Former journalist and "media minder" of the 2000 coup Joe Nata . . . an "unwelcome blast from the past", says writer Graham Davis. Image: Grubsheet/FT
COMMENTARY: By Graham Davis
The Fiji Times totally crossed the line today by using a convicted felon who took part in the 2000 coup to call for the release of the coup frontman George Speight.
Journalist Josefa Nata spent 23 years in prison for his part in the rebellion. He has served his time and deserves his freedom.
But he does not deserve to have the front page of Fiji’s traditional newspaper of record for any reason at all short of naming the shadowy figures behind the rebellion or throwing new light on our understanding of what took place.
Does he do so? Not a chance. The headline says: “Nata on Coup”. Yet nowhere is there any detail of what occurred 24 years ago.
So why would The Fiji Times give him the front page for his pedestrian musings on how his “time in jail has helped him to realise his wrongdoings”? The answer is revealed on page 2 – Joe Nata’s call for his fellow conspirator, George Speight, to be released from prison.
He reveals that he has already had discussions with the ousted attorney-general, Siromi Turaga, and the Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, to press Speight’s case. And now he wants to meet the Commander of the RFMF, Major General Ro Jone Kalouniwai, to try to persuade him that the 2000 coup leader has done his time.
Until now, General Kalouniwai has insisted that Speight cannot be released without it being a threat to national security. The RFMF Commander has given undertakings to his fellow officers that he will not countenance Speight being set free.
And Grubsheet understands that he has conveyed that position to the government through the Home Affairs Minister, Pio Tikoduadua.
Legalities clear
The legal position is clear. George Speight was the last person to be sentenced to death in Fiji. In 2002, he wept as High Court judge Justice Michael Scott donned a black cap over his horse-hair wig to protect him from the eyes of God and pronounced that for his treason against the state, Speight should “hang from the neck until dead”.
He then used the famous accompanying words: “And may God have mercy on your soul”.
Soon afterwards, Speight’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. That was a pardon in itself. So axiomatically George Speight cannot be pardoned again by being released with the other 2000 conspirators who were sentenced to long terms in jail.
The Mercy Commission instigated by Siromi Turaga at the urging of the nationalist hardliners in the Coalition may have released Joe Nata and most notably so far, the Qaranivalu, Ratu Inoke Takiveikata, who instigated the mutiny in the RFMF in November 2000. But it cannot release George Speight.
Having been sentenced to death and having had that sentence commuted to life imprisonment, life means life for George. It is the law and for the Coalition to make an exception for the man who brought Fiji to its knees in 2000 would open a pandora’s box filled to the brim with a great many imponderables. Foremost of these would be the potential threat to national security.
George Speight isn’t some doddering and harmless old man but a super-fit and charismatic figure who is said to still command a great deal of authority in Naboro Prison. Those who have met him in recent years say he retains the strut and cockiness of the man who shot to global infamy by removing the former prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, at gunpoint and holding the nation’s MPs hostage in the parliamentary complex for 56 days.
He is also said to be unrepentant about what he did and remains a hard-line indigenous supremacist. And there is clear evidence that he doesn’t regard himself as being bound by the normal strictures of what constitutes appropriate behaviour for most people.
Great deal of upheaval
A well-meaning New Zealand couple I know who shall remain nameless went to visit George Speight in Naboro a few years ago thinking they could help him. But George’s idea of help was to ask whether he could have sex with the woman with her husband’s consent.
So his virility isn’t in question. Neither is his potential to cause a great deal of upheaval in Fiji.
The Fiji Times front page today . . . “Nata on coup”. Image: Grubsheet/FT
So why is The Fiji Times actively, albeit indirectly, advocating for his release? Because it is evidently a mouthpiece for those elements in the Coalition who want to complete the agenda Sitiveni Rabuka and George Speight shared of entrenching iTaukei supremacy by any means, including their coups of 1987 and 2000.
Now that Sitiveni Rabuka has been restored to power, these elements now want George Speight freed. The difference is that Rabuka wasn’t sentenced to death for his treason. George Speight was.
It is the height of journalistic irresponsibility for The Fiji Times to provide a public soapbox for a criminal like Joe Nata to agitate for a course of action that is not only contrary to the law but has the potential to trigger all sorts of consequences that are contrary to the national interest.
There is already enough instability in Fiji right now without throwing fuel on the fire. And the Commander of the RFMF must be persuaded to hold the line against any attempt to free George Speight.
This is not ancient history. Indeed the man Speight removed at gunpoint, Mahendra Chaudhry, is still with us, still leads the Fiji Labour Party and still intends to contest the next election. He should be able to do so without the malignant presence of his tormentor.
Because far from intending to disappear quietly into the shadows in the event of his release, George Speight is evidently intent on a political comeback. And that must not be allowed to happen.
Fiji-born to missionary parents and a dual Fijian-Australian national, Graham Davis is an award-winning investigative journalist turned communications consultant who was the Fiji government’s principal communications advisor for six years from 2012 to 2018 and continued to work on Fiji’s global climate and oceans campaign up until the end of the decade. Republished from Grubsheet with permission.
Coup frontman George Speight (centre in tie). . . tearful after being handed his death sentence (later commuted to life in prison). Image: www.grubsheet.com.au
Palestinian lawyer and advocate Diana Buttu . . . "You could see from the 1990s, even up until 2006, that there wasn't free access or free flow of people or of goods into the Gaza Strip. To the contrary, Israel was controlling all aspects of that." Image: Freedom Flotilla Coalition screenshot Café Pacific
An international lawyer and former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Diana Buttu, says it is a myth that the siege on Gaza began in 2006/2007.
She has explained in a Gaza Freedom Flotilla video released on YouTube that Israel’s control and closure on Gaza started decades earlier.
The Israeli military closed Gaza off from the world, continuously ignoring international law and diplomatic efforts to end the blockade, making this current genocide possible, said Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian.
Geneva Convention 1949 . . . “Instead, what Israel has done is create a system of blockade and closure,” says lawyer Diana Buttu. Image: Freedom Flotilla screen shot APR
Buttu argued that this made global efforts to break the siege on Gaza — foremost among them, the Freedom Flotilla—all the more imperative.
“Look, the Israeli logic when it comes to Palestinians, is that what won’t be learned with force, will only be learned with more force.” she said.
“One of the most important things right now is to break that siege and break that blockade”.
Israel ‘could turn off the tap’
She also said: “The reason why they [Israel] could turn off the tap, so to speak, was because of the fact that they had been maintaining such a brutal siege and blockade on the Gaza Strip.
