The New York-based global media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned a decision by the Palestinian Authority to suspend Al Jazeera’s operations in the West Bank and called for it to be reversed “immediately”.
“Governments resort to censoring news outlets when they have something to hide,” said CPJ chief executive Jodie Ginsberg in a statement.
“The Palestinian Authority should reverse its decision to suspend Al Jazeera’s operations and allow journalists to report freely without fear of reprisal.”
The Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported yesterday that the PA had suspended Al Jazeera on grounds of “inciting material”.
The ban comes after the authority criticised Al Jazeera’s last week coverage of a standoff between Palestinian security forces and militant fighters in Jenin camp, located in the West Bank, according to reports.
Israel raided Al Jazeera’s Ramallah offices in September and ordered its closure for 45 days, accusing the broadcaster’s West Bank operations of “incitement to and support of terrorism”.
Palestinian Authority suspends broadcast of Al Jazeera. Video: Al Jazeera
In a statement, the Al Jazeera network has condemned the PA closure of its offices in the occupied West Bank, calling the move “consistent” with the Israeli occupation’s “practices against its crews”.
The network “considers the Palestinian Authority’s decision an attempt to dissuade it from covering the escalating events taking place in the occupied territories”, the statement said.
It added the move “comes in the wake of an ongoing campaign of incitement and intimidation by parties sponsored by the Palestinian Authority against our journalists”.
The network further called the ban “an attempt to hide the truth about events in the occupied territories”, particularly in Jenin.
Palestinian Authority suspends Al Jazeera operations in the West Bank https://t.co/dHclCfcPXU
Political pressure ‘from Israel’
Political pressure from Israeli authorities on the PA is likely behind the temporary ban decision, said the network’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.
“There is no doubt pressure by the Israeli authorities to ban Al Jazeera like it was banned in Israel,” Bishara said.
“The PA is foolishly and short-sightedly trying to prove its credentials to Israeli authorities . . . because they want a role in Gaza and the only way they can do that is by appeasing the Israeli occupation.”
Bishara said the suspension would fail to curtail the channel’s coverage of events in Palestine, just as it had failed to achieve the same goal in Israel.
“This is not going to stop us, this is not going to shut us up,” he said. “We question power and that’s what we do, we question the PA and every other authority in the world.”
Al Jazeera Media Network condemns the incitement campaign initiated by Fatah in the West Bank against Al Jazeera and its journalists.https://t.co/ypxgeGxnj3
‘Dangerous path’, says Barghouti Also condemning the PA ban, Mustafa Barghouti, the head of the opposition Palestinian National Initiative, said the ban was “a big mistake” and “should be reversed as soon as possible”.
“I think this is a wrong decision, especially in the light of the fact that Al Jazeera . . . has been at the avant garde in exposing the crimes against the Palestinian people, and continues to do so — especially the genocide that is taking place in Gaza,” said Barghouti, who had previously served as Palestinian minister of information.
“This is an issue of freedom of expression, an issue of freedom of press, an issue of freedom of media,” he told Al Jazeera.
He added that the Palestinian Authority was taking a “dangerous path” that underlines the lack of unified Palestinian leadership.
“At the end of the day, the Israeli occupation is targeting everybody, including Fatah and Hamas and everybody else,” he said.
“So our approach should be an approach of unity, encouraging freedom of expression, because at the end of the day, freedom of expression will only support the struggle against the occupation.”
Palestinian ban follows Israeli ban, killing of journalists
The PA’s temporary ban on Al Jazeera comes months after the network was banned from operating by the Israeli government.
Israel, which has sought to disrupt Al Jazeera’s coverage multiple times throughout its 18-year history, ordered the closure of Al Jazeera’s offices and a ban on its broadcasting in Israel in May.
A month earlier, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed a law that allowed Israel to temporarily shut down foreign media outlets deemed to be security threats.
Al Jazeera condemned the move as a “criminal act” and has stood by its coverage, particularly of Israeli operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
In September, Israeli authorities shut down Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, a move decried by Amnesty International’s MENA director as a “shameless attack on the right to freedom of expression and a crushing blow for press freedom”.
Several Al Jazeera journalists and their families have been killed while reporting in the occupied Palestinian territories in recent years, including Shireen Abu Akleh, a renowned correspondent fatally shot by Israel while reporting in Jenin in May 2022.
Amid the war in Gaza, Israeli strikes have killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa, correspondent Ismail Al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Rifi, cameraman Ahmed al-Louh, and journalist Hamza Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh.
Gaza’s Health Ministry has confirmed that close to 46,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s ongoing assault, but Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah estimates the true number is closer to 300,000.
“This is literally and mathematically a genocidal project,” says Dr Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon who worked in Gaza for more than a month treating patients at both Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals.
Israel continues to attack what remains of the besieged territory’s medical infrastructure.
The last photograph of the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, before he was arrested and abducted by Israeli forces . . . he is reportedly being held in the Sde Teiman base in Israel’s Negev desert, a place notorious for the torture and deaths of detainees. Image: @jeremycorbyn screenshot APR
On Sunday, an Israeli attack on the upper floor of al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza City killed at least seven people and wounded several others. On Friday, Israeli troops stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, northern Gaza’s last major functioning hospital, and set the facility on fire.
Many staff and patients were reportedly forced to go outside and strip in winter weather.
The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, was arrested, and his whereabouts remain unknown. [Editor: He is reportedly being held in the Sde Teiman base in Israel’s Negev desert, a place notorious for the torture and deaths of detainees].
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, and Faris Odeh, a 15-year-old boy from Gaza, are iconic figures of Palestine, both photographed standing unarmed before Israeli tanks with nothing but their resolve.
“It’s been obvious from the beginning that Israel has been wiping out a whole generation of health professionals in Gaza as a way of increasing the genocidal death toll but also of permanently making Gaza uninhabitable,” says Abu-Sittah.
“On October 7, the Israelis crossed that genocidal Rubicon that settler-colonial projects cross.”
‘A genocidal project’. Video: Democracy Now!
Transcript NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where a sixth baby has died from severe cold as the death toll tops 45,500 and Israel’s assault on medical infrastructure continues in the besieged territory.
On Sunday, an Israeli attack on the upper floor of al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza City killed at least seven people and wounded several others.
On Friday, Israeli troops stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, northern Gaza’s last major functioning hospital.
The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, was arrested, [and he is reportedly being held in the Sde Teiman base in Israel’s Negev desert, a place notorious for the torture and deaths of detainees].
Many staff and patients were reportedly forced to go outside and strip in winter weather. This is nurse Waleed al-Boudi describing Dr Hussam Abu Safiya’s arrest.
WALEED AL-BOUDI: [translated] Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was arrested from Al-Fakhoura School after he had stayed with us and refused to leave. Even though they told him to and that he was free to go, he told them that he won’t leave his medical staff.
He took all of us and wanted to get us out at night. But they yelled at him and arrested him, a man of great humanity.
We appeal to the entire world, all of the world, all the human rights organiSations to stand by Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the great man, the man who planted, within us and within our hearts, patience so we can persevere in our steadfast north.
I swear we wouldn’t have left, but by force. We cried blood on the doors of Kamal Adwan Hospital when we were forced out by the occupation army.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: A person who was with Dr Hussam Abu Safiya shared testimony that, quote, “The Israeli forces whipped Dr Hussam using an electrical wire found in the street after forcing him and others from the medical staff to remove their clothes”.
This is Dr Hussam Abu Safiya in one of his final interviews before being detained, produced by Sotouries.
DR HUSSAM ABU SAFIYA: [translated] I always say the situation requires one to stand by our people’s side and not run away from it.
Gaza is our homeland, our mother, our beloved and everything to us. Gaza deserves all of this steadfastness and deserves all of the sacrifices.
It is not just about Gaza, but we deserve to be a people that deserves freedom just like every other people on Earth.
I think the occupation wants us to get out and for us to ask them to get us out, so they can publicly say that the healthcare system is the one asking to leave and that it wasn’t them who asked us to, but we are aware of that.
But we will not leave, God willing, from this place, as I said, for as long as there are humanitarian services to be provided to our people in the northern Gaza Strip.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Dr Hussam Abu Safiya in one of his last interviews before Israeli forces arrested him on Friday in a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital along with at least 240 others in a raid which left the hospital nonoperational.
