like Australia and New Zealand.
As reported last week, Egypt, Qatar and Hamas are all insisting Barghouti, the most popular leader in Palestine, be among the thousands of Palestinian hostages to be freed as part of the ceasefire agreement.
His release or retention in captivity will say volumes about which path the US and Israel wish to take: either more land thieving, more killings, more lawlessness or steps towards ending the occupation and choosing peace over territorial expansion.
Why is Barghouti potentially so important? Despite long years in Israeli jails, he is a political giant who bestrides the Palestinian cause. He is an intellectual and both a fighter and a peace activist.
He is respected by all factions of the Palestinians. He is by far the most popular figure in Palestine and as such he is almost uniquely positioned to complete the vital task of uniting his people.
Back in July last year the Chinese government pulled off a diplomatic masterstroke by getting 14 factions, including Hamas and Fatah, to successfully come together for reconciliation talks and ink the Beijing Declaration on Ending Division and Strengthening Palestinian National Unity. Now they need a unifying leader to move forward together.
Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas is despised as a US-Israeli tool by most Palestinians, 90 percent of whom, according to polling, want him gone. Hamas has represented the most effective resistance to Israel but the time may have come for them to accept partnership with, even leadership by, someone who can negotiate peace.
How Gaza and the West Bank is governed should be determined by the Palestinian people not by anyone else, especially not by Israeli leaders currently under investigation for genocide or US leaders who should join them in the dock for arming them.
The moment that Hamas released three women hostages. Video: Al Jazeera
Hypocritical rejection of Hamas
Barghouti, however, could untie the Gordian knot that has formed around the West’s hypocritical rejection of Hamas on one hand and the Palestinian people’s determination not to be dictated to by their oppressors on the other.
Barghouti may also be a saviour for the Israelis. Their society has turned into a psychotic perversion of the great hope Jews around the world placed in the Israeli state.
Israel is now the greatest killer of journalists in the history of war, the remorseless destroyer of hospitals and their patients and staff, the desecrator of countless churches and mosques. Tens of thousands of women have been killed for the sake of killing.
Israel is guilty of the crime of crimes — genocide — and needs a way out of the mess it has created.
For all these reasons Marwan Barghouti is a very dangerous man to Netanyahu and the most fanatical Zionists. He believes in peace.
In my profile of him a year ago I quoted his wife, lawyer and activist Fadwa Barghouti: “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.
‘Fought for peace’ “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.”
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.”
Marwan Barghouti has the moral, political and popular stature to reach out to the Israelis, to see past their crimes and to sit down with them. If only. If only. If only.
The horrible reality is Israel and the US have been led by war criminals who fail to grasp the fact that peace is only possible if they abandon the vilification of the Palestinian people and their leaders; that a better world is only possible if the Palestinians are finally given freedom and dignity.
It will be a relief to everyone to see the remaining few dozen Israelis held by Hamas and other groups released. They deserve to be home with their families.
It will be a relief that thousands of Palestinian hostages be freed, many of them, according to Israel’s leading human rights organisation B’tselem, victims of torture, sexual violence and medieval conditions. Hundreds of Palestinian child hostages — all of them traumatised — will be returned to their families.
All these are welcome developments. Strategically, however, Marwan Barghouti stands apart.
Palestinian Marwan Barghouti . . . a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation and resist the genocidal forces of the US, Israel and their Western enablers like Australia and New Zealand. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz/
Uniquely suited to lead Palestine
Long considered the “Palestinian Mandela” — not least because of his 22-years continuous imprisonment — the former Fatah leader, the former military leader, has attributes that make him almost uniquely suited to lead Palestine to freedom — if Israel and the US are prepared to abandon the Greater Israel project and accept peace can only come with justice for all.
He has lived for more than 22 years in conditions far more barbaric than the great South African leader had to endure on Robben Island. According to Israeli human rights groups, family and international lawyers, Barghouti has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken.
What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian – a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation and resistance to the genocidal forces of the US, Israel and their Western enablers like Australia and New Zealand.
Marwan Barghouti is the same age as me — 65 — and it fills me with horror that a man who has spent decades fighting for freedom, and, if possible, peace, has been subjected to the horrors of an Israeli gulag for so long.
I am not sure I would have had the physical or mental strength to endure what he has but — like Mandela — he kept his humanity and has remained an advocate for peace.
We should never forget that seven million Palestinians remain as hostages held in brutal conditions by the US and Israel. Most are hostages without human rights, political rights, territorial rights.
As Palestinians have pointed out: imprisonment is now part of Palestinian consciousness. But — as Marwan Barghouti has shown with his iron will, his human decency, his determination to continue to be an advocate for peace with Israel — you can imprison the Palestinians but not their struggle.
I’ll give the last word to his son, Arab Barghouti who told Mehdi Hasan on Zeteo this week, “My father used to always tell me that hope is sometimes a privilege, but being ‘hope-less’ is a privilege that we can’t have as Palestinians.”
In the same interview he also said:
“If any Israeli leader really wants an end to this and to have peace for the region, they would see that my father is someone that would bring that and is someone who still believes in the tiny chance left for the two-state solution.”
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
The Gaza ceasefire begins with three Israeli women hostages in good health being reunited with their families in Israel and an expected 90 Palestinian prisoners set to be released. Image: The Palestine Chronicle
An Al-Jazeera Arabic special report translated by The Palestine Chronicle staff details how Israel’s military strategy in Gaza, aimed at dismantling Hamas and displacing Palestinian civilians, has failed after 470 days of conflict.
ANALYSIS: By Abdulwahab al-Mursi
On May 5, 2024, nearly seven months into Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the main goal of the war was to destroy Hamas and prevent it from controlling Gaza.
However, over 250 days since this statement, and 470 days into the Israeli aggression, it has become clear that Netanyahu’s promises have faded into illusions.
In the early hours of the first phase of the ceasefire on Sunday, Israeli military radio reported that Hamas forces were reasserting their control over Gaza, stating that Hamas, which had never lost control of any part of the territory during the war, was using the ceasefire to strengthen its grip.
This development highlights the gap between Israel’s strategic objectives and the reality on the ground, as images from Gaza continue to reveal widespread devastation and loss of life, yet Hamas remains firmly in control.
Popular Support: The backbone of Hamas Military literature highlights the concept of “Center of Gravity” (COG) for military organisations, a concept that can vary depending on the organisation and context.
In the case of Hamas and Palestinian Resistance, the central element of their strength lies in the support of the local population.
This grassroots support provides Hamas with invaluable social depth, a continuous supply of human resources, and strong strategic backing.
The popular support and belief in the resistance’s strategic choices and leadership have allowed Hamas to maintain its popular mandate to achieve Palestinian national goals.
Recognising this, Israel has targeted Gaza’s civilian infrastructure both militarily and psychologically, aiming to raise the costs of supporting the resistance and weaken Hamas’s popular base.
Israel has treated Gaza’s entire civilian infrastructure as military targets, believing that expanding the death toll among civilians and inflicting maximum suffering would force the population to turn against Hamas.