“Add that together, and you can see that the impact and the intent is genocide.’
Kia Ora Gaza is the Aotearoa New Zealand affiliated member of the international Freedom Flotilla collective and several Kiwi participants re taking part.
Auckland activists Youssef Sammour and Rana Hamida being farewelled at Auckland International Airport on the first stage of their protest waka last Sunday. Image: Rana Hamida/Freedom Flotilla
“Currently about to head to the airport to take the last flight to La Rochelle, France, where we will be joining the Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship Handala.
“Please share and keep an eye on the waka.
“The more you are courageous to follow up and open your eyes — the safer the mission is.
“A mission guided by love to all human beings.
“Guided by the deep knowing of the equally vital solidarity with those the most in need of it.
“Acknowledge your role — it’s time.
“More updates as we go.”
Republished in collaboration with Kia Ora Gaza.
Diana Buttu on the Biggest Myth About Israel’s Siege of Gaza. Video: Freedom Flotilla
Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths of Plains FM96.9 radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region.
Dr Robie has just been made a Member of the NZ Order of Merit (MNZM) and Earthwise ask him what this means to him. Why has he campaigned for so long for Pacific issues to receive media attention?
Do Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia really feel like part of the Pacific world? What are the growing concerns about increasing militarisation in the Pacific and spreading Chinese influence?
And why is decolonisation in Kanaky New Caledonia from France such a pressing issue? Dr Robie also draws parallels between the Kanak, Palestinian and West Papuan struggles.
Interviewee: Dr David Robie, deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and a semiretired professor of Pacific journalism. He founded the Pacific Media Centre.
Interviewers: Lois and Martin Griffiths, Earthwise programme
New Zealand activists Youssef Sammour and Rana Hamida have been selected to join the volunteer crew on the international Freedom Flotilla ship Handala, currently visiting European ports and heading to break Israel’s siege of Gaza.
Youssef Sammour at a recent Auckland rally for Palestine. Image: Kia Ora Gaza
They will be farewelled at 10:30am upstairs at the Auckland International Airport today, reports Kia Ora Gaza.
Trevor Hogan, a former Irish rugby champion and pro-Palestinian activist who participated in several flotillas that were water cannoned and pirated by the Israeli military in the past, has sent a special message to the volunteers and those supporting the freedom missions in “a time of great, unquantifiable grief”.
“While our Handala has just left the Irish port of Cobh and we continue to work on reflagging the flotilla ships stuck in Istanbul, the decades of solidarity from Ireland remains palpable, unwavering and tremendously significant for Palestinians and the wider diaspora,” said Kia Ora Gaza.
“This is a reminder to everyone watching: on those dark days, take time to regroup, regather, and come back again. Until Palestine is free.”
Trevor Hogan’s message to the world in support of Palestine. Video: Freedom Flotila Coalition
Concerns raised over US ‘floating pier’
Meanwhile, Ahmed Omar in Monoweiss reports that in March 2024, US President Joe Biden announced in his State of the Union address that the US would be building a temporary “floating pier” on the Gaza shoreline to deliver “humanitarian aid” to the starving population in Gaza.
“No US boots will be on the ground,” he promised.
Since then, however, critics have raised concerns that the pier is not only being used for “humanitarian” purposes but is being employed for military activities that aid in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.
An intelligence source from within the resistance in Gaza, who spoke to Mondoweiss under conditions of anonymity, said there were mounting signs the US pier could also be used to forcibly displace Palestinians.
This would provide an alternative to the original Israeli plan of forcing Palestinians into the Sinai, which was rejected by Egypt early on in the war.
“The floating pier project is an American solution to the displacement dilemma in Gaza,” the source said.
“It goes beyond both the Israeli solution of displacing Gazans into Sinai . . . and the Egyptian suggestion of displacing [Gazans] into the Naqab [desert].”
Instead, the source said, the US pier would be used to facilitate the displacement of Gazans to Cyprus, and then eventually to Lebanon or Europe.
The US pier was at the centre of coverage of the massacre, as multiple news sources, videos, and eyewitness accounts from Gaza indicated that US forces may have been involved in the operation and that humanitarian trucks entering Nuseirat were hiding the Israeli soldiers that carried out the massacre.
Since resigning from USP in 2002, Professor David Robie (right) has maintained close links with USP Journalism. He was chief guest at the 18th USP Journalism awards in 2018. Picture: Wansolwara File
By Monika Singh in Suva
New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) awardee Professor David Robie has called on young journalists to see journalism as a calling and not just a job.
Dr Robie, who is also the editor of Asia Pacific Report and deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network, was named in the King’s Birthday Honours list for “services to journalism and Asia Pacific media education”.
He was named last Monday and the investiture ceremony is later this year.
The University of the South Pacific’s head of journalism Associate Professor Shailendra Singh told Wansolwara News: “David’s mountain of work in media research and development, and his dedication to media freedom, speak for themselves.
“I am one of the many Pacific journalists and researchers that he has mentored and inspired over the decades”.
Dr Singh said this recognition was richly deserved.
Dr Robie was head of journalism at USP from 1998 to 2002 before he resigned to join the Auckland University of Technology ane became an associate professor in the School of Communication Studies in 2005 and full professor in 2011.
Close links with USP
Since resigning from the Pacific university he has maintained close links with USP Journalism. He was the chief guest at the 18th USP Journalism awards in 2018.
Retired AUT professor of journalism and communication studies and founder of the Pacific Media Centre Dr David Robie. Image: Alyson Young/APMN
He has also praised USP Journalism and said it was “bounding ahead” when compared with the journalism programme at the University of Papua New Guinea, where he was the head of journalism from 1993 to 1997.
He is a keynote speaker at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference which is being hosted by USP’s School of Pacific Arts, Communications and Education (Journalism), in collaboration with the Pacific Island News Association (PINA) and the Asia-Pacific Media Network (APMN).
The editors will be inviting a selection of the best conference papers to be considered for publication in a special edition of the PJR or its companion publication Pacific Media.
Professor David Robie and associate professor and head of USP Journalism Shailendra Singh at the 18th USP Journalism Awards. Image: Wnsolwara/File
Referring to his recognition for his contribution to journalism, Dr Robie told RNZ Pacific he was astonished and quite delighted but at the same time he felt quite humbled by it all.
‘Enormous support’
“However, I feel that it’s not just me, I owe an enormous amount to my wife, Del, who is a teacher and designer by profession, and a community activist, but she has given journalism and me enormous support over many years and kept me going through difficult times.