Israel’s military alleged that Hamas militants were using Kamal Adwan Hospital [But have never provided evidence for their claims].
The World Health Organisation is calling on Israel to end its attacks on Gaza hospitals. Earlier today, the World Health Organization’s chief, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, said: “People in Gaza need access to health care. Humanitarians need access to provide health aid. Ceasefire!”
Last week, World Health Organisation spokesperson Dr Margaret Harris was asked on Channel 4 News whether there was any evidence of the Israeli claim that the hospital is a Hamas stronghold.
DR MARGARET HARRIS: So, whenever we send a mission, we go and we look at the health situation.
Now, I’ve not had at any point our healthcare teams come back and say that they’ve got any concerns beyond the healthcare, but I should say that what we do is look at what the health situation is and what needs to be done.
But all we’ve ever seen going on in that hospital is healthcare.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, for more, we go to Cairo, Egypt.
AMY GOODMAN: Nermeen, thanks so much. I am here with a man who knew Dr Abu Safiya well and is in constant contact with people on the ground in Gaza, particularly the medical professionals.
Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah is with us here, British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon. He worked last year in Gaza for almost — for over a month with Médecins Sans Frontières — that’s Doctors Without Borders (MSF) — in two hospitals. He worked at Al-Shifa, the main hospital in Gaza, as well as Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.
Welcome to Democracy Now! You’ve been in touch with family of Dr Abu Safiya. If you can talk about where he is right now, believed to have been arrested by the Israeli military, and then the crisis just right now on the ground with the closing of Kamal Adwan and more?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, unfortunately, the family is afraid that he has been moved to the infamous Sde Teiman torture camp, an internment camp where, before him, Dr Adnan al-Bursh was tortured, and tortured to death, Dr Iyad Rantisi was tortured to death, where there is documented evidence of not just Israeli guards taking part in torture, but even Israeli doctors taking part in the torture of Palestinians.
And so, that is the fear that not just the family has, but all of us have.
And what we’ve seen in this process, in this destruction, systematic destruction of the health system, with the total destruction of all of the hospitals in the north, so not just Kamal Adwan, before that, the Indonesian Hospital and Al-Awda Hospital, and, immediately after, the targeting of al-Wafa Hospital and then the targeting again of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, which was the first hospital the Israelis targeted on the October 17.
The targeting of al-Wafa Hospital was intended to kill medical students from Gaza’s Islamic University who were sitting in exam in that hospital. And luckily for them, the Israelis got the wrong floor. And then the targeting of Al-Ahli Hospital, which is now the last hospital functioning in that whole arbitrarily created northern part of Gaza, is a sign that the Israelis will now move towards the Ahli Hospital for destruction.
I just want to highlight there is research that is about to be published that shows that the chances of being killed as a nurse or a doctor in Gaza during this genocidal war is three-and-a-half times that of the general population.
So it’s been obvious from the beginning that Israel has been wiping out a whole generation of health professionals in Gaza as a way of increasing the genocidal death toll but also of permanently making Gaza uninhabitable.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, you, of course, as we mentioned, as Amy mentioned in the introduction, you have worked in two Gaza hospitals. You’ve just talked a little bit about what’s recently — the recent Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure in Gaza, but if you could explain, just to give a sense of what’s happened overall since October 7, 2023.
If you could say the scale of the destruction of medical infrastructure, as well as the systematic attacks on medical personnel, as you said, this new research that’s coming out that shows that they’re three to four times more likely to be killed than the general population?
So, if you could just say, begin from October 2023 to now?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, what happened on October 12th is that the Israeli army started to call by phone medical directors of all of the hospitals, telling them that unless they evacuated the hospitals, the blood of the patients would be on their hands.
And I remember that day I was with Dr Ahmed Muhanna from Al-Awda Hospital, who’s still been arrested now for over a year, an anesthetist and a medical director, and he received a phone call from the Israeli army to tell him to evacuate Al-Awda Hospital.
Of course, we realised at that point that the destruction of the health system was going to be a prerequisite for the kind of ethnic cleansing that the Israelis wanted in Gaza.
I was in Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on the day of the October 17, when the Israelis bombed that hospital, killing over 480 patients. And then we had the whole narrative about Shifa Hospital, the siege of Shifa Hospital, the destruction of three pediatric hospitals in the north, and then the first attack on Shifa Hospital.
And then, after that, 36 hospitals in Gaza have now been reduced to the three partially working hospitals in the south and only a remnant of Al-Ahli Hospital in the north. We have had over a thousand health workers — doctors, nurses, health professionals — killed, over 400 imprisoned, and then the destruction of the health infrastructure, the destruction of water and sewage, the use of water as a tool of collective punishment in order to create the public health catastrophe that exists in Gaza in terms of infectious diseases, and the intentional famine.
And so, at the moment, we have in Gaza what the doctors are referring to as the triad of death: hypothermia because of the winter, wounding because of the injuries, and malnutrition.
And with the three, what happens is that people die of at higher temperatures, people die of lesser injuries, because the coexistence of these three conditions means that the body is depleted of any physiological reserve.
And so, that’s why we’re watching over seven kids in the last week die of hypothermia, an adult nurse die of hypothermia, not because the temperatures are subzero — the temperatures are just hovering above zero — but because they’re so malnourished and they’re injured and a lot of them have infectious diseases, and so they’re dying at the same time.
Israel has created a genocidal machine that takes Palestinian lives beyond the injury, beyond the bombs, beyond the shrapnel.
And so people are dying of infectious diseases. People are dying because of the health system has collapsed, and so their chronic diseases become medical emergencies. And people are dying from the famine and the malnutrition.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, in light of that, Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, if you could comment on the fact that so many people now, an increasing number of people, are questioning this death toll of 45,500, over that number who have been killed in Gaza since or who have died in Gaza since October 2023?
People are saying that is a vast undercount. From what you’re saying, that seems almost certain. If you could comment as a medical professional? You know, what do you think might be a more accurate figure?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, 45,000 are people whose bodies were taken to a Ministry of Health hospital, and they were taken by people who witnessed or who recognised them, and a death certificate was issued.
This 45,000 excludes the tens of thousands who are still under the rubble, more so in the north, where the emergency services were targeted by the Israelis and so are now completely unable to function.
And so, we see pictures of dogs eating bodies of those killed in the streets. Not only people under the rubble, people who have been killed and not reported, or their bodies have not been retrieved.
When you drop 2000-pound bombs, there’s very little of the human body that is left. And so there are people who literally pulverized by these bombs.
Then you have those whose chronic illnesses, once untreated, became deadly, so the kidney dialysis patients, the heart disease patients, the diabetics, who were no longer able to get treatment.
It doesn’t take into account the women who are dying from maternal care, from obstetric injuries during delivery, because they’re delivering in makeshift hospitals, they’re delivering in the tents, and they’re malnourished when they give birth, and so them and their babies have a higher rate of maternal mortality, of infant mortality.
And then you have those who are dying of infectious diseases, of the thousands who have hepatitis at the moment, of the polio, and those who are dying not immediately from their injuries but from the wounds that do not have access to healthcare to stop the infection setting in, and then, eventually, the infection becoming sepsis and killing them.
The number is closer to 300,000. This is around 10 to 12 percent of Gaza’s population.
France, at the end of the Second World War, 4 percent of its population were killed. This is literally and mathematically a genocidal project.
This is not a political term. This is a literal and mathematical term, where you want to eliminate the population and to ensure that whoever is left is incapable of becoming part of a society, because they’re tending to their wounds or they’ve been so severely debilitated by the injuries and the neglected injuries.
We at @amnesty are extremely concerned over the fate & wellbeing of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital who was detained by Israeli forces along with others during a raid on the hospital on 27 December. He must be released immediately and unconditionally.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr Abu-Sittah, you have asked, “How can a live-streamed genocide continue unhindered?” What is your response to that question right now?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Right now with the arrest of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, where is the British Medical Association? Where is the American Medical Association? Where are the royal colleges? Where is the French Medical Association?
Western medical institutions, their moral bankruptcy has become so astounding during this genocide. For them to become part of a genocidal enablement apparatus, for their silence and, in a lot of times, their collusion to silence those who speak out against the genocide.