Yet, despite these efforts, images of celebrations in Gaza, even in areas heavily targeted by Israel, underscore the exceptional nature of the Gaza situation, where resistance culture is deeply rooted and unyielding.
The strategic consciousness of Gaza’s people There appears to be a collective strategic awareness among Gaza’s people to maintain a victorious image at all costs, even in the midst of devastating humanitarian crises.
This desire to project an image of resistance and triumph, despite the overwhelming tragedy, has led to spontaneous public displays of support for Hamas and resistance forces, reinforcing their resolve against the Israeli onslaught.
Failure of forced displacement plans In the initial weeks of the war, Israel revealed its plan to forcibly relocate Gaza’s population.
Israeli media outlets reported in October 2023 that Netanyahu had proposed relocating Gaza’s residents to other countries.
However, after months of war, Gaza’s residents have shown an unshakable determination to remain, with displaced individuals in refugee camps celebrating their return to their homes, despite the widespread destruction they have suffered.
In northern Gaza, particularly in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, Jabaliya, and Shuja’iyya, Israel’s attempts to prevent the return of displaced residents became a significant obstacle to a ceasefire agreement, delaying it for months.
Israel’s plan, known as the “Generals’ Plan” by former Israeli military advisor Giora Eiland, aimed to create a buffer zone in northern Gaza by applying immense military and living pressures on the population.
However, as evident from the ongoing images from the region, the displaced population continues to resist and return, undermining Israel’s relocation goals.
Hamas’s military structure endures One of Netanyahu’s primary goals was to dismantle Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.
However, in the early hours of the first phase of the ceasefire, images showed Hamas fighters organising military parades in southern Gaza, signalling the resilience of Hamas’s military structure even before the ceasefire officially began.
Despite Israeli claims of killing thousands of Hamas fighters and destroying significant portions of Gaza’s tunnel network, the rapid and organized emergence of Al-Qassam forces on the ground suggests that these Israeli claims may have been aimed more at reassuring the Israeli public about the progress of the war, rather than reflecting the true situation on the ground.
Failure of post-war plans In December 2023, Netanyahu rejected Palestinian proposals that Hamas be included in Gaza’s post-war governance, insisting, “There will be no Hamas in the post-war period; we will eliminate them.”
Throughout the war, Israel attempted various unilateral methods to manage Gaza, including direct military administration and creating a new technocratic authority with local leaders, but all efforts failed.
Israeli military attempts to distribute humanitarian aid in Gaza also proved ineffective, as the army struggled to manage these operations.
As the conflict nears what is supposed to be its final phase, the governance structure in Gaza has not changed.
Hamas’s leadership, especially the Al-Qassam Brigades, continues to operate effectively, and the ceasefire agreement has allowed for the resumption of local security forces.
Even after Israel’s targeted assassinations of 723 members of Gaza’s police and security apparatus, the resilience of Gaza’s security forces has remained evident.
This failure of Israel’s post-war vision was highlighted by a comment from a political analyst on Israeli i24 News, who questioned the results of the prolonged military operation: “What have we achieved in a year and five months?
“We destroyed many homes, lost many of our best soldiers, and in the end, the result is the same: Hamas rules, aid enters, and the Qassam Brigades return.”
Republished from The Palestinian Chronicle with permission.
A bouquet for the Gaza ceasefire in Auckland's Te Komititanga square today . . . on the reverse of the Palestine flag is the West Papuan Morning Star flag of independence, another decolonisation issue. Image: David Robie/APR
About 200 demonstrators gathered in the heart of New Zealand’s biggest city Auckland today to welcome the Gaza ceasefire due to come into force tomorrow, but warned they would continue to protest until justice is served with an independent and free Palestinan state.
Jubilant scenes of dancing and Palestinian folk music rang out across Te Komititanga square amid calls for the Israeli ambassador to be expelled from New Zealand and for the government to halt holiday worker visas for “Zionist terrorist” soldiers or reservists.
While optimistic that the temporary truce in the three-phase agreement agreed to between the Hamas resistance fighter force and Israel in Doha, Qatar, on Wednesday would be turned into a permanent ceasefire, many speakers acknowledged the fragility of the peace with at least 116 Palestinians killed since the deal — mostly women and children.
New Zealand Palestinian Dr Abdallah Gouda speaking at today’s Gaza ceasefire rally . . . “We want to rebuild Gaza, we will rebuild hospitals . . . we will mend Gaza.” Image: David Robie/APR
“We have won . . . won. We are there, we are here. We are everywhere,” declared defiant Gaza survivor Dr Abdallah Gouda, whose family and other Palestinian community members in Aotearoa have played a strong solidarity role alongside activist groups during the 15-month genocidal war waged on the besieged 365 sq km enclave.
He said the struggle would go on until Palestine was finally free and independent; Palestinians would not leave their land.
“They’re [Israelis] killing us. But Palestinians decided to fight [back] . . . No Palestinians want to leave Gaza. They want to stay . . .”
‘We want to rebuild Gaza’
Dr Gouda said in both Arabic and English to loud cheers, “We promise God, we promise the people that we will never leave.
“We can be starved, we can be killed , but we will never leave.
Dr Abdallah Gouda speaking at today’s rally. Video: APR
“We want to rebuild Gaza, we will rebuild hospitals, we will rebuild schools, we will rebuild churches . . .
“We will mend Gaza. It’s not too difficult because Gaza was beautiful, we will rebuild Gaza as the best!”
His son Ali, who has been the most popular cheerleader during the weekly protests, treated the crowd to resounding chants including “Free, free Palestine” and “Netanyahu, you can’t hide”.
PSNA’s Neil Scott speaking. Video: APR
Commenting on the ceasefire due to start tomorrow, Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national secretary Neil Scott said: “This is just the end of the beginning — and now we will fight for justice.”
Scott said the continued struggle included the BDS — boycott, divest, sanctions — campaign. He appealed to the crowd to check their BDS apps and then monitor their “cupboards at home” to remove and boycott Israeli-sourced products.
He also said the PSNA would continue to keep pressing the NZ government to ban Israelis with military service visiting New Zealand on working holiday visas.
“Even now, stop allowing young Zionist terrorists — because that’s what they are — to come to Aotearoa to live among the decent people of New Zealand and wash the blood off their hands and feel innocent again,” Scott said.
“Not a chance, we are pushing this government to end that working holiday visa.”
Speakers also called for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from New Zealand.
Ali Gouda’s flagwaving challenge to the crowd. Video: APR
New Palestine documentary
In his final chant, Ali appealed to the crowd: “Raise and wave your Palestinian flags and keffiyeh.”
Future rallies will include protest marches in solidarity with Palestine.
RNZ reports that New Zealand’s Justice for Palestine co-convenor Samira Zaiton said she would only begin to breathe easy when the ceasefire began on Sunday.
“It feels as though I’m holding my breath and there’s a sigh of relief that’s stuck in my throat that I can’t quite let out until we see it play out.”