“There’s a whole range of people who have contributed over the years so it’s sort of like a recognition of all of us, especially all those who worked so hard for 13 years on the Pacific Media Centre when it was going. So, yes, it is a delight and I feel quite privileged.”
Reflecting on his 50 years in journalism, Dr Robie believes that the level of respect for mainstream news media has declined.
“This situation is partly through the mischievous actions of disinformation peddlers and manipulators, but it is partly our fault in media for allowing the lines between fact-based news and opinion/commentary to be severely compromised, particularly on television,” he told Wansolwara News.
‘Respect for media has declined due to disinformation, but it is partly our fault in media for allowing the lines between fact-based news and opinion to be severely compromised’: Prof Robie.https://t.co/Gad0AZN5Td
— Dr Shailendra B Singh (@ShailendraBSing) June 10, 2024
He said the recognition helped to provide another level of “mana” at a time when public trust in journalism had dropped markedly, especially since the covid-19 pandemic and the emergence of a “global cesspit of disinformation”.
Dr Robie said journalists were fighting for the relevance of media today.
“The Fourth Estate, as I knew it in the 1960s, has eroded over the last few decades. It is far more complex today with constant challenges from the social media behemoths and algorithm-driven disinformation and hate speech.”
He urged journalists to believe in the importance of journalism in their communities and societies.
‘Believe in truth to power’
“Believe in the contribution that we can make to understanding and progress. Believe in truth to power. Have courage, determination and go out and save the world with facts, compassion and rationality.”
Despite the challenges, he believes that journalism is just as vital today, even more vital perhaps, than the past.
“It is critical for our communities to know that they have information that is accurate and that they can trust. Good journalism and investigative journalism are the bulwark for an effective defence of democracy against the anarchy of digital disinformation.
“Our existential struggle is the preservation of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa — protecting our Pacific Ocean legacy for us all.”
Dr Robie began his career with The Dominion in 1965, after part-time reporting while a trainee forester and university science student with the NZ Forest Service, and worked as an international journalist and correspondent for agencies from Johannesburg to Paris.
In addition to winning several journalism awards, he received the 1985 Media Peace Prize for his coverage of the Rainbow Warrior bombing. He was on a 11-week voyage with the bombed ship and wrote the book Eyes of Fire about French and American nuclear testing.
Professor David Robie (second from right), and USP head of journalism Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, (left) with the winners of the 18th USP Journalism Awards in 2018. Image: Wansolwara/File
Geopolitics, climate crisis and decolonisation
Dr Robie mentions geopolitics and climate crisis as two of the biggest issues for the Pacific, with the former being largely brought upon by major global players, mainly the US, Australia and China.
He said it was important for the Pacific to create its own path and not become pawns or hostages to this geopolitical rivalry, adding that it was critically important for news media to retain its independence and a critical distance.
“The latter issue, climate crisis, is one that the Pacific is facing because of its unique geography, remoteness and weather patterns. It is essential to be acting as one ‘Pacific voice’ to keep the globe on track over the urgent solutions needed for the world. The fossil fuel advocates are passé and endangering us all.
“Journalists really need to step up to the plate on seeking climate solutions.”
“In addition to many economic issues for small and remote Pacific nations, are the issues of decolonisation. The events over the past three weeks in Kanaky New Caledonia have reminded us that unresolved decolonisation issues need to be centre stage for the Pacific, not marginalised.”
According to Dr Robie concerted Pacific political pressure, and media exposure, needs to be brought to bear on both France over Kanaky New Caledonia and “French” Polynesia, or Māohi Nui, and Indonesia with West Papua.
He called on the Pacific media to step up their scrutiny and truth to power role to hold countries and governments accountable for their actions.
Monika Singhis editor-in-chief of Wansolwara, the online and print publication of the USP Journalism Programme. Published in partnership with Wansolwara.
At least 274 Palestinians were killed and more than 698 others were wounded on Saturday in the central Gaza Strip, in what Israel is celebrating as a “heroic” military operation to rescue four Israeli captives that were being held in Gaza.
Palestinian media reported intense bombardment in the early afternoon local time in various areas in the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
Video footage from the main market in the Nuseirat refugee camp showed crowds of Palestinian civilians fleeing under the sound of heavy artillery fire.
— أنس الشريف Anas Al-Sharif (@AnasAlSharif0) June 8, 2024
Translation: A horrific scene shows the first moments of the [Israeli] occupation committing the Nuseirat massacre in the middle of the Gaza Strip.
Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif reported that Israeli forces “infiltrated” the Nuseirat refugee camp in trucks disguised as humanitarian aid trucks.
The Gaza government media office said in a statement that Israeli forces launched an “unprecedented brutal attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp” directly targeting civilians, and that ambulances and civil defence crews were unable to reach the area and evacuate the wounded due to the intensity of the bombing.
The media office added that according to its count, at least 210 Palestinians were killed and an estimated 400 others were wounded during the Israeli operation.
Video footage published on social media showed dozens of bodies of men, women and children lying in the streets in the Nuseirat area, as well as bloodied and injured civilians being rushed to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.
Hind Khoudary reports from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah. Video: Al Jazeera
‘Complete bloodbath’
Al Jazeera quoted Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan with Doctors Without Borders as saying the emergency department at Al-Aqsa Hospital “is a complete bloodbath . . . It looks like a slaughterhouse”.
“The images and videos that I’ve received show patients lying everywhere in pools of blood . . . their limbs have been blown off,” she told Al Jazeera, adding “that is what a massacre looks like.”
As the death toll from the central Gaza Strip continued to rise, Israeli reports emerged that four Israeli captives were rescued in the operation and transferred back to Israel.
The four captives were identified as Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40. They were all reportedly taken on October 7 from the Nova Music festival in southern Israel close to the Gaza border.
According to Israeli media, the four captives were found in good health, and were transferred to a hospital in Israel where they were reunited with their families. One member of the Israeli special forces was killed during the attack.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz cited Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari as saying the captives were “rescued under fire, and that during the operation the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] attacked from the air, sea, and land in the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah areas in the center of the Gaza Strip.”
Haaretz added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant approved the operation on Thursday evening. Netanyahu hailed the operation as “successful,” while Gallant reportedly described it as “one of the most heroic operations he had seen in all his years in the defence establishment”, according to Israeli media.
Families praised military
The families of Israeli captives held a press conference on Saturday afternoon in reaction to the news. Relatives of the four captives rescued on Saturday praised both the Israeli military and the government.