For me, as a health professional, you’re shocked at how completely empty of any moral value these medical associations have become, when they have become complicit in a televised genocide which targets doctors.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, I’m speaking to you here in Cairo. In May, Germany did not allow you in to speak. You are a British Palestinian doctor.
Since you were in Gaza last year, you’ve been speaking out about what’s happening. Explain exactly what happened. I mean, Human Rights Watch and other groups were demanding that this ban be lifted. They banned you from where?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, I was invited to speak at a conference in Germany. I was stopped at Berlin Airport and was told that I’m banned from going into Germany for a month, and I was deported at the end of that day back to the UK.
A few months later, I had an invitation from the French Senate. When I arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I discovered that the Germans, a few days after they deported me, had put in a ban for the whole of the Schengen — and Schengen is the EU plus Norway, plus Sweden, plus Switzerland — using an administrative law so that they wouldn’t have to put it in front of the judge. We then were able to challenge that and have it overturned.
But at the same time, pro-Israel groups, like UK Lawyers for Israel, submitted multiple complaints against me with the General Medical Council to have my medical licence removed, submitted complaints against me with the Charity Commission in the UK to have me banned for life from ever holding office in a UK registered charity.
This is what — this is why this genocide has continued unhindered and unchallenged for over 14 months. There are apparatus of genocide enablement that exists in the West, either through collusion or by actively targeting.
Over 60 doctors in the UK have had complaints against them with the General Medical Council to have their medical licences removed as a result of their support of the Palestinians during the genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Dr Abu-Sittah, Jimmy Carter died yesterday at the age of 100. He wrote the book in the 2000s, which is quite amazing, but after he was president, Palestine: Peace [Not] Apartheid. I’m going to rejoin Nermeen for the end of the show, an interview I did with him on that issue. But your thoughts on President Carter?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: The logic of the relationship between the Zionist colonialist movement and the Palestinian indigenous population has always been that of elimination.
At a certain point — and that’s unfortunately now behind us since the 7th of October — apartheid separation was the chosen method of elimination of the Palestinians. On the 7th of October, the Israelis crossed that genocidal Rubicon that settler-colonial projects cross.
And once the genocidal Rubicon is crossed, the elimination of the indigenous population by the settler-colonial project then purely becomes genocidal.
Israel, even at the end of this genocidal war in Gaza, will not be able to deal with the Palestinians in a nongenocidal way. Once the settler-colonial project becomes genocidal, it cannot undo itself.
We’ve seen that in North America with the killing of the children in Canada. We’ve seen that in Australia. We’ve seen that everywhere.
AMY GOODMAN: And Carter, again, as we just have 30 seconds, writing the book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Well, Carter had a historic opportunity to change the course of this struggle, had he insisted that part of the Camp David Accords was the creation of a Palestinian state. And no amount of recantation will ever change that missed opportunity.
He could have forced on the Israeli government, and the first right-wing Israeli government at that point, under Begin — he could have forced the creation of a Palestinian state, but he failed to do that.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, we just have 30 seconds. You just said that a genocidal settler-colonial project cannot undo itself. How do you see this ending, then?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: You see, the world has a choice, because surplus populations like the Palestinians, like refugees crossing the Mediterranean, like the poor people in the favelas and in the inner-city slums, these will either be dealt with through a genocidal project, as Israel has dealt with the Palestinians in Gaza — and this kind of response or this kind of template will become part of the military doctrine that is taught to armies across the world in dealing with these surplus populations.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, thank you so much for joining us, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon who worked in Gaza as a volunteer with Doctors without Borders treating patients at both Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.
Amy will rejoin us for our last segment talking about her interview with former President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at age 100.
Israel kills the journalists deliberately. This is unprecedented. The Western media — including here in Aotearoa New Zealand — kills the truth about genocide in Gaza.
201 Palestinian journalists killed in Israel’s war on Gaza . . . an Anadolu Agency compilation of the media workers wiped out by the Israel military, many of them targeted and some with their families also becoming victims. Image: Anadolu Ajensi
The journalists from the Al-Quds Today TV channel were outside the al-Awada Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp when their satellite broadcast van was struck by a pre-dawn Israeli strike.
Video footage that went viral showed the van with the words “PRESS” clearly marked in red block letters engulfed in flames.
The slain journalists were – let’s honour their names — Fadi Hassouna, Ibrahim al-Sheikh Ali, Mohammed al-Ladah, Faisal Abu al-Qumsan and Ayman al-Jadi.
Jadi had gone to the hospital with his wife who was giving birth to their first child. He had gone out to check on the car and his mates when it was bombed.
Baby born on day father died for ‘truth’
Imagine that, the baby was born on the very day his father died while doing his job as a journalist — reporting the truth.
It is another cruel example of the tragic lives lost in this genocide by Israel which has killed more than 45,400 people, mostly women and children.
Al Jazeera’s report on the journalist killings. Video: AJ
Just last week, four other journalists were killed over two days. And now the total is 201 Palestinian journalists killed since 7 October 2023.
This is by far the highest death toll of journalists in any war or conflict.
And in 20 years of the Vietnam War, just 63 journalists were killed.
Al Jazeera reports that Israel, which has not allowed foreign journalists to enter Gaza except on military embeds with the Israeli “Defence” Forces (IDF), which is increasingly being dubbed by critics as the Israeli “Offence” Forces (“IOF”), has been condemned by many media freedom organisations.
Samoan Palestine decolonisation activist Michel Mulipola . . . speaking at today’s Auckland rally about the 95th anniversary of the Black Saturday Mau massacre by NZ forces in Samoa. Image: APR
Gaza ‘most dangerous region’
The besieged enclave is now regarded as the “most dangerous region of the world” for journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders in its annual report.
New Zealand journalist and author Dr David Robie . . . critical of New Zealand media’s role over the Gaza genocide. Image: Del Abcede/APR
Al Jazeera itself was banned by Israel in May from reporting within the country, and was subsequently barred from reporting within the occupied West Bank and the closure of the Ramallah bureau in mid-September.
Israel has tried to silence Al Jazeera previously in by threatening it in 2017, bombing its broadcast office in Gaza in 2021, and assassinating celebrated journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 and other reporters with impunity.
Al Jazeera, TRT News and many independent news outlets as Democracy Now!, The Intercept, Middle East Eye and The Palestine Chronicle stand in contrast to mainstream media such as BBC, CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post that have frequently been called out in investigative reports for systemic bias against Palestine.
Among the poignant messages from Palestinian journalists documenting this war are Bisan Owda, who signs on her video reports every day with “I’m still alive”.
But I would like to share this reflection from another journalist, videographer Osama Abu Rabee who says on his X news feed that he is “capturing the untold stories of resilience and hope”. He said in one post this week:
Kia Ora Gaza facilitator Roger Fowler (in hat) . . . a heartyfelt tribute by Gaza survivor Dr Abdallah Gouda for his many years of support for the Palestine freedom cause, including with the Freedom Flotilla and his resistance music. Image: APR
‘Moments away from death’
“One of my most vivid memories is when three journalists and I were in Eastern Jabalia and we needed to connect our e-sims to edit and upload content of a massacre.
“We went to a room but the connection wasn’t good so I suggested we go into another room. Less than 5 minutes later, the room we had been in got bombed.
“People came over running thinking that we were killed but luckily there were only injuries.
“This was one of the many times that I was moments away from death. I know that I’m targeted as a Palestinian but also as a journalist.
“Every single day I step out of my house and put on my ‘press’ vest and I look behind at my family, I’m not sure if I’ll see them again.
“I hope you understand the risks we are taking to show you the truth.
“Even 15 month later, we continue to go out every single day and document the horrors that people in Gaza experience.
“We do this so that when God asks what you do, we respond with ‘we did what we could’.”
NZ media’s role shameful
Can journalists and the media in Aotearoa New Zealand say with hand on heart that “we did what we could” in the face of this genocide?
Palestinian advocate Katrina Mitchell-Kouttab . . . powerful address in how people in New Zealand can help in the face of Israel’s genocide. Image: APR
Of course not, the role of New Zealand media has been shameful, apart from notable exceptions such as Gordon Campbell.
It has failed to hold the Christopher Luxon coalition government to account over its pathetic inaction over the genocide.