In Sydney, Australian Jewish author Antony Loewenstein, who visited New Zealand in 2023 to speak about his award-winning book, The Palestine Laboratory, has been a consistent and strong critic of Israel throughout the war.
“I often think about what Israel has unleashed in Gaza — the aim is complete devastation, and Palestinians there have a long history of suffering under this arrogant and criminal war-making,” he said today in a post on X.
“My first visit to Gaza was in July 2009, six months after Israel’s Operation Cast Lead war, and I made a short film about what I saw and heard:”
Gaza Reflections. Video: Antony Loewenstein
His new documentary based on his book, The Palestine Laboratory, will be broadcast by Al Jazeera later this month.
Protesters at today’s Gaza ceasefire rally in Auckland today. Image: David Robie/APR
Two journalists were ejected from a State Department press conference yesterday for asking inconvenient questions about Gaza. One of them, Sam Husseini, was physically carried out by security while demanding to know why Secretary of State Antony Blinken is not in The Hague for his war crimes.
The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal was also made to leave while asking Blinken why he allowed hundreds of journalists to be murdered in Gaza, telling State Department spokesman Matt Miller that he “smirked through a genocide”.
Husseini was then forcibly removed for asking questions about Gaza, and about Israel’s nuclear programme and Hannibal directive.
Blinken told Husseini to “respect the process,” to which Husseini replied, “Respect the process? Respect the process?
“While everybody from Amnesty International to the ICJ says Israel’s doing genocide and extermination, and you’re telling me to respect the process? Criminal! Why aren’t you in the Hague?”
None of these war criminals will face justice. Video: Caitlin Johnstone
The Western political-media class is expressing outrage over the incident, not because of journalists being manhandled for asking critical questions of their government, but because those journalists asked critical questions.
The talking heads on CNN described the journalists interrogating government officials as “cringeworthy heckling by activists”, initially expressing bafflement at how those “activists” could have got into a press room intended for accredited journalists (both Blumenthal and Husseini are in fact members of the press who often attend State Department press briefings).
Chaos erupts at Antony Blinken’s final press conference. Video: New York Post
Longtime State Department swamp monster Aaron David Miller tweeted of the exchange, “In 27 years at State, never seen a situation where a Secretary of State — a caring compassionate man — is heckled in his own building by a heckler yelling ‘Why aren’t you in The Hague.’ A new low in civility and discourse.”
Western liberalism in a nutshell
This is Western liberalism in a nutshell. The problem isn’t the genocide, the problem is people being insufficiently “polite” about the genocide. Western officials feeling inconvenienced and insulted is a greater concern than children being shredded and burned by US military explosives.
Husseini’s question is an interesting one. Why isn’t Blinken in The Hague? Why hasn’t he faced justice for his facilitation of the starvation, sickness and daily massacres he’s been helping Israel inflict on civilians in Gaza for the last 15 months?
And more importantly, why does it seem like a safe assumption that he never will?
This is after all the “rules-based international order,” is it not? Surely when you’ve got mainstream human rights organisations asserting that genocidal atrocities are being committed with the facilitation of the government which purports to uphold that order, some legal repercussions should be seen as at least within the realm of possibility, should they not?
And yet we all know this won’t be happening any time in the foreseeable future. We all know that as long as the US empire exists in the way that it exists, Tony Blinken and Matt Miller will enjoy prosperous free lives after their time with the Biden administration draws to a close.
This is because “international law” only exists to the extent that it can be enforced. If a superpower doesn’t want its lackeys being carted off to war crimes tribunals in the Netherlands then they won’t be, because as things sit right now nobody’s going to war with the US empire to put Tony Blinken behind bars. Or George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, for that matter.
Extraordinary moment during a Blinken press conference when reporter Sam Husseini is dragged from the room for asking a probing question.
A reminder that the corporate media is not a watchdog on power. It’s a lapdog. Any doubts, just watch the other journalists’ reaction. https://t.co/2tA3ABO0BA
As long as the US empire exists, none of these monsters will ever face justice for their actions. They will move on from their time in government to lucrative careers in think tanks or working as lobbyists until another Democratic administration calls for their services again — or, in Biden’s case, enjoy a comfortable retirement until a peaceful death surrounded by family members in the lap of luxury.
Tormenting the innocents
Until the empire has been dismantled, the world will never know justice. These swamp creatures will be able to worm their way around back and forth through the revolving door between Washington’s official government and its unofficial government while murdering, displacing and tormenting as many innocents as they please, with total impunity.
One way or another, the slaughter in Gaza will end at some point. And as long as the US-centralised power structure still dominates our world, there will be no meaningful consequences for this.
It will be filed away in the history books, and the propagandists will pace us along into the next imperial horror show. There will be more Gazas in the future, perhaps overseen by different Tony Blinkens or perhaps by the same ones, and they will keep happening for as long as this murderous empire remains standing.
This world can have justice when it finds a way to end the US empire. Until then the world will be ruled by tyrants who do exactly as they please, and anyone who questions them will be removed from the room by any force necessary.
The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Communication . . . Pacific media content in this comprehensive interdisiplinary volume including communication studies. Image: Sage Books
Four researchers and authors from the Asia-Pacific region have provided diverse perspectives on the media in a new global book on intercultural communication.
The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Communication published this week offers a global, interdisciplinary, and contextual approach to understanding the complexities of intercultural communication in our diverse and interconnected world.
It features University of Queensland academic Dr Mairead MacKinnon; founding director of the Pacific Media Centre professor David Robie; University of Ottawa’s Dr Marie M’Balla-Ndi Oelgemoeller; and University of the South Pacific journalism coordinator associate professor Shailendra Singh.
Featuring contributions from 56 leading and emerging scholars across multiple disciplines, including communication studies, psychology, applied linguistics, sociology, education, and business, the handbook covers research spanning geographical locations across Europe, Africa, Oceania, North America, South America, and the Asia Pacific.
It focuses on specific contexts such as the workplace, education, family, media, crisis, and intergroup interactions. Each chapter takes a contextual approach to examine theories and applications, providing insights into the dynamic interplay between culture, communication, and society.
One of the co-editors, University of Queensland’s associate professor Levi Obijiofor, says the book provides an overview of scholarship, outlining significant theories and research paradigms, and highlighting major debates and areas for further research in intercultural communication.
“Each chapter stands on its own and could be used as a teaching or research resource. Overall, the book fills a gap in the field by exploring new ideas, critical perspectives, and innovative methods,” he says.
Refugees to sustaining journalism Dr MacKinnon writes about media’s impact on refugee perspectives of belonging in Australia; Dr Robie on how intercultural communication influences Pacific media models; Dr M’Balla-Ndi Oelgemoeller examines accounting for race in journalism education; and Dr Singh unpacks sustaining journalism in “uncertain times” in Pacific island states.
Dr Singh says that in research terms the book is important for contributing to global understandings about the nature of Pacific media.