Some relatives of the remaining captives still being held in Gaza demanded an end to the war and a prisoner exchange in order to secure the release of those still being held in Gaza.
On Saturday evening local time, spokesman for the Qassam Brigades Abu Obeida said “the first to be harmed by [the Israeli army] are its prisoners”, saying that while some of the captives were freed in the operation, a number of other Israeli captives were reportedly killed.
The Israeli government and military have not commented on the reports that Israeli captives were killed in the operation.
It is reported that there are 120 captives still held in the Gaza Strip, including 43 who have been killed since October, many reportedly by Israel’s own forces.
On its official Telegram channel, Hamas said the release of the four captives “will not change the Israeli army’s strategic failure in the Gaza Strip” and that “the resistance is still holding a larger number of captives and can increase it.”
Reports of US involvement in Nuseirat massacre As news flooded on the scale of the massacre in central Gaza, and of celebrations in Israel at the release of the four captives, reports emerged of alleged US involvement in the operation.
Axios, citing a US administration official, reported that “the US hostage cell in Israel supported the effort to rescue the four hostages.”
Of the operation, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said: “The United States is supporting all efforts to secure the release of hostages still held by Hamas, including American citizens. This includes through ongoing negotiations or other means.”
Some reports claimed that American forces were involved in the operation on the ground, and that the humanitarian aid trucks that were reportedly used to disguise the entry of special forces into Nuseirat departed from the US built humanitarian pier off the Gaza coast.
Mondoweiss has not been able to independently verify some of these reports.
Videos circulating on social media showed the helicopters that were used in the operation to evacuate the Israeli captives taking off from the vicinity of the US pier that was built off the coast of Gaza in order to deliver “much-needed humanitarian aid” to Gaza.
The US$230 million pier, which was completed last month, has drawn significant criticism from rights groups and activists who say the pier is an ineffective way to deliver aid.
According to Axios, citing a U.S. administration official, the American hostages unit in Israel assisted in the release of the four Israeli captives in Gaza.
Footage published by an Israeli occupation soldier confirms Israel’s use of the American temporary pier in central Gaza… pic.twitter.com/GJJp1ZSA7T
Intense criticism
Reported US involvement in the attacks on central Gaza on Saturday, and the alleged use of the pier in the operation, has sparked intense criticism and outrage online.
In response to the reports, Hamas said it proves “once more” that Washington is “complicit and completely involved in the war crimes being perpetrated” in Gaza.
US President Joe Biden has not commented on US involvement in the operation, but in response said: “We won’t stop working until all the hostages come home and a ceasefire is reached. It is essential that it happens.”
Reported by the Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau. Republished under Creative Commons in partnership with Asia Pacific Report.
Israel is not a country, it’s like a fake movie set version of a country. A movie set where the set pieces won’t even stand up on their own, so people are always running around in a constant state of construction trying to prop things up and nail things down. Image: caitlinjohnstone.com.au
COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
Everything about Israel is fake. It’s a completely synthetic nation created without any regard for the organic sociopolitical movements of the land and its people, slapped rootless atop an ancient pre-existing civilisation with deep roots.
That’s why it cannot exist without being artificially propped up by nonstop propaganda, lobbying, online influence operations, and mass military violence.
Israel is so fake that its far right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir has been stoking religious tensions by encouraging militant Zionists to pray on the Temple Mount — known to Muslims as Al-Aqsa.
This is an illustration of how phony Israel and its political ideology are because Jews were historically prohibited from praying at the Temple Mount under Jewish law; a sign placed there in 1967 and still upheld by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate reads, “According to Torah Law, entering the Temple Mount area is strictly forbidden due to the holiness of the site.”
It’s just this weird, evangelical Christian-like thing that Zionists have started doing in contravention of their own traditions and religious texts to advance their nationalist agendas.
“‘Prayer’ on the Temple Mount is 100% a Zionist invention in total contravention of Jewish law. Jews don’t step foot onto the Temple Mount, let alone ‘pray’ there. That’s why the sign below is posted at the entrance non-Muslims use.
“Ben Gvir publicly announced this in order to provoke a reaction to use as a pretext to restrict and expel Muslims from the site, explode Jerusalem and the West Bank, and expand the regional war.
“Ben Gvir holds Netanyahu hostage. Together, they’re leading Israel to self-destruction.”
“Prayer” on the Temple Mount is 100% a Zionist invention in total contravention of Jewish law. Jews don’t step foot onto the Temple Mount, let alone “pray” there. That’s why the sign below is posted at the entrance non-Muslims use.
There’s no authentic spirituality in such behaviour. It has no roots. No depth. No connection. It’s the product of busy minds with modern agendas, with nothing more to it than that.
Israel is so fake that Zionists artificially resurrected a dead language in order for its people to have a common “native” tongue for them to speak, so that they could all LARP as indigenous Middle Easterners together in their phony, synthetic country.
Israel has no real culture of its own — it’s all a mixture of (A) organic Jewish culture brought in from other parts of the world by the Jewish diaspora, (B) culture that was stolen from Palestinians (see “Israeli food”), and (C) the culture of indoctrinated genocidal hatred that is interwoven with the fabric of modern Zionism.
The way Israel has become a Mecca of electronic dance music points clearly to an aching cultural void that its people are trying desperately to fill with empty synthetic pop fluff.
Even international support for Israel is fake, manufactured astroturf that has to be enforced from the top down, because it would never organically occur to anyone that Israel is something that should be supported.
The phenomenally influential Israel lobby is used to push pro-Israel foreign policy in powerful Western governments like Washington and London. Just this week US Representative Thomas Massie told Tucker Carlson that every Republican in Congress besides himself “has an AIPAC person” assigned to them with whom they are in constant communication, who he describes as functioning “like your babysitter” with regard to lawmaking on the subject of Israel.
Massie:”I’ve Republicans…say: that’s wrong what AIPAC is doing to you…let me talk to my AIPAC person”
The Israel lobby exists with the full consent of the Western imperial war machine and its secretive intelligence cartel, because Western military support for Israel is also phony and fraudulent.
The Western empire whose strategic interests directly benefit from violence and radicalism in the Middle East pretends it is constantly expanding its military presence in the region in order to promote stability and protect an important ally, but in reality this military presence simply allows for greater control over crucial resource-rich territories whose populations would otherwise unite to form a powerful bloc acting in their own interests.
The Israel lobby is a self-funding consent manufacturer which helps the empire do what it already wants to do.