It has failed to press the government into taking a stronger and more principled stance at the United Nations to call for sanctions against the apartheid and genocidal regime, or to even expel Israel from the global chamber — or the ambassador from Wellington.
Take Ireland, a smallish country like New Zealand, as an inspirational example. Earlier this month, Ireland responded immediately to the closure of Israel’s embassy in Dublin by opening a Palestinian museum on the premises.
Prime Minister Simon Harris condemned Israel’s genocidal actions, particularly against children and reaffirmed his country’s commitment to human rights and international law.
“You know what I think is reprehensible? Killing children, I think that’s reprehensible.
“You know what I think is reprehensible? Seeing the scale of civilian deaths that we’ve seen in Gaza.
“You know what I think is reprehensible? People being left to starve and humanitarian aid not flowing,”
Silence of the news media
Have we ever had such a courageous statement like this from our Prime Minister. Absolutely not.
It is shameful that our government has not taken a stand.
And it is shameful that the New Zealand media has been so silent over this most horrendous episode of our times — genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in front of our very eyes for 15 months.
To my knowledge, journalists in Aotearoa have not made even made statements of solidarity with the journalists of Gaza and their horrific sacrifice to bear witness to the truth.
New Zealand journalists have already “normalised” the genocide. Shameful.
Dr David Robie is convenor of Pacific Media Watch and editor of Asia Pacific Report. This was first presented as an address to a Palestinian solidarity rally in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Te Komititanga Square in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau on 28 December 2024.
A banner condemning New Zealand media for being “silent and complicit” over Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Image: APR
Silent Night is a well-known Christmas carol that tells of a peaceful and silent night in Bethlehem, referring to the first Christmas more than 2000 years ago.
It is now 2024, and it was again a silent night in Bethlehem last night, reports Al Jazeera’s Nisa Ibrahim. Not because of peace. But a lack of it.
Israel’s war on Gaza and violence in the occupied West Bank has frightened away visitors who would traditionally visit Bethlehem at this time of year.
Gone were the sparkling lights, the festive decorations and the towering Christmas tree that had graced Gaza City for decades.
The Square of the Unknown Soldier, once alive with the spirit of the season, now lies in ruins, reduced to rubble by relentless Israeli air strikes.
Amid the rubble, the faithful sought solace even as fighting continued to rage across the Strip.
“This Christmas carries the stench of death and destruction,” said George al-Sayegh, who for weeks has sought refuge in the 12th century Greek Orthodox Church of St Porphyrius.
“There is no joy, no festive spirit. We don’t even know who will survive until the next holiday.”
‘Christ still in the rubble’
On Friday, the Palestinian theologian and pastor Reverend Munther Isaac delivered a Christmas sermon at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, in occupied West Bank — the birthplace of Jesus — called “Christ Is Still in the Rubble.” He said in this excerpt from Democracy Now!:
‘“Never again” should mean never again to all peoples. “Never again” has become “yet again” — yet again to supremacy, yet again to racism and yet again to genocide.
‘And sadly, “never again” has become yet again for the weaponisation of the Bible and the silence and complicity of the Western church, yet again for the church siding with power, the church siding with the empire.
‘And so, today, after all this, of total destruction, annihilation — and Gaza is erased, unfortunately — millions have become refugees and homeless, tens of thousands killed.
‘And why is anyone still debating whether this is a genocide or not? I can’t believe it. Yet, even when church leaders simply call for investigating whether this is a genocide, he is called out, and it becomes breaking news.
‘Friends, the evidence is clear. Truth stands plain for all to see. The question is not whether this is a genocide. This is not the debate. The real question is: Why isn’t the world and the church calling it a genocide?
‘It says a lot when you deny and ignore and refrain from using the language of genocide. This says a lot. It actually reveals hypocrisy, for you lectured us for years on international laws and human rights. It reveals your hypocrisy.
‘It says a lot on how you look at us Palestinians. It says a lot about your moral and ethical standards. It says everything about who you are when you turn away from the truth, when you refuse to name oppression for what it is. Or could it be that they’re not calling it a genocide?
‘Could it be that if reality was acknowledged for what it is, that it is a genocide, then that it would be an acknowledgment of your guilt? For this war was a war that so many defended as “just” and “self-defense.” And now you can’t even bring yourself to apologise . . .
‘We said last year Christ is in the rubble. And this year we say Christ is still in the rubble. The rubble is his manger. Jesus finds his place with the marginalised, the tormented, the oppressed and the displaced.
‘We look at the holy family and see them in every displaced and homeless family living in despair. In the Christmas story, even God walks with them and calls them his own.’
Christ is still in the Rubble – Reverend Munther Isaac’s Christms message. Video: Reverend Isaac
Story of Jesus one of oppression
“Pastor Isaac joined journalist host Chris Hedges on a special episode of The Chris Hedges Report to revisit the story of Christmas and how it relates to Palestine then and now.
He wasted no time in reminding people that despite the usual jolly associations with Christmas, the story of Jesus Christ was one of oppression, one that involved the struggle of refugees, the rule of a tyrant, the witnessing of a massacre and the levying of taxation.
“To us here in Palestine,” Reverend Isaac said the terms linked to the struggle “actually make the story, as we read it in the Gospel, very much a Palestinian story, because we can identify with the characters.”
Journalist Hedges and Reverend Isaac invoked the story of the Good Samaritan to point out the deliberate blindness the world has bestowed upon the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza in the midst of the ongoing genocide.
The conclusion of the [Good Samaritan] story is that there is no us and them, Reverend Isaac told Hedges.
“Everybody is a neighbour. You don’t draw a circle and determine who’s in and who’s out.”
It was clear, Reverend Isaac pointed out, “the Palestinians are outside of the circle. We’ve been saying it — human rights don’t apply on us, not even compassion.”
Pope calls for ‘silence of arms’ in Gaza In his Christmas “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and world) address yesterday at the Vatican, Pope Francis denounced the “extremely grave” humanitarian situation in Gaza while appealing for the release of captives and a ceasefire in the war-torn coastal enclave.
He also appealed for peace in Ukraine and Sudan, reports Al Jazeera.
“I think of the Christian communities in Israel and Palestine, particularly in Gaza, where the humanitarian situation is extremely grave. May there be a ceasefire, may the hostages be released and aid be given to the people worn out by hunger and by war,” he said.
Israel has killed at least 45,361 Palestinians in its war on Gaza and wounded 107,803 since October 7, 2023, the day a Hamas-led operation was launched into Israel during which 1,139 people were killed and about 200 were taken captive.
The nativity scene on Christmas Eve in New Zealand’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in Auckland last night . . . no mention of Bethlehem’s oppression by Israel and muted celebrations, or the Gaza genocide in the sermon. Image: Asia Pacific Report
A "Christ in the Rubble" nativity scene recreated by the Fiji Women's Crisis Centre (FWCC) in Suva, Fiji . . . peacefully replicating Bethlehem and representing Gaza's "hell on earth". Image: FWCC screenshot APR
COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle
I have just attended a wonderful Christmas concert at St Mary of the Angels in Wellington – the Bach Choir, the Chiesa Ensemble and excellent soloists sent a thrill through my body. The final piece, Gloria by Antonio Vivaldi, triggered these thoughts.
The Gloria, of course, is a traditional element of the Catholic mass, and the maestro’s version is one of the Christmas favourites. But in 2024, in the midst of the Gaza genocide, surely Christian observance means more than, for example, turning up to church, enjoying the choir, and having a cup of tea and a scone.
How then should Christians translate Gloria in excelsis Deo?
Gloria in excelsis Deo. Glory to God in the highest.
The best way to venerate is to emulate. Which is why the American Christians like to ask themselves: “WWJD” (What Would Jesus Do?) — quite a practical question. The curious part is they come up with the craziest answers.
American bombs, delivered by Israeli soldiers, have torn thousands of Palestinian children apart. Thousands today need new artificial limbs. Most, for want of Christian charity, will never get them.
A year ago, in the early days of these crimes against humanity, I heard the best and wisest sermon of my life by Palestinian minister Reverend Munther Isaac, delivered in the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. He titled his sermon “Christ in the rubble” .
Christ in the Rubble sermon, Christmas 2023. Video: Democracy Now!