The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Communication cover. Image: Sage Books
“The Pacific papers address a major gap in international scholarship on Pacific media. In terms of professional practice, the papers address structural problems in the regional media sector, thereby providing a clearer idea of long term solutions, as opposed to ad hoc measures and knee-jerk reactions, such as harsher legislation.”
Dr Robie, who is also editor of Asia Pacific Report and pioneered some new ways of examining Pacific media and intercultural inclusiveness in the Asia-Pacific region, says it is an important and comprehensive collection of essays and ought to be in every communication school library.
He refers to his “talanoa journalism” model, saying it “outlines a more culturally appropriate benchmark than monocultural media templates.
“Hopefully, this cross-cultural model would encourage more Pacific-based approaches in revisiting the role of the media to fit local contexts.”
Comprehensive exploration
The handbook brings together established theories, methodologies, and practices and provides a comprehensive exploration of intercultural communication in response to the challenges and opportunities presented by the global society.
The opening page of David Robie’s chapter 23 in The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Communication. Image: Sage
From managing cultural diversity in the workplace to creating culturally inclusive learning environments in educational settings, from navigating intercultural relationships within families to understanding the role of media in shaping cultural perceptions, this handbook delves into diverse topics with depth and breadth.
It addresses contemporary issues such as hate speech, environmental communication, and communication strategies in times of crisis.
It also offers theoretical insights and practical recommendations for researchers, practitioners, policymakers, educators, and students.
The handbook is structured into seven parts, beginning with the theoretical and methodological development of the field before delving into specific contexts of intercultural communication.
Each part provides a rich exploration of key themes, supported by cutting-edge research and innovative approaches.
With its state-of-the-art content and forward-looking perspectives, this Sage Handbook of Intercultural Communication serves as an indispensable resource for understanding and navigating the complexities of intercultural communication in our increasingly interconnected world.
Republished from Pacific Media Watch.
Robie, D., (2025). How Intercultural Communication Influences Pacific Media Models. In Shuang Liu, Adam Komisarof, Zhu Hua, and Levi Obijiofor (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Communication. Sage. ISBN: 9781529626391
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani . . . for him, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the main obstacle to a Gaza ceasefire, to the considerable frustration of his own negotiators. Image: AJ screenshot APR
A ceasefire in Gaza is not the end of Palestine’s nightmare, but the start of Israel’s. Legal moves will only gather momentum as the truth of what happened in Gaza is uncovered and documented after the war has ended.
ANALYSIS: By David Hearst, editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye
When push came to shove, it was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who blinked first.
For months, Netanyahu had become the main obstacle to a Gaza ceasefire, to the considerable frustration of his own negotiators.
That much was made explicit more than two months ago by the departure of his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant. The chief architect of the 15-month war, Gallant said plainly that there was nothing left for the army to do in Gaza.
“The draft agreement clearly notes that Palestinians can return to their homes, including in northern Gaza. The attempt to clear it of its inhabitants has failed.” Image: flyers_for_falastin and andreadetoba
Still Netanyahu persisted. Last May, he rejected a deal signed by Hamas in the presence of CIA director William Burns, in favour of an offensive on Rafah.
In October, Netanyahu turned for salvation to the Generals’ Plan, aiming to empty northern Gaza in preparation for resettlement by Israelis. The plan was to starve and bomb the population out of northern Gaza by declaring that anyone who did not leave voluntarily would be treated as a “terrorist”.
It was so extreme, and so contrary to the international rules of war, that it was condemned by former Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon as a war crime and ethnic cleansing.
Key to this plan was a corridor forged by a military road and a string of outposts cutting through the centre of the Gaza Strip, from the Israeli border to the sea.
The Netzarim Corridor would have effectively reduced the territory’s land mass by almost one third and become its new northern border. No Palestinian pushed out of northern Gaza would have been allowed to return.
Red lines erased No-one from the Biden administration forced Netanyahu to rethink this plan. Not US President Joe Biden himself, an instinctive Zionist who, for all his speeches, kept on supplying Israel with the means to commit genocide in Gaza; nor Antony Blinken, his Secretary of State, who earned the dubious distinction of being the least-trusted diplomat in the region.
Even as the final touches were being put on the ceasefire agreement, Blinken gave a departing news conference in which he blamed Hamas for rejecting previous offers. As is par for the course, the opposite is the truth.
Every Israeli journalist who covered the negotiations has reported that Netanyahu rejected all previous deals and was responsible for the delay in coming to this one.
It fell to one short meeting with US President-elect Donald Trump’s special Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to call time on Netanyahu’s 15-month war.
In a war of liberation, the weak and vastly outgunned can succeed against overwhelming military odds. These wars are battles of will
After one meeting, the red lines that Netanyahu had so vigorously painted and repainted in the course of 15 months were erased.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in military gear – now a wanted man by the ICC . . . “After one meeting, the red lines that he had so vigorously painted and repainted in the course of 15 months were erased.” Image: AJ screenshot APR
As Israeli pundit Erel Segal said: “We’re the first to pay a price for Trump’s election. [The deal] is being forced upon us . . . We thought we’d take control of northern Gaza, that they’d let us impede humanitarian aid.”
This is emerging as a consensus. The mood in Israel is sceptical of claims of victory.
“There’s no need to sugarcoat the reality: the emerging ceasefire and hostage release deal is bad for Israel, but it has no choice but to accept it,” columnist Yossi Yehoshua wrote in Ynet.
The circulating draft of the ceasefire agreement is clear in stating that Israel will pull back from both the Philadelphi Corridor and the Netzarim Corridor by the end of the process, stipulations Netanyahu had previously rejected.
Even without this, the draft agreement clearly notes that Palestinians can return to their homes, including in northern Gaza. The attempt to clear it of its inhabitants has failed.
This is the biggest single failure of Israel’s ground invasion.
Fighting back There is a long list of others. But before we list them, the Witkoff debacle underscores how dependent Israel has been on Washington for every day of the horrendous slaughter in Gaza.
A senior Israeli Air Force official has admitted that planes would have run out of bombs within a few months had they not been resupplied by the US.
It is sinking into Israeli public opinion that the war is ending without any of Israel’s major aims being achieved.
Netanyahu and the Israeli army set out to “collapse” Hamas after the humiliation and shock of its surprise attack on southern Israel in October 2023. They demonstrably haven’t achieved this goal.
“But after wave upon wave of military operations, each of which was supposed to have ‘cleansed’ the city of Hamas fighters, Beit Hanoun turned out to have inflicted one of the heaviest concentrations of Israeli military casualties.” Image: AJ screenshot APR
Take Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza as a microcosm of the battle Hamas waged against invading forces. Fifteen months ago, it was the first city in Gaza to be occupied by Israeli forces, who judged it to have the weakest Hamas battalion.
But after wave upon wave of military operations, each of which was supposed to have “cleansed” the city of Hamas fighters, Beit Hanoun turned out to have inflicted one of the heaviest concentrations of Israeli military casualties.
Hamas kept on emerging from the rubble to fight back, turning Beit Hanoun into a minefield for Israeli soldiers. Since the launch of the most recent military operation in northern Gaza, 55 Israeli officers and soldiers have perished in this sector, 15 of them in Beit Hanoun in the past week alone.