Support for Israel in the media is also phony and imposed from the top down. Since October outlets like The New York Times, CNN and CBC have been finding themselves fighting off scandals due to staff leaks about demands from their executives that they slant their Gaza coverage to benefit the information interests of Israel.
Briahna Joy Gray was just fired by The Hill for being critical of Israel as co-host of the show “Rising”, a fate that all mass media employees understand they will share if they are insufficiently supportive of the empire’s favorite ethnostate.
Israel’s support from celebrities is similarly forced. A newly leaked email from influential Hollywood marketing and branding guru Ashlee Margolis instructs her firm’s employees to “pause on working with any celebrity or influencer or tastemaker posting against Israel.”
As we discussed recently, celebrities are also naturally disincentivised from criticising any aspect of the Western empire by the fact that their status is dependent on wealthy people whose wealth is premised upon the imperial status quo.
After the beginning of the Gaza onslaught Israel spent millions on PR spin via advertising on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, and The New York Times has just confirmed earlier reports that Israel has been targeting US lawmakers with fake social media accounts to influence their policymaking on Israel.
In truth, nobody really organically supports Israel. If they’re not supporting it because their lobbyists and employers told them to, they’re supporting it because that’s what they were told to support by the leaders of their dopey political ideologies like Zionism, liberalism and conservatism, or by the leaders of their dopey religions like Christian fundamentalism.
It’s always something that’s pushed on people from the top down, rather than arising from within themselves due to their own natural interests and ideals.
Israel is not a country, it’s like a fake movie set version of a country. A movie set where the set pieces won’t even stand up on their own, so people are always running around in a constant state of construction trying to prop things up and nail things down, and scrambling to pick up things that are falling over, and rotating the set pieces so that they look like real buildings in front of the camera.
Without this constant hustle and bustle of propagandising, lobbying, online influence ops, and nonstop mass military violence, the whole movie set would fall over, and people would see all the film crew members and actors and cameras for what they are.
Clearly, no part of this is sustainable. Clearly, something’s going to have to give. Those set pieces are going to come toppling down sooner or later; it’s just a question of when, and of how high the pile of human corpses needs to be before it happens.
"It is no coincidence that the US wants to install [the Palestine Authority] as administrators of a post-war Gaza, as sort of the reservation cops for what is already the world’s biggest outdoor prison and permanent free fire zone for the Israeli military." Image: Visualing Palestine graphic
ANALYSIS: By Murray Horton
The general consensus is that Gaza is this generation’s Vietnam. There are some similarities between the two wars — and a whole lot more differences. But it is true as far as the global protest movement is concerned. Even some of the chants are the same – substitute Biden or Netanyahu for Johnson in “Hey, hey, LBJ. How many kids did you kill today?” (The answer in both cases is an awful lot).
And the putdowns are much the same. If you were a critic of the Vietnam War, you were labelled “anti-American”. Today, if you’re a critic of the Gaza War or Zionism in general, you’re labelled “anti-Semitic”, which is just ludicrous.
I’m old enough to have actively participated in both Vietnam and Gaza demos. There is one conspicuous absence from the latter. In the Vietnam demos it was common for people to chant “Victory to the NLF” (National Liberation Front or the “Viet Cong” to the Western world) and to carry their flag — I have old photos of me as a callow youth with that flag.
But nobody is chanting “victory to Hamas” or carrying its flag. I can only speak from my personal experience of months of Christchurch demos but I have no doubt that if anyone was supporting Hamas at any NZ demo the media would be shouting it from the rooftops.
Why is this? Simply that people want to keep separate their outrage at Israel’s genocide in Gaza from any perception of support for Hamas. There are big differences between Vietnam’s NLF of half a century ago and Hamas today. One was communist and nationalist; the other is Islamist. I distrust all religious fundamentalists, regardless of which religion they are imposing on people.
Murray Horton in his younger protest days in 1969 . . . spokesperson for the Progressive Youth Movement (PYM). Image: canterburystories.nz
The same goes for ideological fundamentalists, so I put the Khmer Rouge in the same bracket as the Taliban (this country has been afflicted by capitalist fundamentalists in government at various times in recent decades, including among the present coalition).
Israel has only got itself to blame for the existence of Hamas. Israel defeated and ruthlessly repressed the previous secular Palestinian armed resistance, the one led by Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which fitted into the pantheon of global liberation movements of the day. That old guard ended up as Israel’s collaborators, the corrupt and powerless administrators (not rulers) of the Occupied West Bank.
It is no coincidence that the US wants to install them as administrators of a post-war Gaza, as sort of the reservation cops for what is already the world’s biggest outdoor prison and permanent free fire zone for the Israeli military.
The Palestinian people have made clear that they do not want this.
Peace Researcher editor, Anti-Bases Coalition organiser and protester Murray Horton . . . “Israel will not achieve peace by military means – it will have to be a political solution (which has to be more than a ceasefire).” Image: Asia Pacific Report
Israel laughably conflates Hamas with ISIS, which everyone agrees is a terrorist organisation and ideology, with no redeeming features. I guarantee that if Israel does succeed in its murderous mission to exterminate Hamas, it will be replaced by something more extreme, maybe something actually like the ISIS fascists. That would be a very sad day but the Palestinian people are not going to lie down and lick the boots of their oppressors. They will continue to fight back.
The Hamas surprise attack into Israel in October 2023 was an impressive military feat, catching the arrogant and complacent Israeli military and intelligence machine completely off guard. But Hamas definitely committed war crimes by terrorising, murdering and kidnapping Israeli civilians. As for killing and capturing enemy soldiers, that is normal in a war (which Israel and Hamas have been fighting for decades).
Nor are the Israeli settlers innocent bystanders. Throughout history, and up until today, settlers are a common denominator in wars, land theft and dispossession. This applies across the world, including in New Zealand.
Ongoing colonisation of Palestine . . . from David Ben-Gurion (1947) until Benjamin Netanyahu (2024). Image: Visualising Palestine Graphics
Terrorism
Hamas is routinely presented in the West as a terrorist organisation — in 2024 New Zealand has designated it, in its entirety, as one (previously NZ only designated Hamas’ military wing as a terrorist organisation). “Terrorist” is a very subjective term and it depends on who’s telling the story. In wartime it is usual to brand one’s enemy as terrorists. Thus, the Nazis branded the French Resistance as such.
“Our boys” who incinerated huge numbers of German and Japanese civilians in WW2 bombing raids were as much terrorists committing war crimes as were the Nazis who bombed British civilians during the Blitz.