Fearing not just for Gaza but for all of Palestine and what will come next, he said:
“We are tormented by the silence of the world.
“Leaders of the so-called Free World lined up one after the other to give the green light to this genocide against a captive population.”
“Here we confront the Theology of Empire,” he said, a theology that enlists even the Bible to justify killing men, women and children on an industrial scale. A year later, hundreds are still being killed every week. All means of existence are being denied the people of Gaza.
Jurists and scholars from one end of the earth to the other say we are witnessing genocide. Do you think Jesus Christ would approve of such conduct by an all-powerful army supported by the richest Christian-majority nations?
Recall his righteous rage when he drove the moneychangers from the temple; their transgression is small-change compared to what is being done to the children of Gaza. WWJD?
Babes of Bethlehem . . . A version of this article first appeared as “Babes of Bethlehem & Gaza” in the New Zealand Catholic magazine Tui Motu. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz
Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. And peace on earth to people of good will.
Jesus, a Palestinian, died a violent death at the hands of a colonial regime working in concert with local elites. We know where his sympathies would lie today — with the refugees, the starved, the sick, the persecuted.
When confronted with something on this scale, it is important we refrain from despair or helplessness. We can be part of building a global movement of solidarity with suffering humanity.
This is a time for activism eg, join demonstrations in support of Palestine. They bring good people of all faiths and outlooks together.
Tell your bank and your stockbroker (if you have one) to divest from Israel. If you are an ASB customer, check out the Don’t Bank on Apartheid campaign.
Write to Parliamentarians, including Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters, about your concerns, eg, that it is time to
join South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ;
expel the Israeli ambassador in protest;
take our US ally to task for their part in the genocide;
call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire;
withdraw NZ troops from Operation Prosperity Guardian;
call on New Zealand to live up to its obligations under the International Court of Justice ruling 19th July 2024 “not to recognise as legal the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Territories and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation”; and
restore and massively increase funding to UNRWA and to condemn attacks on the United Nations and to call genocide by its name.
Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram. Thouwho takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer.
Jesus was not born in a stable so that thousands of Palestinians could be born in tents.
If God so loved the world, do we imagine God would approve of the satanic violence being meted out to 2.3 million Palestinians this Christmas?
Would God forgive the leaders of all the Western governments, including New Zealand’s, who have actively supported this daily slaughter of the Innocents?
The Babe Jesus isn’t the only baby we should be caring about this Christmas. All people of goodwill need to oppose these crimes and do all we can to bring to a close Israel’s war on Palestinians.
Miserere nobis. Have mercy upon us.
Come on, people, let us support the Palestinian people in their hour of need.
Amen
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz He is a lapsed Catholic who has maintained lifelong contact with some of the nuns who played an influential part in his upbringing.
By turns over his long career, Michael Leunig was a poet, a prophet and a provocateur . . . his greatness lay in how intensely he made his audiences think and feel. Image: Michael Leunig, CC BY-NC-ND
ANALYSIS:By Richard Scully, Robert Phiddian and Stephanie Brookes
Michael Leunig — who died in the early hours of Thursday December 19, surrounded by “his children, loved ones, and sunflowers” — was the closest thing Australian cartooning had to a prophet. By turns over his long career, he was a poet, a prophet and a provocateur.
The challenge comes in attempting to understand Leunig’s significance: for Australian cartooning; for readers of The Age and other newspapers past; and for the nation’s idea of itself.
On this day, do you remember the gently philosophical Leunig, or the savagely satirical one? Do you remember a cartoon that you thought absolutely nailed the problems of the world, or one you thought was terribly wrong-headed?
Leunig’s greatness lay in how intensely he made his audiences think and feel.
There is no one straightforward story to tell here. With six decades of cartooning at least weekly in newspapers and 25 book-length collections of his work, how could there be?
The light and the dark One thread is an abiding fondness for the whimsical Leunig. Mr Curly and Vasco Pyjama live on in the imaginations of so many readers.
Particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, Leunig’s work seemed to hold a moral and ethical mirror up to Australian society — sometimes gently, but not without controversy, such as his 1995 “Thoughts of a baby lying in a childcare centre”.
Feed the Inner Duck. Image: Michael Leunig, CC BY-NC-ND
Another thread is the dark satirist.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he broke onto the scene as a wild man in Oz, the Sunday Observer and the Nation Review who deplored Vietnam and only escaped the draft owing to deafness in one ear.
Then he apparently mellowed to become the guru of The Age, still with a capacity to launch the occasional satirical thunderbolt. Decidedly countercultural, together with Patrick Cook and Peter Nicholson, Leunig brought what historian Tony Moore has called “existential and non-materialist themes to the Australian black-and-white tradition”.
By 1999, he was declared a “national living treasure” by the National Trust, and was being lauded by universities for his unique contributions to the national culture.
But to tell the story of Leunig’s significance from the mid 90s on is to go beyond the dreamer and the duck. In later decades you could see a clear distinction between some cartoons that continued to console in a bewildering world, and others that sparked controversy.
Politics and controversy Leunig saw 9/11 and the ensuing “War on Terror” as the great turning point in his career. He fearlessly returned to the themes of the Vietnam years, only to receive caution, rebuke and rejection from editors and readers.
He stopped drawing Mr Curly and Vasco Pyjama. The world was no longer safe for the likes of them.
Then there was a cartoon refused by The Age in 2002, deemed by editor Michael Gawenda to be inappropriate: in the first frame, a Jew is confronted by the gates of the death camp: “Work Brings Freedom [Arbeit Macht Frei]”; in the second frame an Israeli viewing a similar slogan “War Brings Peace”.
Rejected, it was never meant to see the light of day, but ABC’s Media Watch and Crikey outed it because of the constraint its spiking represented to fair media comment on the Middle East.
That the cartoon was later entered, without Leunig’s knowledge, in the infamous Iranian “Holocaust Cartoon” competition of 2006, has only added to its infamy and presaged the internet’s era of the uncontrollable circulation of images.
A decade later, from 2012, he reworked Martin Niemöller’s poetic statement of guilt over the Holocaust. The result was outrage, but also acute division within the Australian Jewish community.
First They Came. Image: Michael Leunig, CC BY-NC-ND
Dvir Abramovich (chairperson of the Anti-Defamation Commission) made a distinction between something challenging, and something racist, believing it was the latter.
Harold Zwier (of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society) welcomed the chance for his community to think critically about Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank.
Mummy was Busy. Image: Michael Leunig, CC BY-NC-ND
Then from 2021 — a covid-19 vaccination needle atop an armoured tank, rolling towards a helpless citizen.
Leunig’s enforced retirement (it is still debated whether he walked or was pushed) was long and drawn-out. He filed his last cartoon for The Agethis August. By then, he had alienated more than a few of his colleagues in the press and the cartooning profession.
Support of the downtrodden Do we speak ill of the dead? We hope not. Instead, we hope we are paying respect to a great and often angry artist who wanted always to challenge the consumer society with its dark cultural and geopolitical secrets.
Leunig’s response was a single line of argument: he was “Just a cartoonist with a moral duty to speak”.
You don’t have to agree with every provocation, but his purpose is always to take up the cause of the weak, and deploy all the weaponry at his disposal to support the downtrodden in their fight.
“The role of the cartoonist is not to be balanced”, said Leunig, but rather to “give balance”.
For Leunig, the weak were the Palestinian civilians, the babies of the post-iPhone generation, and those forced to be vaccinated by a powerful state; just as they were the Vietnamese civilians, the children forced to serve their rulers through state-sanctioned violence, the citizens whose democracy was undercut by stooges of the establishment.
That deserves to be his legacy, regardless of whether you agree or not about his stance.
The coming year will give a great many people pause to reflect on the life and work of Leunig. Indeed, he has provided us with a monthly schedule for doing just that: Leunig may be gone, but 2025 is already provided for, via his last calendar.
New York prosecutors have charged Luigi Mangione with “murder as an act of terrorism” in his alleged shooting of health insurance CEO Brian Thompson earlier this month.
The report contains testimony from Israeli troops that civilians are being murdered in Gaza and are then being retroactively designated as terrorists to justify their execution.