If any army is bleeding and exhausted today, it is Israel’s. The plain military fact of life in Gaza is that, 15 months on, Hamas can recruit and regenerate faster than Israel can kill its leaders or its fighters.
“We are in a situation where the pace at which Hamas is rebuilding itself is higher than the pace that the [Israeli army] is eradicating them,” Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier general, told the Wall Street Journal. He added that Mohammed Sinwar, the younger brother of slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, “is managing everything”.
If anything demonstrates the futility of measuring military success solely by the number of leaders killed, or missiles destroyed, it is this.
Against the odds In a war of liberation, the weak and vastly outgunned can succeed against overwhelming military odds. These wars are battles of will. It is not the battle that matters, but the ability to keep on fighting.
In Algeria and Vietnam, the French and US armies had overwhelming military advantage.
Both forces withdrew in ignominy and failure many years later. In Vietnam, it was more than six years after the Tet Offensive, which like the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 was perceived at the time to be a military failure. But the symbol of a fightback after so many years of siege proved decisive in the war.
In France, the scars of Algeria last to this day. In each war of liberation, the determination of the weak to resist has proved more decisive than the firepower of the strong.
In Gaza, it was the determination of the Palestinian people to stay on their land — even as it was being reduced to rubble — that proved to be the decisive factor in this war. And this is an astonishing feat, considering that the 360 sq km territory was entirely cut off from the world, with no allies to break the siege and no natural terrain for cover.
Hezbollah fought in the north, but little of this was any succour to Palestinians in Gaza on the ground, subjected to nightly bombing raids and drone attacks shredding their tents.
Neither enforced starvation, nor hypothermia, nor disease, nor brutalisation and mass rape at the hands of their invaders, could break their will to stay on their land.
Never before have Palestinian fighters and civilians shown this level of resistance in the history of the conflict — and it could prove to be transformative.
Because what Israel has lost in its campaign to crush Gaza is incalculable. It has squandered decades of sustained economic, military and diplomatic efforts to establish the country as a liberal democratic Western nation in the eyes of global opinion.
Generational memory Israel has not only lost the Global South, in which it invested such efforts in Africa and South America. It has also lost the support of a generation in the West, whose memories do not go back as far as Biden’s.
The point is not mine. It is well made by Jack Lew, the man Biden nominated as his ambassador to Israel a month before the Hamas attack.
In his departing interview, Lew, an Orthodox Jew, told the Times of Israel that public opinion in the US was still largely pro-Israel, but that was changing.
With the enormous cost in lives, every family has been touched by loss. But what Gaza has achieved in the last 15 months could well transform the conflict
“What I’ve told people here that they have to worry about when this war is over is that the generational memory doesn’t go back to the founding of the state, or the Six Day War, or the Yom Kippur War, or to the intifada even.
“It starts with this war, and you can’t ignore the impact of this war on future policymakers — not the people making the decisions today, but the people who are 25, 35, 45 today and who will be the leaders for the next 30 years, 40 years.”
Biden, Lew said, was the last president of his generation whose memories and knowledge go back to Israel’s “founding story”.
Lew’s parting shot at Netanyahu is amply documented in recent polls. More than one-third of American Jewish teenagers sympathise with Hamas, 42 percent believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and 66 percent sympathise with the Palestinian people as a whole.
This is not a new phenomenon. Polling two years before the war showed that a quarter of American Jews agreed that “Israel is an apartheid state”, and a plurality of respondents did not find that statement to be antisemitic.
“The antiwar protests, condemned by Western governments first as antisemitism and then legislated against as terrorism, have created a global front for the liberation of Palestine. The movement to boycott Israel is stronger than ever before.” Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Deep damage The war in Gaza has become the prism through which a new generation of future world leaders sees the Israel-Palestine conflict. This is a major strategic loss for a country that on 6 October 2023 thought that it had closed down the issue of Palestine, and that world opinion was in its pocket.
But the damage goes further and deeper than this.
The antiwar protests, condemned by Western governments first as antisemitism and then legislated against as terrorism, have created a global front for the liberation of Palestine. The movement to boycott Israel is stronger than ever before.
Israel is in the dock of international justice as never before. Not only are there arrest warrants out for Netanyahu and Gallant on war crimes, and a continuing genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), but a myriad of other cases are about to flood the courts in every major western democracy.
A court action has been launched in the UK against BP for supplying crude oil to Israel, which is then allegedly used by the Israeli army, from its pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkiye.
In addition, the Israeli army recently decided to conceal the identities of all troops who have participated in the campaign in Gaza, for fear that they could be pursued when travelling abroad.
This major move was sparked by a tiny activist group named after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old killed by Israeli troops in Gaza in January 2024. The Belgium-based group has filed evidence of war crimes with the UCJ against 1000 Israelis, including video, audio, forensic reports and other documents.
A ceasefire in Gaza is thus not the end of Palestine’s nightmare, but the start of Israel’s. These legal moves will only gather momentum as the truth of what happened in Gaza is uncovered and documented after the war has ended.
Internal divisions At home, Netanyahu will return from war to a country more divided internally than ever before. There is a battle between the army and the Haredim who refuse to serve.
There is a battle between secular and national religious Zionists. With Netanyahu’s retreat on Gaza, the settler far right are sensing that the opportunity to establish Greater Israel has been snatched from the jaws of military victory.
All the while, there has been an unprecedented exodus of Jews from Israel.
Regionally, Israel is left with troops still in Lebanon and Syria. It would be foolish to think of these ongoing operations as restoring the deterrence Israel lost when Hamas struck on 7 October 2023.
Iran’s axis of resistance might have received some sustained blows after the leadership of Hezbollah was wiped out, and after finding itself vastly overextended in Syria. But like Hamas, Hezbollah has not been knocked out as a fighting force.
And the Sunni Arab world has been riled by the Gaza genoicide and the ongoing crackdown in the occupied West Bank as rarely before.
Israel’s undisguised bid to divide Syria into cantons is as provocative to Syrians of all denominations and ethnicities, as its plans to annex Areas B and C of the West Bank are an existential threat to Jordan.
Annexation would be treated in Amman as an act of war.
Deconfliction will be the patient work of decades of reconstruction, and Trump is not a patient man.
Hamas and Gaza will now take a backseat. With the enormous cost in lives, every family has been touched by loss. But what Gaza has achieved in the last 15 months could well transform the conflict.
Gaza has shown all Palestinians — and the world — that it can withstand total war, and not budge from the ground upon which it stands. It tells the world, with justifiable pride, that the occupiers threw everything they had at it, and there was not another Nakba.
Gaza tells Israel that Palestinians exist, and that they will not be pacified until and unless Israelis talk to them on equal terms about equal rights.
It may take many more years for that realisation to sink in, but for some it already has: “Even if we conquer the entire Middle East, and even if everyone surrenders to us, we won’t win this war,” columnist Yair Assulin wrote in Haaretz.