There are politicians in office now whose organisations and parties were previously branded as terrorists — South Africa and Northern Ireland are two examples. Look no further than the history of Palestine itself — when it was part of the British Empire in the 20th Century, Zionist Jews waged a very effective terrorist campaign against their occupiers, featuring bombings and murders.
Hamas doesn’t seem to have thought far beyond that initial surprise attack into Israel in October 2023. Which brings up another similarity with the Vietnam War. In 1968, the NLF and North Vietnam took the US and its South Vietnamese puppets completely by surprise by launching the Tet Offensive right across South Vietnam and right into the grounds of the US Embassy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City).
At the time, the West judged it to be a military failure, a suicide mission. The same with Hamas’ attack — deemed a suicide mission. But both Tet in 1968 and Hamas in 2023 were looking beyond the purely military. They were both making a political point, issuing a wake-up call, putting their struggle front and centre on the global agenda.
In both cases the impact was seismic. And there are other similarities. Tet finished the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson. 1968 was an election year — he announced that he would not run again.
This year, 2024, is an election year in the US. It remains to be seen what impact Biden’s “ironclad” support of Israel’s genocide has on his re-election. Here is an even stranger coincidence — the 1968 Democrat convention was in Chicago (the protests became a legendary event in the history of the US anti-war movement). The 2024 Democrat convention is also in Chicago, with this generation’s anti-war movement building up a head of steam in advance.
Important differences between the Vietnam and Gaza wars
Vietnam could count on the rock- solid support of its ideological allies, the Soviet Union and China, who armed it and enabled it to have some air defences that could shoot down the US bombers that waged a much more devastating bombardment on Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia) than anything Israel has unleashed.
Gaza has no friendly next-door neighbours — Vietnam had China, Gaza has Egypt, which regards Hamas as a threat and an enemy. The Arab states sold out the Palestinians decades ago, after they lost several wars to Israel. It was no coincidence that Hamas launched its attack just before Israel was about to announce a normalisation of relations with Saudi Arabia, the most vicious of the regional dictatorships.
Hamas does not even have the support of the Palestinian Authority in the Occupied West Bank, headed by the people who lost the 2006 Palestinian election to Hamas and were subsequently driven out of Gaza by it. So, Hamas is basically on its own, apart from Iran and its allies in the region, such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, but they are all a long way from Gaza.
There are other differences with the Vietnam War. Hamas has no air defences and, although it has done a very good job of protecting its own ranks with tunnels, it has provided no network of air raid shelters for civilians.
It has effectively left its own civilian population defenceless against Israel’s genocide from the sky. And, unlike Vietnam, it seems to have done little or nothing to mobilise those civilians, either for defence or guerrilla war.
A striking feature of the Vietnam War was the military participation of women. Hamas appears to be an all-male military and political movement. Having said that, there is no sign of Hamas having lost popular support in Gaza. There has been no uprising or mass clamour to escape.
Indeed, Hamas has apparently increased in popularity in the Occupied West Bank, which is run by its Palestinian rivals. The reason why is obvious — it is the only organisation offering any kind of effective armed resistance to the Israeli occupation from within.
Ongoing massacres in Palestine . . . from the Nakba (“The Catastrophe”, 1947-8) until Gaza (2023-2024). Image: Visualising Palestine graphics
Murderers, liars, cowards
Which brings me to the other side in this one-sided war. If Hamas is a terrorist organisation, then Israel is a terrorist state. If one has committed atrocities, the other is committing genocide. The keyword here is disproportionality.
Yes, Israel is entitled to defend itself. But so is Palestine, specifically Gaza, which has been used as a real-world testing ground for Israeli weapons and surveillance systems ever since Hamas won that 2006 election.
The West is fed a constant diet of soothing noises about “surgical strikes” and “smart bombs”, which is all just so much bullshit. The world sees that the reality is massive death and destruction. If Israel really was “smart”, then it might have won the allegiance of some of Gaza’s people (there were never going to be cheering crowds throwing flowers onto Israel’s conquering troops).
But, no, it declared that its war was against all Gazans, that they are all the enemy, that they are sub-humans, and it is a war of annihilation. Despite their worst efforts, the Israeli military has still not won (at the time of writing) — whatever “won” means in this context.
Hamas has neither surrendered nor been exterminated. I would say Israel’s methods have guaranteed a fresh supply of Hamas recruits.
Because Israel can count on the unquestioning support of the US, other major Western governments and a supine Western media, it knows it can commit genocide with impunity. Mass murder in broad daylight and in plain sight.
It got such a fright from the successful Hamas attack that it reacted with an all-consuming blood lust, killing everyone in its path in Gaza. It has killed its own hostages, by accident or design; it has murdered record numbers of women and children; civilians; aid workers; health workers; journalists and UN staff.
It has weaponised the withholding of desperately needed humanitarian aid and deliberately induced mass starvation. It has systematically destroyed hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, homes, etc., etc; to make Gaza unliveable for the foreseeable future.
In some cases, it tried to concoct a cover story — “Hamas had a control centre and/or tunnels under this hospital”. It gave up on that because it realised it didn’t have to pretend – it could do anything it liked without consequences, provoking only the feeblest of tut-tutting from its Western allies who bankroll and arm it, to the tune of billions of dollars per year.
So much for “the international rules-based order” that they tiresomely, and lyingly, pontificate about.
It is plainly obvious that the Israeli military are mass murderers. They are also liars — they ordered Gazans to relocate to “safe zones”, which then made them easier to attack and murder. And their chosen method is to murder a defenceless civilian population from the air (a tactic favoured by their American accomplices in their various wars in recent decades).
That’s why I call them cowards.
US is the enabler of genocide
If Israel is the mass murderer, then the US is the enabler of that mass murder, providing vital military support and political cover at places like the UN. Minor US satellites like NZ follow the US lead.
Gaza is certainly not the only war at present, not even the biggest. Until October 2023 the West was fixated on Ukraine, whose war includes old-school features from both World War One (trench warfare) and World War Two (long-range rocket attacks), combined with modern features such as drones and cyber-warfare.
Syria has become yesterday’s story; the war between rival gangs of thugs in Sudan has been forgotten. The West has only ever taken passing interest in the Congo, Africa’s decades-long world war, one in which millions have died.
Gaza is not the only recent example of ethnic cleansing. Just the month before it started, Azerbaijan launched a victorious one-day long lightning strike into the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting in the exit of nearly 100 percent of ethnic Armenians.
This was one of the big stories in world news until Gaza wiped it out of global consciousness.