“People need to know what this war really looks like, what serious acts some commanders and fighters are committing inside Gaza. They need to know the inhuman scenes we’re witnessing,” an Israeli commander who returned from the Netzarim corridor sayshttps://t.co/2y6ONxREy8
“We’re killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists,” a recently discharged officer told Haaretz.
These two stories together say so much about the way the label “terrorist” is used under the US-centralised power umbrella.
The guy who shot the health insurance CEO is a terrorist, but the people systematically slaughtering civilians in Gaza are not terrorists. The people fighting against those who are slaughtering the civilians are terrorists, and noncombatants are being categorized as belonging to this terrorist organisation in order to justify killing them. The al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria were terrorists, but now they’re a US puppet regime so soon they won’t be terrorists — but they need to be designated terrorists for a little while longer because the claim that Syria is crawling with terrorists is Israel’s justification for its recent land grabs there. The Uyghur militant group ETIM used to be a terrorist group, but now they’re not a terrorist group because they can be used to help carve up Syria and maybe fight China later on. The IRGC is a military wing of a sovereign nation, but it counts as a terrorist group because of vibes or something.
Is that clear enough?
Really the label “terrorist” is nothing more than a tool of imperial narrative control which gets moved around based on whether or not someone’s use of violence is deemed legitimate by the managers of the empire. Because Mangione’s alleged crime has ignited a public interest in class warfare, the label “terrorism” is being used to frame it as an especially heinous act of evil against an innocent member of the public.
The empire’s favourite trick is to begin the historical record at the moment its enemies retaliate against its abuses. Oh no, a health insurance CEO was victimised by an evil act of terrorism. Oh no, Israel was just innocently minding its own business when it was viciously attacked by Hamas. Oh no, Iran attacked Israel completely out of the blue and now Israel must retaliate. Oh no, Russia just launched an entirely unprovoked war on Ukraine.
Everything that led up to the unauthorised act of violence is erased from the record, because all of the violence, provocation and abuse which gave rise to the unauthorised act of violence were authorized by the empire. Authorised aggression doesn’t count as aggression.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. If you control the narrative you can control not only when the historical record of violence begins but what kinds of violence qualify as violence. Killing people by depriving them of healthcare because denying healthcare services is how your company increases its profit margins? That’s not violence. Inflicting tyranny and abuse upon a deliberately marginalised ethnic group in an apartheid state? That’s not violence. Violence is when you respond to those forceful aggressions with forceful aggressions of your own.
If we are to become a healthy society, we’re going to have to stop allowing some forms of violence, aggression and abuse to be redacted from the official records while others are listed and condemned. Those who care about truth and justice account for all forms of violence, aggression and abuse, not only those which inconvenience the rich and powerful.
It is an act of aggression to do things which sicken and impoverish others in order to advance your own wealth.
It is an act of aggression to pollute the biosphere we all depend on for survival in order to increase your profit margins.
It is an act of aggression to use your wealth to manipulate your nation’s politics in ways which exacerbate inequality and injustice.
It is an act of aggression to maintain an apartheid state which cannot exist without nonstop violence.
It is an act of aggression to surround the earth with military bases and encircle nations which disobey your dictates.
It is an act of aggression to try to rule the world using military violence, proxy conflicts, staged coups, threats, starvation sanctions, and financial and economic coercion.
These are all acts of aggression, and any retaliation against them will never be an unprovoked attack. As we move into the future while these abuses exacerbate, it’s going to become very important to maintain an acute awareness of this.
1News Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver in Port Vila . . . "searchers are racing against time to find survivors in the rubble." Image: 1News screenshot APR
The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) said late last night that a flight carrying 93 passengers, almost all Kiwis and their families, had left Port Vila at about 7.45pm New Zealand time.
“A small number of foreign nationals are also being assisted on this flight,” the NZDF said.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters confirmed the flight’s arrival overnight.
He wrote on X at about 5.30am today: “We are pleased to have evacuated 93 people from Port Vila on a @NZDefenceForce flight overnight.
People about to depart Vanuatu on a RNZAF Boeing 757. Image: NZDF
“The passengers were mostly New Zealanders and their families, but also included around 12 foreign nationals from Samoa, the United Kingdom, Singapore, France and Finland.
“Our consular team continues to assist New Zealanders affected by the earthquake in Vanuatu.”
Any Kiwis still in Vanuatu were urged to call MFAT on +64 99 20 20 20.
“New Zealand’s efforts to aid Vanuatu with its earthquake response, through the provision of personnel and relief supplies, continues,” Peters said.
NZ disaster response teams on the ground in quake-hit Vanuatu. Image: 1NewsRescue and recovery efforts continue after Vanuatu earthquake. Image: 1NewsThe moment the quake hit a car garage in Port Vila. Image: 1 News
Australian couple describe earthquake ‘mayhem’
Australian couple Susie Nailon and her partner Tony Ferreira were in the Billabong shop when the quake hit. Image 1News
Australian couple Susie Nailon and her partner Tony Ferreira told 1News about the “mayhem” of being inside the Billabong shop when the quake hit.
“It sort of started to rumble a little bit and I looked up in the ceiling and saw the ceiling start to come down on the fluorescent light. But it wasn’t just a shake, it no longer shook left or right, the whole ground started to wave,” said Ferreira.
“The whole roof had caved down . . . It just felt like a deck of cards. [It came] straight down, flattened everything.
“And the force of it just pushed all the windows, plastered glass straight out in the road from all that weight,” he said.
He said there were about six or seven others in the shop with them at the time, and said the couple only made it out by “literally seconds”.
“If my rack had been a couple more metres in, then there’s no chance. It was that quick. There was no warning,” he said.
Nailon said the aftershocks had been really triggering, and as soon as she felt something she was “straight out the door”.
“No one has a chance if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said.
Kiwi helping out in Vanuatu
Kiwi Jason Horan who lives in Port Vila. Image: 1News
New Zealander Jason Horan, who lives in Port Vila, told 1News it was “just chaos” in the aftermath of the quake.
“There [were] people lying on the ground everywhere, buildings falling down, so it was pretty scary,” he said.
He said he watched the road move “like a wave”.
Since the quake, Horan said he had been helping others simply because he wanted to.
“I’ve been running everybody around, just trying to supply everybody with food and water. So I go around to every hotel and resort making sure they know who to talk to and stuff like that.”
He said he wanted to do his part in “making sure people are okay”.
“All the locals are pulling together though . . . they’re resilient, so it’s really good.”
NZ High Commissioner on quake and what comes next
New Zealand High Commissioner to Vanuatu Nicci Simmonds. Image: 1News
New Zealand High Commissioner to Vanuatu Nicci Simmonds said the commission was in the top storey of a three-storey concrete building.
“I was at my desk at the time [of the quake], so that’s about as far away from the entry/exit as you can get,” she said.
“So you follow your schoolgirl training and you just get under the table, holding on while it jumped around a lot. A lot of noise.”
She said there was dust everywhere when the shaking stopped. She tried to check on a colleague.
“Very close to her desk, the building had completely separated. There was a three-storey drop.”
Everyone managed to get out of the building, Simmonds said. Initially, communications were the biggest challenge, she added.
“Now, it’s making sure that reliable safe drinking water, power, and basic infrastructure is up and running.”
Simmonds said the impact was “highly localised”, based on aerial surveillance.
“It’s a significant, major event in Port Vila, but it doesn’t appear that there have been villages buried by landslides elsewhere, so that’s been an enormous relief.”
She said the response was “the kind of job that surges, and peaks, and changes”.
Have you ever heard a comment which made you so outraged that you were compelled to debate it in your head years later?
One of my favourite shows is Unreported World, where journalists travel to cover an underreported human rights issue with an international “People vs Power” theme. I can easily pinpoint the worst episode for me, Series 33, Episode 7 (“Obesity in Paradise”).
This made me disappointed and angry at what I thought was an uncritical episode.
Unreported World: “Obesity in Paradise”. Video: Sophie Morgan
I interpreted the presenter as having a condescending and blaming tone to the locals she had been interviewing, instead of linking the health issues back to the source of food. When health issues disproportionately affect a group fast, there is some kind of systemic issue.
Also, I felt as though the locals were portrayed as ignorant, with the presenter picking at the food, showing disgust and insensitively raising topics of death.