But what everyone in Gaza who stayed put has achieved is of historic significance.
David Hearst is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He is a commentator and speaker on the region and analyst on Saudi Arabia. This article has been republished from the Middle East Eye under Creative Commons.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Egyptian, Palestinian and Israeli authorities to allow foreign journalists into Gaza in the wake of the three-phase ceasefire agreement set to to begin on Sunday.
The New York-based global media watchdog urged the international community “to independently investigate the deliberate targeting of journalists that has been widely documented” since the 15-month genocidal war began in October 2023.
“Journalists have been paying the highest price — with their lives — to provide the world some insight into the horrors that have been taking place in Gaza during this prolonged war, which has decimated a generation of Palestinian reporters and newsrooms,” the group’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement.
According to a CPJ tally, at least 165 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the conflict began. However, according to the Gaza Media Office, the death toll is much higher — 210.
Israel and the Palestinian resistance group Hamas agreed to the ceasefire deal after more than 460 days of a war that has devastated Gaza, mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States announced.
After the ceasefire comes into effect on Sunday, Palestinians in Gaza will be left with tens of thousands of people dead and missing and many more with no homes to return to.
The war has killed at least 46,707 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Among the “horrifying numbers” released by the Gaza Government Media Office last week:
1600 families wiped off of the civil registry
17,841 children killed
44 people killed by malnutrition
CPJ welcomes the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in #Gaza and calls on authorities to grant unconditional access to journalists and independent human rights experts to investigate crimes committed against the media during the 15-month long war.https://t.co/9zloRVYhSf
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said that the ceasefire deal would come into effect on Sunday, but added that work on implementation steps with Israel and Hamas was continuing.
How the Gaza ceasefire deal was reported by the Middle East-based Al Jazeera news channel on its website. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Israel said that some final details remained, and an Israeli government vote is expected today.
Gazans celebrate but braced for attacks
However, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported from al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza that while Gazans celebrated the ceasefire news, they were braced for more Israeli attacks until the Sunday deadline.
“This courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which has seen many funerals and bodies laid on the ground, turned into a stage of celebration and happiness and excitement,” he said.
“But it’s relatively quiet in the courtyard of the hospital now.
“At this time, people are back to their tents, where they are sheltering because the ceasefire agreement does not take effect until Sunday.”
Gaza ceasefire: The moment of relief for Palestinians Video: Al Jazeera
That left time for the Israeli military to continue with the attacks, Mahmoud said.
“As people were celebrating here from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, we could clearly hear the sound of heavy artillery and bombardment on the Bureij refugee camp and Nuseirat.
“So these coming days until Sunday are very critical times, and people here expect a surge in Israeli attacks.”
Gaza ceasefire a ‘start’
Sheikh Mohammed said the Gaza deal came after extensive diplomatic efforts, but the ceasefire was a “start”, and now mediators and the international community should work to achieve lasting peace.
“I want to tell our brothers in the Gaza Strip that the State of Qatar will always continue to support our Palestinian brothers,” the Qatari prime minister said.
Welcoming the ceasefire deal, a Hamas official said Palestinians would not forget the Israeli atrocities.
The resistance movement’s Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya said Palestinians would remember who carried out mass killings against them, who justified the atrocities in the media and who provided the bombs that were dropped on their homes.
“The barbaric war of extermination . . . that the Israeli occupation and its backers have carried out over 467 days will forever be engraved in the memory of our people and the world as the worst genocide in modern history,” al-Hayya said.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was “imperative” that the ceasefire removed obstacles to aid deliveries as he welcomed the deal that includes a prisoner and captive exchange.
“It is imperative that this ceasefire removes the significant security and political obstacles to delivering aid across Gaza so that we can support a major increase in urgent life-saving humanitarian support,” Guterres said.
“Over the past 15 months, this conflict has caused incomprehensible human suffering. We acknowledge the efforts of all those involved in the negotiations to bring an end to the misery, particularly the US, Qatar and Egypt.
“The terms of the deal must now be implemented fully. Protection of civilians and the release of hostages must be at the forefront of effort,” Peters said in a statement.
“There now needs to be a massive, rapid, unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“To achieve a durable and lasting peace, we call on the parties to take meaningful steps towards a two-state solution. Political will is the key to ensuring history does not repeat itself.”
Israel isn’t eradicating “the terrorists”. It’s turning Gaza into a wasteland, a hellscape, where doctors no longer exist, aid workers are a memory, and compassion a liability, writes Jonathan Cook.
If there was an image from 2024 that captured the year’s news, it was this one: Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, in a white lab coat, picking his way through the wreckage of the Kamal Adwan hospital he ran — the last surviving major medical facility in northern Gaza — towards two Israeli tanks, their gun barrels aimed at him.
The past year has been dominated by the death and destruction Israel has wrought throughout the tiny enclave.
It has been marked by the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians — the deaths we know about — and the maiming of at least 100,000 more; the starvation of the entire population; the levelling of the urban and agricultural landscape; and the systematic erasure of Gaza’s hospitals and health sector, including the killing, mass arrest and torture of Palestinian medics.
War on Gaza: Healthcare system crisis. Video: Al Jazeera
2024 was dominated, too, by a growing consensus from international legal and human rights authorities that all this amounts to genocide.
Here was an image, from the very final days of the year, that said it all. It showed a lone doctor — one who had risked his life to keep his hospital operational as it was besieged by Israeli forces, battered by Israeli shells and drones, and had its staff picked off by Israeli snipers — bravely heading towards his, and his people’s, exterminators.
He had paid a personal price, just as much as his patients and staff. In October, his 15-year-old son, Ibrahim, was executed during an Israeli raid on the hospital. A month later, he himself was wounded by shrapnel from an Israeli strike on the building.
By December 27, the hospital could no longer withstand Israel’s savage onslaught. When a loudspeaker demanded that Dr Abu Safiya come towards the tanks, he set off grimly across the rubble.
It was the moment that the Kamal Adwan hospital’s fight to protect life was brought to a sudden end; when the genocidal Israeli war machine notched an inevitable victory against the last outpost of humanity in northern Gaza.
Held in torture camp The image was also the last known one of Abu Safiya, taken minutes before his so-called “arrest” — his abduction — by Israeli soldiers, and his disappearance into Israel’s system of torture camps.
Dr Hussem Abu Safiyeh was arrested by Israeli military soon after this photo was taken. His whereabouts are not known. He was the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza until it was forcibly evacuated by Israel. @FrontLineHRD considers him a human rights defender.… pic.twitter.com/kP7sfUefix
After days of claiming it had no knowledge of his whereabouts, the Israeli military finally confirmed it was holding him incommunicado. The admission appears to have come only because of a petition to the Israeli courts from a local medical rights group.
According to a growing number of reports, Dr Abu Safiya is now in the most notorious of Israel’s torture facilities, Sde Teiman, where soldiers were caught on video last year raping a Palestinian inmate with a baton until his insides ruptured.