The world has been fed this myth of “plucky little Israel”, surrounded by enemies. Furthermore, we’ve been told it’s the only democracy in the Middle East. Maybe, but Israeli democracy is only for the occupiers, not the occupied.
It certainly has never accepted the result of the 2006 Palestinian election which brought Hamas to power in Gaza. It has barred international media from Gaza during the war and shut down al Jazeera in Israel.
Zionism: An inherently racist and terrorist ideology
In fact, Israel is a bully, both domestically and regionally. A heavily militarised bully which wages continual war, both internally and regionally. Armed to the teeth and politically sheltered by the US superpower, it recklessly tries to provoke a wider war with Iran in order to draw in the US and its Western allies.
A state governed by Zionism, an inherently racist and terrorist ideology, it is an apartheid state on the same model as the former white-ruled South Africa.
A state currently governed by the extreme Right and headed by a corrupt Prime Minister who is a literal criminal (in addition to being a war criminal), one who is keen to keep the Gaza War going indefinitely in order to postpone his various criminal trials. A lawless state which arms vigilante settlers and lets them rob, starve, terrorise and murder Palestinians with impunity.
Yes, Israel has got a problem neighbour in Hamas. Any country is entitled to defend itself against being regularly attacked by barrages of low-grade rockets. But Irael’s response has always been disproportionate and the most recent response is the most disproportionate of all.
Israel is modelling its response on Sri Lanka, which ended the decades-long separatist war with the Tamil Tigers by finally driving them, and a huge number of civilians, into a corner, then bombarding them all into death and defeat.
But Israel will not achieve peace by military means — it will have to be a political solution (which has to be more than a ceasefire. Korea has had one of those since 1953, and it’s not a good precedent).
Above all, Israel, the US and its fellow accomplices and enablers of genocide have to recognise that old truism: no justice, no peace.
Activist Murray Horton is editor of Peace Researcher, organiser of the Anti-Bases Coalition (ABC), and a contributor to Café Pacific. Republished with permission from Peace Researcher at the Converge website.
This is a clarifying moment for all of us. We will be forced to confront our real values. Will deep attachment to American power and white supremacy trump our belief in the rule of law, of justice for all? Image: Solidarity
COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle
Could the final act of the US Global War on Terror (GWOT) be the conviction of a US President for terrorism? Tantalising but implausible? Read on.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) request for arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others is only the beginning. Around the world evidence is being gathered and cases are being prepared, including against British, American and EU politicians and officials for complicity in genocide and other crimes against humanity.
Last week the ICC received a request from jurists and human rights groups to investigate European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen for complicity in genocide.
Tayab Ali, a human rights lawyer and director of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians told journalist Owen Jones that a tremendous amount of preparation is underway out of sight of the public.
“I’ve spent a significant amount of time this year travelling the world meeting with heads of state, meeting with foreign ministers, meeting with justice ministers, and I’ll tell you: the appetite, particularly in the Global South, to prosecute people complicit in war crimes, is high.”
South Africa has been a leader in this regard.
The reality is Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden are guilty of far worse crimes than Osama Bin Laden, Ismail Haniyeh, Marwan Barghouti or Nelson Mandela.
I don’t condone Bin Laden or minimise what he did; a good friend of mine John Lozowski was killed in the Twin Towers on 9/11. He didn’t deserve to die.
Murdered far more innocents
The current US President and the PM of Israel, however, just happen to have murdered far more innocent men, women and children — and, unlike Bin Laden and the others, are clearly guilty of the crime of crimes: genocide. The game changer, however, is the looming presence of the combined legal and moral authority of the ICC and ICJ.
Bearing down like angels of justice, they will pursue Israel, and, ultimately even top US officials, to the ends of the earth. In the case of the ICC, no signatory nation to the Rome Statute can provide a safe haven once the arrest warrants go out.
Which is why the ICC seeking Netanyahu’s arrest has triggered something approaching a nervous breakdown, a shattering of the psyche for the Western elites. Impunity is in the job description.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, told Deutsche Welle this week that some European countries had been trying to intimidate the International Court of Justice following its decision, under the Genocide Convention, to order Israel to halt its onslaught on Rafah, Gaza.
He said the court’s ruling poses a dilemma for the EU.
“We will have to choose between our support of international institutions and the rule of law – or our support to Israel.” Borrell said. Ponder those words and, depending on the choice, where they lead.
Could the US and Europe be on the cusp of walking away from the decades-long charade that they stand for justice, law and order?
Which gets to the next Gordian dilemma that is impossible to cut through: terrorism.
US war theory lies in mangled ruins Like the Twin Towers that came tumbling down in 2001, the architectural framing of the American theory of war now lies in mangled ruins. After Gaza, where is the Global War on Terror, launched by George W Bush, and supported by countries like Australia and New Zealand to this very day?
It was based on the argument that while terrorists like Al Qaeda deliberately kill innocents, America and its allies deliver justice. In response to the charge that America, or Israel or the UK have killed countless more innocents than any “terrorist” organisation, the answer always came back: but we never meant to . . . our intentions were noble, they just died as a result of collateral damage, unforeseen or unintended consequences, or that hoary old chestnut: the lesser of two evils.
On the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children as a result of US sanctions, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sighed: “This is a very hard choice but we think the price is worth it.” Israel trots out the same argument in respect to incinerating men, women and children in Gaza.
This is the Doctrine of Double Effect — which goes all the way back to St. Thomas Aquinas. It argues that there is a moral difference between consequences that you intend and those that you merely foresee.
“The moral basis of the distinction evaporates as consequences become ever more horrific and approach certainty,” says Ramon Das, senior lecturer in moral and political philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington.
“Consider a pilot who drops a hydrogen bomb on a city. Afterwards, he claims that although he foresaw that he would kill the city’s inhabitants, his intention was merely to destroy a weapons factory. We would not be impressed.
“Yet when we consider Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and medieval-like siege of Gaza, its claim that it does not intentionally target civilians has about as much moral credibility as the hydrogen bomb pilot.”
Volumes of evidence
Enter the ICC and ICJ: volumes of evidence have been presented that Israel’s military and civilian leaders deliberately targeted civilians, aid workers, journalists and civilian infrastructure, and that Israel is using starvation as an instrument of war. The US — the Arsenal of Genocide — is fully aware of this, yet has continued to send billions of dollars of bombs and other instruments of death to continue both the slaughter and the destruction of everything necessary to sustain social, economic, political and physical existence.
It calculates it can get away with mass murder — until now a pretty safe bet.