I felt as though the locals were being mocked and given no dignity. This has since been scrubbed from the Unreported World social media outlets and YouTube, but can be found on Vimeo and at The Coconet TV.
The matter of personal responsibility and health is raised in any conversation about minorities. For example, food related illness, childhood obesity, obesity in general, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes; all often discussed to be caused by “lazy parenting”, “poor habits”, “genetic weakness” and more.
Food for thought
But I recently read a book which provided much food for thought to challenge often simple, overgeneralising and frankly racist explanations for obesity and health issues in Pacific communities.
The book Cheap Meat: Flap Food Nations in the South Pacific raises the fact that what food we have available is not a coincidence and that sourcing, buying and eating food is inherently political and tangled with human rights abuses in each step of production and purchase.
For example, workplace exploitation in plantations, the exploitation of migrants and undocumented workers, factory farming, environmental degradation and so on.
Cheap Meat: Flap Food Nations in the Pacific Islands. Image: University of California Press screenshot APR
Neocolonialism is defined as the subjugation and dehumanisation of another community through indirect economic, cultural or political pressures. The more the book progressed, this pattern became more evident.
Companies are knowingly selling items which have negative health impacts. How they determine the “disposable” communities to sell to is a human rights issue.
Enter: The world of the lobby Flaps are a food known and shown in discussions of the Polynesian diet: they are the fatty belly parts of a sheep often sold in many Pacific Islands. The Unreported World episode stops at the disgust of the journalist, but the episode does not investigate why this food is so common and where it is coming from.
This is where New Zealand comes in. Enter: Ross Finlayson, once dubbed the “Kissinger of the meat industry”, we get the impression of a man embedded in international matters…and for whom the ends justify the means.
The UK was previously one of the biggest consumers of New Zealand lamb. In the 1970s, the meat industry was under pressure with increased competition with foreign products, dropping meat quality and changes to British import policies with the then entry into the European Union (then the European Economic Community 1973) and thus, new arrangements with European trading partners.
So, what’s going to happen to the meat?
Deborah Gewerts and Frederick Errington apply the Marxist theory of the “fetishisation of commodities” to the sale of meat flaps. The theory can be broken down like this: To create value and demand of an item, we “fetishise” it, which means we can create an artificial value to it, which can make us stop thinking about the exploitation which created the item, or the actual poor value of the item, because we feel good when we purchase it.
An example could be designer goods for instance.
Let’s apply this to meat flaps. Using case studies, the book raises how in, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Tonga, meat is seen as a prestigious food because it is more expensive than other types of food.
A status symbol
It is also a status symbol as a foreign good from New Zealand, known for its prized food and drink. So flaps have the reputation as an affordable small luxury. But in reality, it is a waste product.
Necessity: Sales tactics and the skills of the lobby combine with cheap, meaty and foreign dinners. But we know the forgone conclusion of poor health outcomes.
So, is New Zealand complicit with this outcome? The question was raised in a 2002 article for The Independent quoting the then Health Minister, Annette King, who thought it would be inappropriate to interfere with other countries’ affairs.
There could be many reasons for this. Firstly, Pacific nations are culturally diverse, and intervention would be complex. Secondly, intervening can be seen as paternalistic and culturally inappropriate.
Thirdly, this touches on what I call the “Activist’s Dilemma” — how and when can we interfere with another nation’s sovereignty. We will need to play the long game and involve communities directly.
But thankfully, seeds have been sown for the public. There are no coincidences when it comes to what food is available and when. In New Zealand, there is a renewed sense of activism in lower-socioeconomic neighbourhoods against new fast food and liquor stores, a lot of which is led by Pasifika community groups who want to create safe and healthy environments.
There are also indications that the availability of healthy food or lack thereof is being understood in a policy level. For example, the Helen Clark Foundation, a New Zealand think tank based on the values of former Labour Prime Minster, Helen Clark, has taken an interest in the topic, with a 2022 report on “Healthy Food Environments” and the disproportional impact of unhealthy food advertising and availability in poorer neighbourhoods.
Part of New Zealand’s identity is as a protesting nation alongside friends, against nuclear testing in the Pacific. What’s to stop us now to defend against the deaths of our neighbours?
Well, with awareness, maybe the plucky little nation might just pay attention.
Post Script Overall, Gewerts and Errington’s Cheap Meat is a good initial tool to debunk existing blaming narratives towards Pacific people. However, I would like to note that I have some criticisms of the book for prospective readers, namely the use of the term “genocide” without a provided definition or analysis of intent and total ethnic/national/religious destruction.
The book would benefit from further analysis.
Second, the book presents perspectives of unions, Pacific communities and the lobbies as having the same “weight”.
I felt that these groups are not directly comparable, for instance, advocating for human rights matters is not the same in effect or technique as corporate lobbying. Therefore, I felt that by presenting all sides as “equal”, this encouraged a false equivalency of all groups.
Please keep these in mind as you explore the topic. Happy reading!
Keeara Ofren is a New Zealand-born and based Filipina. She is a law and politics and international relations graduate who does communications for the public sector. Republished with permission from her blog K for Kindling.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Israel is continuing to bomb Syria a week after Syria’s longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power. On Sunday night, Israel dropped what has been described as an “earthquake bomb” on Syrian military and air defence sites in the coastal Tartus region.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights described Israel’s bombing as the heaviest strikes in Syria’s coastal region in more than a decade. According to the group, Israeli forces have launched more than 800 strikes on Syria over the past week.
The Israeli government has also approved a plan to expand illegal settlements in the occupied Golan Heights. This comes days after Israel invaded Syrian territory to seize more of the Golan Heights. In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Strengthening the Golan Heights is strengthening the state of Israel, and is especially important at this time. We will continue to hold on to it, make it flourish, and settle it.”
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has confirmed the Biden administration has been in direct contact with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist Syrian armed group that led the surprise offensive that toppled Assad.
SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: So, first, yes, we’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties. We have impressed upon everyone we’ve been in contact with the importance of helping find Austin Tice and bringing him home.
And we’ve also shared the principles that I just laid out for our ongoing support, principles, again, that have now been adopted by countries throughout the region and well beyond. And we’ve communicated those.
REPORTER: That’s direct contact?
SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: That’s direct contact, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Blinken made the comments in Jordan. Over the weekend, he also visited Turkey and Iraq to discuss the future of Syria.
We go now to Marwan Bishara, senior political analyst at Al Jazeera. He’s joining us from Doha.
If you can start off by responding to the latest, Marwan? Thanks for joining us again.
MARWAN BISHARA: Well, thank you for having me. I’m glad that the both of you are there in the studio. The last time I was with you, the both of you were there, and I was with Noam Chomsky, and we discussed the Arab Spring. It was the first two weeks of it.
AMY GOODMAN: Wow! Well, it’s —
MARWAN BISHARA: Thirteen years ago.
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara . . . “So, it’s not just the incredible ugliness of it all, the rogueness of it all, the inhumanity of it all. What kills me is the silence in Israel, in the United States and elsewhere.” Image: Democracy Now! screenshot APR
AMY GOODMAN: Yeah, that’s absolutely amazing. Oh, and a belated happy birthday to Noam Chomsky, who turned, I think it was, 96 on December 7th. Marwan, if you can talk now — I wish we could have Noam Chomsky responding, as well, but if you can talk now about the latest news? And then we’re going to go back to look at the toppling of Assad, but right now this latest news of the attacks on Syria. I think the number of Israeli strikes is at about 800 now.
MARWAN BISHARA: It’s truly incredible. Israel is setting new precedents in the Middle East. It has been doing so for the past 75, 80 years, but this week, in the way it’s acting so lawlessly against Syria, as a rogue state basically, bombing the hell out of its neighbor, simply because there has been a change of rulers in Damascus attempting a peaceful transitional governing there, taking care of the people, and sending all kinds of signals that they have absolutely zero intentions of getting into war with anyone.
And yet, this is what’s called “strategic opportunism” on the part of the Netanyahu government; also political opportunism just while he’s on trial for corruption and the rest of it, being a war criminal also, he’s stealing the show by deflecting from what’s going on in Israel, attacking Syria everywhere in Syria, while at the same time expanding in the southern part of Syria beyond the already-occupied Golan Heights.