The hope is that Dr Abu Safiya will not suffer the fate of his colleague, Dr Adnan al-Bursh, the former head of orthopaedics at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital. After four months of abuse at Ofer prison, Dr Bursh was dumped by guards in its yard, naked from the waist down, bleeding and unable to stand. He died a short time later.
Reports by human rights agencies and the United Nations — as well as testimonies from whistleblowing camp guards — tell of the systematic beating, starvation, sexual abuse and rape of Palestinian prisoners.
Israel has accused Dr Abu Safiya, Gaza’s best-known paediatrician, of being a Hamas “terrorist”. It has abducted a further 240 people from Kamal Adwan Hospital who it claims are “terror suspects” — presumably chiefly among them patients and medical staff – and they are being held in similarly horrifying conditions.
The family of Dr. Abu Safeyeh is worried that he might be tortured to death as happened to the medical doctors Iyad Rantisi and Adnan Al bursh.
So for God sake @jonstewart raise their voice. They will kill him because he revealed to the world the bombardment and the Israeli… pic.twitter.com/6slN2tBaMI
Psychotic logic According to Israel’s psychotic logic, anyone who works for Gaza’s Hamas government — meaning anyone like Dr Abu Safiya employed in one of the enclave’s major institutions, such as a hospital — counts as a terrorist.
By extension, any hospital — because it falls under the Hamas government’s authority — can be treated as a “Hamas terrorist stronghold”, as Israel has termed Kamal Adwan. Ergo, all medical facilities should be destroyed, all doctors “arrested” and tortured, and all patients forcibly “evacuated”.
An “evacuation” of this kind means only one thing: patients being left to die of their wounds, illnesses or malnourishment – and increasingly from the cold, too. Image: www.jonathan-cook.net
In Kamal Adwan’s case, the wounded, the seriously ill and those about to give birth were allowed 15 minutes to unhook their drips, get out of their sickbeds and make their way into the wrecked courtyard.
An “evacuation” of this kind means only one thing: patients being left to die of their wounds, illnesses or malnourishment — and increasingly from the cold, too.
A growing number of babies have been dying of hypothermia as their families huddle through winter nights under canvas, without blankets or proper clothing, in the tent encampments that have become home to most of Gaza’s population.
The photograph of Dr Abu Safiya’s surrender made it only too clear who is David and who Goliath; who is the humanitarian and who the terrorist.
Most of all, it demonstrated how the West’s political and media classes have spent the past 15 months promoting a grand lie about Gaza. They have not been seeking to end the bloodshed, but to cover it up — to excuse it.
This might explain why the most defining image of 2024 was barely visible in establishment media outlets, let alone on their front pages, as Dr Abu Safiya was abducted by Israel and his hospital destroyed.
Most foreign editors and picture editors — dependent on salaries from their billionaire owners — appeared to prefer to pass on the news photograph of the year. Social media, however, did not. Ordinary users spread it far and wide. They understood what it showed and what it meant.
‘Consciousness warfare’ Late last month, Israel announced that this coming year, it would be spending an extra $150 million on what it has termed “consciousness warfare”.
That is, Israel is upping its budget 20-fold to improve its media disinformation campaigns — to whitewash its image as the slaughter in Gaza continues.
Israel has killed many of Gaza’s journalists and barred foreign correspondents from its undeclared “kill zones”. But in an era of live-streaming on phones, concealing a genocide is proving far harder than Israel imagined.
It is not enough, it seems, to have the Western establishment peddling your disinformation.
Israel is particularly concerned about young people — such as students on campuses — who do not consume news filtered through the BBC or CNN, and thus have a much clearer grasp of what is happening. Their senses and sensibilities have not been dulled by years of Western corporate propaganda.
They are much less likely, for example, to fall for the Israeli fake news — recycled and given credence by Western media — that has justified over the past 15 months the complete destruction of Gaza’s hospitals, or the kind of disinformation that entertains the idea that an esteemed physician like Dr Abu Safiya is secretly a terrorist.
The genesis of Israel’s campaign to erase Gaza’s health sector started within days of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack. Less than two weeks later, Israel fired a powerful missile at the courtyard of Gaza City’s al-Ahli hospital; dozens of Palestinian families who had fled there, seeking protection from Israel’s military rampage, were caught in the explosion.
But the media laundered this opening shot in the war on Gaza’s hospitals by credulously echoing Israel’s preposterous assertion that a misfired Palestinian rocket, rather than an Israeli missile, had done the damage.
The attack on al-Ahli set out Israel’s blueprint for genocide, one it has followed closely over the past 15 months. It made clear to Palestinians that nowhere would be safe from Israel’s onslaught, not even established sites of sanctuary such as hospitals, mosques and churches.
And it made clear to Western leaders and media that Israel was ready to breach every known precept of international humanitarian law. There was no atrocity, no war crime it would not commit, including destroying Gaza’s medical system.
Israel’s patrons were expected to give their full backing to the war, however far Israel went. And that is exactly what they did.
Red herrings Looking back, the brief furore over whether Israel was responsible for the attack on al-Ahli seems nightmarishly quaint now. With the lack of any pushback, Israel intensified its “consciousness warfare”, creating a bubble of fake news to connect Gaza’s hospitals to Hamas terrorism.
Within weeks, Israel was claiming to have discovered a Hamas terrorist base under Gaza’s al-Rantisi children’s hospital, with weapons stashes and a guard duty rota in Arabic for the Israeli hostages — except the rota was quickly shown to be nothing more than an innocuous calendar.
Israel’s biggest target was al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s most important medical facility. Israel released a CGI-generated video showing it sitting atop an underground “Hamas command and control centre”. The claims were once again credulously aired by Western media, though the Hamas bunker was never found.
These lies served their purpose, nonetheless. Even as Israel wrecked Gaza’s hospitals and denied entry to medical aid, leaving Gaza without any way to treat the men, women and children maimed by Israel’s relentless bombing, the media turned its focus away from these all-too-obvious crimes against humanity.
Instead, as Israel hoped, journalists expended their energies chasing after red herrings, trying to verify each individual lie.
The media’s working premise appeared to be that, should the faintest hint of complicity between Hamas and a single hospital, or doctor, in Gaza be confirmed, Israel’s campaign to erase all medical facilities in the enclave and deny healthcare to 2.3 million people caught in its killing fields would be justified.
Mass graves Notably, none of the stream of senior Western doctors who volunteered in Gaza reported upon their return home having seen any sign of the armed “Hamas terrorists” who were supposedly crawling all over the hospitals in which they had worked.
These Western doctors were rarely interviewed by the media as a counterpoint to Israel’s endless disinformation, which created the rationalisation for Israel to lay waste to Gaza’s hospitals and medical centres with utter abandon.
Soldiers invaded the hospitals one after another, destroying the wards, operating rooms and intensive care units.
Each forcible “evacuation” created its own trail of misery. Premature babies were left to starve or freeze to death inside their incubators. The critically ill were forced from their beds. Ambulances that tried to collect them were blown up. And each time, Gaza’s medical staff were rounded up, stripped of their clothing and “disappeared”.