John V Whitbeck, a Paris-based lawyer who has spent much of his distinguished career on Middle East issues, has written that “the poor, the weak and the oppressed rarely complain about ‘terrorism’. The rich, the strong and the oppressors constantly do.
“While most of mankind has more reason to fear the high-technology violence of the strong than the low-technology violence of the weak, the fundamental mind-trick employed by the abusers of the word ‘terrorism’ is essentially this: The low-technology violence of the weak is such an abomination that there are no limits on the high-technology violence of the strong that can be deployed against it.”
Have we now come to an epoch-making tipping point? The recent actions by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court could shatter the Shield of Impunity – the idea that international institutions are there as tools for the West to attack their enemies and can never be used against the US and its allies. Until the past week the ICC was considered by many progressives as the International Caucasian Court; the idea that the Prime Minister of Israel could have an arrest warrant issued against him broke the unspoken rule that the court was there to pursue Africans and Slavs.
I think this is a clarifying moment for all of us. We will be forced to confront our real values — a bit like Josep Borrell. Will deep attachment to American power and white supremacy trump our belief in the rule of law, of justice for all?
If we think a British foreign secretary, or an EU president or even the US president himself is above the law, we really are back to what Thrasymachus argued when he wrangled with Socrates thousands of years ago: Justice is a scam — an elaborate set of rules, conjured up by the powerful to control the weak.
This was certainly the conclusion Nelson Mandela made when he formed Umkhonto We Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation — the ANC’s military wing — in the wake of the Sharpeville massacre by police in 1960. It was certainly the conclusion Hamas came to after the West ignored countless massacres and land thefts against the Palestinians.
Is international law a scam? Make up your own mind.
Eugene Doyle is a Wellington-based writer and community activist who publishes the Solidaritywebsite. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at Solidarity.
The Kanak flag of independence (and West Papua Morning Star flag inset) . . . The average French citizen in Paris is not fully aware of the decolonisation process in Kanaky New Caledonia and why the electoral roll has been restricted to Kanaks and “citizens”, as per the Nouméa Accord. Image: Kanaky Online
COMMENTARY: By Jimmy Naouna in Nouméa
The unrest that has gripped Kanaky New Caledonia is the direct result of French President Emmanuel Macron’s partisan and stubborn political manoeuvring to derail the process towards self-determination in my homeland.
The deadly riots that erupted two weeks ago in the capital, Nouméa, were sparked by an electoral reform bill voted through in the French National Assembly, in Paris.
Almost 40 years ago, Kanaky New Caledonia made international headlines for similar reasons. The pro-independence and Kanak people have long been calling to settle the colonial situation in Kanaky New Caledonia, once and for all.
FLNKS Political Bureau member Jimmy Naouna . . . The pro-independence groups and the Kanak people called for the third independence referendum to be deferred due to the covid pandemic and its high death toll. Image: @JNaouna
Kanak people make up about 40 percent of the population in New Caledonia, which remains a French territory in the Pacific.
The Kanak independence movement, the Kanak National and Socialist Liberation Front (FLNKS), and its allies have been contesting the controversial electoral bill since it was introduced in the French Senate by the Macron government in April.
Relations between the French government and the FLNKS have been tense since Macron decided to push ahead with the third independence referendum in 2021. Despite the call by pro-independence groups and the Kanak people for it to be deferred due to the covid pandemic and its high death toll.
Ever since, the FLNKS and supporters have contested the political legitimacy of that referendum because the majority of the indigenous and colonised people of Kanaky New Caledonia did not take part in the vote.
Peaceful rallies
Since the electoral reform bill was introduced in the French Senate in April this year, peaceful rallies, demonstrations, marches and sit-ins gathering more than 10,000 people have been held in the city centre of Nouméa and around Kanaky New Caledonia.
But that did not stop the French government pushing ahead with the bill — despite clear signs that it would trigger unrest and violent reactions on the ground.
The tensions and loss of trust in the Macron government by pro-independence groups became more evident when Sonia Backés, an anti-independence leader and president of the Southern province, was appointed as State Secretary in charge of Citizenship in July 2022 and then Nicolas Metzdorf, another anti-independence representative as rapporteur on the proposed electoral reform bill.
Macron can deploy thousands of troops and military arsenals. France will never silence Kanaky aspirations for freedom ✊🇳🇨 https://t.co/GJcXFCDvLY
This clearly showed the French government was supporting loyalist parties in Kanaky New Caledonia — and that the French State had stepped out of its neutral position as a partner to the Nouméa Accord, and a party to negotiate toward a new political agreement.
Then last late last month, President Macron made the out-of-the blue decision to pay an 18 hour visit to Kanaky New Caledonia, to ease tensions and resume talks with local parties to build a new political agreement.
It was no more than a public relations exercise for his own political gain. Even within his own party, Macron has lost support to take the electoral reform bill through the Congrès de Versailles (a joint session of Parliament) and his handling of the situation in Kanaky New Caledonia is being contested at a national level by political groups, especially as campaigning for the upcoming European elections gathers pace.
Once back in Paris, Macron announced he may consider putting the electoral reform to a national referendum, as provided for under the French constitution; French citizens in France voted to endorse the Nouméa Accord in 1998.
“To me Kanak independence is inevitable” /
“I think France is prolonging the inevitable.” Sir Collin Tukuitonga
New Caledonia’s fires for freedom https://t.co/PB0edo9XWg
More pressure on talks
For the FLNKS, this option will only put more pressure on the talks for a new political agreement.
The average French citizen in Paris is not fully aware of the decolonisation process in Kanaky New Caledonia and why the electoral roll has been restricted to Kanaks and “citizens”, as per the Nouméa Accord. They may just vote “yes” on the basis of democratic principles: one man, one vote.
Yet others may vote “no” as to sanction against Macron’s policies and his handling of Kanaky New Caledonia.
Either way, the outcome of a national referendum on the proposed electoral reform bill — without a local consensus — would only trigger more protest and unrest in Kanaky New Caledonia.
After Macron’s visit, the FLNKS issued a statement reaffirming its call for the electoral reform process to be suspended or withdrawn.
It also called for a high-level independent mission to be sent into Kanaky New Caledonia to ease tensions and ensure a more conducive environment for talks to resume towards a new political agreement that sets a definite and clear pathway towards a new — and genuine — referendum on independence for Kanaky New Caledonia.
A peaceful future for all that hopefully will not fall on deaf ears again.
Jimmy Naouna is a member of Kanaky New Caledonia’s pro-independence FLNKS Political Bureau. This article was first published by The Guardian and is republished here with the permission of the author.