And, as you said, he’s trying to double the illegal settlements in the Golan Heights. So, all in all, Israel, Netanyahu are sending exactly the wrong messages, doing exactly the wrong provocations, and at the same time setting precedents for rogueness, that I think it might not come to bite them soon, but it probably could later.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And your response, Marwan, to the summit that was held in Jordan over the weekend? What do you think came out of it, and especially Secretary of State Blinken being there?
MARWAN BISHARA: You know, the first impression is to remember back the leaders’ parole, parole, parole. You know, sometimes things like only words, words and more words come out of Arab leaders and Arab summits, especially those with the United States. But then, if you look a little more deeply into it, you would know that a lot of those people who — a lot of those leaders who were convening the summit in Aqaba — have already been normalising relations with the former Assad regime, despite its murderous corruption, despite its narco-state criminal kleptocracy.
They had invited him back in the Arab League in 2022 and embraced him in 2023, and they were actually strengthening economic relations in most of them. But now they were suddenly meeting together and to talk about human rights and peaceful transition and minority rights in Syria, as if, moving forward, or as if the past 60 years, it was merely the majority rights that were violated in Syria by the Assad dictatorship.
Be that as it may, I think while they sing from the same sheet, I think they have very different, very different approaches to what security means, to what stability means in Syria, to what even terrorism means. They don’t agree on this, that and the other thing.
Israel bombs Syria 800 times. Video: Democracy Now!
And, in fact, each and every one of the major powers in that meeting supports different militia, different military forces in Syria. Just to give you a simple example, we have now what? Five or six military forces in Syria. We have the Free Syrian Army; we have the National Syrian Army; we have the militias, Syrian forces in the south; we have the Syrian Democratic Forces; and we have, of course, HTS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — all in addition to Assad’s forces that remain there, as well as ISIS.
A lot of these groups are supported by some of these people convening, including the Turks and the Emiratis and the Jordanians and so on and so forth. So, it’s going to be a very complicated way forward, and I remain doubtful that the Arab regimes are serious about assisting the Syrian people, moving forward.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I want to turn to President Biden speaking last week after the fall of Assad.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: So we carried out a comprehensive sanction programme against him and all those responsible for atrocities against the Syrian people.
Second, we maintained our military presence in Syria, our counter-ISIS — to counter the support of local partners, as well, on the ground, their partners, never ceding an inch of territory, taking out leaders of ISIS, ensuring that ISIS can never establish a safe haven there again.
Third, we’ve supported Israel’s freedom of action against Iranian networks in Syria and against actors aligned with Iran who transported lethal aid to Lebanon.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was President Biden taking credit for the fall of Assad. Your response, Marwan?
MARWAN BISHARA: I tell you, it’s mind-boggling, mind-boggling, trying to whitewash genocide by saying, “Well, after all, 15 months of genocide, maybe, you know, we were on the right track after all. Look at us. You know, we are so great,” you know, and basically tapping himself on the shoulders after all the war crimes that were committed in Lebanon and in Palestine.
And now he’s taking credit for some change that happened in Syria by the Syrian people — by the Syrian people — despite the complicity and the conspiracies against the Syrian people, and despite the embrace of the Assad regime by Biden’s allies in the region.
The second thing that came to mind is that, you know, Blinken and Biden keep warning us about ISIS, without mentioning that ISIS is basically the creation of the American invasion and occupation in Iraq, of the stupidities committed by everyone from Bush to Obama, how they dealt with the question of Iraq, including the de-Ba’athifications, including the dissolving of the Iraqi military, that basically led directly to the rise of ISIS.
So, really, American intervention in the region, whether it is in Iraq or in Syria, and certainly in Palestine, has been catastrophic. Trying to claim credit for what happened in Syria or could happen in Syria is just beyond the pale.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to the [White House] spokesperson Matt Miller, who was questioned by journalists recently.
MATTHEW MILLER: So, we support the work of the ICC. I know that, obviously, we have disagreed with their —
MATT LEE: Wait a second.
MATTHEW MILLER: Hold on. Hold on. I’m going to — let me address it.
MATT LEE: No, you support the work of the ICC —
MATTHEW MILLER: We do support —
MATT LEE: — until they do something like with Israel.
MATTHEW MILLER: We — so, we have had a lot — let me just answer the question.
MATT LEE: And then you don’t like them at all, or the U.S.
MATTHEW MILLER: You know what, Matt? Let me — Matt, let me answer the question, because I was addressing that before you interrupted me.
We obviously have had a jurisdictional dispute with them as it relates to cases against Israel. That is a long-standing jurisdictional dispute. But that said, we have also made clear that we support broadly their work, and we have supported their work in other cases, despite our jurisdictional dispute when it comes to Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s State Department spokesperson Matt Miller being questioned by AP’s Matt Lee, talking about why he would support Assad being brought up on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court but doesn’t feel the same way about Netanyahu and Gallant. In fact, that was just a few days after Gallant had been in Washington, DC, even though the ICC has issued this arrest warrant, meeting with US officials. Marwan Bishara?
MARWAN BISHARA: You know, Amy, it’s funny, right? I mean, each and every era has an image that speaks to it, that represents it, that reflects it. This was one of them, laughing out, laughing at the State Department spokesperson, the Biden administration’s spokesperson, for again underlining, emphasizing and basically speaking clearly to his double standard and hypocrisy.
But, you know, as an international relations observer, let me tell you, America does not have double standards in the Middle East. It has a single standard. And that’s American interest, American-Israeli interest. So, it’s not really a double standard. I mean, you know, global powers, empires, and notably the United States, it looks like, for us intellectuals and others, moralists, that there is double standard, but in the end of the day, they have a single, narrow American strategic, Israeli strategic interest, and they’ve always spoken to it, defended it, justified it.
So, that’s why for 15 months we’ve seen — at Al Jazeera, we’ve reported from — live from Gaza the unraveling genocide, the war on doctors, the war on journalists, the war on children, on schools and hospitals. And a lot of this has trickled down to the American media, and we’ve seen it.
And I think the Biden administration understands that there is a genocide, trying to get off on technicality. Of course, again, this was exposed to be the total hypocrisy which it is. It’s OK for Putin to be taken or indicted by the ICC, and Assad, it’s OK, even the Myanmar generals, it’s OK, but not the Israeli leaders.
It’s hypocrisy and double standard for the rest of us. For America, it’s the one single standard: American-Israeli interest.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I also wanted to ask you about Gaza, which the rest of the world keeps trying to forget, the atrocity still going on there. At least three journalists killed in Israeli attacks this weekend, including Al Jazeera cameraman Ahmed Al-Louh, as well as Mohammed Balousha, who last November was first to report — about the intensive care babies who died after Israeli soldiers forcibly evacuated of the Al-Nasr Hospital. Your response to these latest attacks on your fellow journalists?
MARWAN BISHARA: You know, we’ve been covering this for a while. And at one point, you start asking yourself the question: Is this intentional? Or is it actually, you know, war, as it were, you know, just it happens? But then, when we started investigating and others started investigating and when the UN started looking at it, as we did when our own journalists were killed in the West Bank, clearly there is an intentional policy of assassinating journalists in Gaza.
They are the eyewitnesses of the unraveling genocide, and hence getting rid of them is a thing that Israel has been doing now for 15, 16 months.
Now, why has this become more and more believable is when, then, more and more human rights organisations start reporting about how children are being targeted, I mean, you know, shooting at children in the head and in the chest. We’ve seen that by doctors, including Western doctors, American doctors, reporting about that.
Then, slowly but surely, one starts to believe that, in fact, there is a government, there is an army, that is capable of killing doctors intentionally, killing journalists intentionally, in fact, killing children intentionally.
And all that happens while — I don’t want to talk about American journalists — while Israeli journalists are silent. Israeli journalists are silent as countless Palestinian journalists are killed by their military. Israeli doctors are silent as Israel assassinates countless doctors in the 15, 16 clinical or hospital facilities in Gaza, or what remains of them.
So, it’s not just the incredible ugliness of it all, the rogueness of it all, the inhumanity of it all. What kills me is the silence in Israel, in the United States and elsewhere.
AMY GOODMAN: Marwan Bishara, we thank you for being with us, Al Jazeera senior political analyst, speaking to us from Doha.