Western journalists showed little interest, too, in the discovery of unidentified corpses in makeshift mass graves on hospital grounds after Israeli soldiers had finished their assaults — bodies that had been decapitated or mutilated, or showed indications of having been buried alive.
For these reasons and more, the UN Human Rights Office concluded last week that Gaza’s hospitals, “the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe, in fact, became a death trap”.
Similarly, a World Health Organisation official, Rik Pepperkorn, observed: “The health sector is being systematically dismantled.”
The WHO is seeking urgent, life-saving treatment abroad for more than 12,000 people, he added. “At the current rate, it would take five to 10 years to evacuate all these critically ill patients.”
In another statement last week, two UN experts warned that Dr Abu Safiya’s arbitrary detention was “part of a pattern by Israel to continuously bombard, destroy and fully annihilate the realisation of the right to health in Gaza”.
They noted that, in addition to the mass round-ups, at least 1057 Palestinian health and medical professionals had been killed so far.
Trajectory to genocide The truth is that Israel’s new, better-funded disinformation campaign will prove no more effective than its existing ones.
Avi Cohen-Scali, the head of Israel’s ministry for combating antisemitism, said a decade of such programmes against what Israel calls its “delegitimisation” — that is, the exposure of its apartheid and now genocidal character — had yielded “nearly zero results”.
He told Israeli media: “This activity has failed by every conceivable parameter.”
The reality of a genocide will be impossible to airbrush away. Over the coming months, more Israeli atrocities — new and historic — will come to light. More legal and human rights organisations and scholars will conclude that Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) will issue more arrest warrants for war crimes, following those against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
At the weekend, an Israeli soldier on holiday in Brazil was forced to flee the country after he was warned he was under investigation.
But there is more. Leading rights organisations and scholars will have to reformulate their historical understanding of both Israel and its founding ideology of Zionism. They will need to acknowledge that this genocide did not come out of nowhere.
The trajectory began when Zionism was established as a settler-colonial movement more than a century ago. It continued when Israel was created through a mass ethnic cleansing operation against the native Palestinian population in 1948.
And it gathered speed in 1967 as Israel formalised its apartheid system, engineering separate rights for Jews and Palestinians, and forcing Palestinians into ever-shrinking ghettoes.
Unchecked, Israel’s ultimate destination was always towards genocide. It is an ideological compulsion embedded in Israel’s notions of ethnic supremacy and chosen-ness.
Mad Max vision Even after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant in November, Israeli leaders continued their explicit incitement to genocide.
Last week, eight legislators from the Israeli Parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee wrote to the new Defence Minister, Israel Katz, demanding that he order the destruction of the last sources of water, food and energy in northern Gaza.
It was precisely Israel’s current starvation of Gaza’s population that led to Netanyahu and Gallant being charged with crimes against humanity.
Meanwhile, the destruction of Kamal Adwan Hospital clears the ground for a new policy in northern Gaza: what Israel is chillingly calling “Chernobylisation”.
Named after the Soviet nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, the policy views the Palestinian presence in Gaza as a comparable threat to the 1986 radioactive leak. The military’s goal is to erase all Palestinian infrastructure above and below ground, echoing Soviet emergency efforts to contain Chernobyl’s radiation.
Where does this lead?
Louise Wateridge, the senior emergency officer for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, noted at the weekend that Israel was accelerating Gaza’s complete social collapse by driving Unrwa out of the enclave.
Israeli legislation coming into effect at the end of this month will bar the refugee agency from operating in Gaza to provide families with what little food and shelter is available, given Israel’s aid blockade.
It will also, in the absence of hospitals, deprive Gaza of its last meaningful health services. Wateridge noted: “Unrwa does something like 17,000 health consultations a day in the Gaza Strip. It’s impossible for another agency to replace that.”
The danger she underscores is that Gaza will become completely lawless. Families will face not only Israel’s bombs, assassination drones and starvation programme, but also the dystopian rule of criminal gangs.
This is exactly what Israel intends for Gaza. As a report in Haaretz last week revealed, following the “Chernobylisation” of northern Gaza, Israel is mulling plans to let two big Palestinian crime families rule the south.
These are likely to be the same gangs that are looting the few aid trucks that Israel allows into Gaza, assisting Israel in depriving the population of food and water.
Israel’s vision for Gaza’s future is a post-apocalyptic cross between the Mad Max film franchise and Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road.
Cover story The trajectory to genocide might have been hardwired into Zionism’s coding, but it has been the task of Western leaders, media outlets, academia, think tanks and even human rights organisations to pretend otherwise.
They have spent decades holding the line on what should long ago have been a thoroughly discredited Western narrative: that Israel was only ever a sanctuary for Jews from antisemitism, that it is “the only democracy in the Middle East”, that its occupation is largely benign and its illegal settlements a necessary security measure, and that the Israeli army is “the most moral in the world”.
Those fictions are unravelling faster than Israel’s disinformation can ever hope to stitch them back together.
So why do more of it? Because Israel’s “consciousness warfare” is not primarily directed at you and me. It is directed at Western leaders.
This is not to persuade them of anything; British Prime Minister Keir Starmer knows full well there is a genocide going on in Gaza, as does Donald Trump, the incoming US President.
They simply do not care — not least because you cannot reach the summit of a Western political system unless you are prepared to think sociopathically about the world. There is a Western military industrial complex to placate, and Western corporations to service that expect to maintain their dominion over global resource extraction.
This is why in the dying days of his presidency, with no votes to win, Joe Biden has dropped the pretence of “tirelessly working for a ceasefire” or demanding that Israel send in at least 350 aid trucks a day.
Instead, he has announced as a parting gift to Israel a further $8 billion in arms, including munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters.
No, the goal of Israel’s disinformation campaign is to provide a cover story. It is to muddy the waters just enough to obscure Western leaders’ support for genocide; to give them an excuse for continuing to send weapons, and to help them evade a war crimes trial at The Hague.
The goal is “plausible deniability”: to be able to claim that what was obvious was not too obvious, that what was known to ordinary onlookers was unclear to those directly participating.
Western leaders know that Israel has dragged off Dr Abu Safiya — one of Gaza’s great healers — to one of its torture camps, where he is almost certainly being starved, intermittently beaten, humiliated and terrorised, like the other inmates.
Israel’s work now is to weaken and destroy his physical and mental resilience, just as it has dismantled Gaza’s hospitals.
Israel’s goal is not to eradicate “the terrorists”. It is to turn Gaza into a wasteland, a hellscape, in which no one good, no one who cares, no one trying to cling on to their humanity can survive.
A place where doctors do not exist, aid workers are a memory, and compassion is a liability; a place where tanks and criminal gangs rule.
The job of the Western political and media class is to make all this appear as routine and normal as possible. Their job is to deaden us inside, to hollow out our ability to care or resist, to leave us numb. We must prove them wrong — for Dr Abu Safiya’s sake, and for our own.
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.
