New research argues the priority now should be addressing the real driver of multiple ecological crises -- our own maladaptive behaviours.Image: The Conversation/Getty
ANALYSIS: By Mike Joy and Phoebe Barnard
As the world grapples with multiple ecological crises, it’s clear the various responses over the past half century have largely failed. Our new research argues the priority now should be addressing the real driver of these crises — our own maladaptive behaviours.
For at least five decades, scientists have worked to understand and document how human demands exceed Earth’s regenerative capacity, causing “ecological overshoot”.
Those warnings of the threats posed by the overshoot’s many symptoms, including climate change, were perhaps naive. They assumed people and governments would respond logically to existential threats by drastically changing behaviours.
The young researchers in the 1970s who published the Limits to Growth computer models showed graphically what would happen over the next century if business-as-usual economic growth continued.
Once people saw the results of the research, the authors believed, they would understand the trajectory the world was on and reduce consumption accordingly. Instead, they saw their work dismissed and business-as-usual play out.
The behavioural crisis During these past five decades, there have been innumerable reports, speeches and data, ever more strident in their predictions. Yet there has been no change in the economic growth trajectory.
The first world scientists’ warning to humanity was published in 1992 as an open letter, signed by hundreds of scientists and detailing how human activities damage the environment.
A second notice in 2017, which thousands of scientists signed, included this stark statement:
If the world doesn’t act soon, there will be catastrophic biodiversity loss and untold amounts of human misery.
Many of those working in the natural sciences felt they were doing what they could to prevent this “ghastly future” unfolding. Researchers even laid out a framework of actions for the world to take, including human population planning and diminishing per capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat and other resources.
But few meaningful changes have been achieved.
By taking a different perspective, our research explores intervention points and demonstrates the behavioural roots of ecological overshoot. It is a collaboration with behaviour-change strategists in the marketing industry, and grew partly from their disaffection with the outcomes of their work on human and planetary health.
Behind the research sits a stark statistic: the wealthiest 16 percent of humanity is responsible for 74 percent of excess energy and material use. This reflects a crisis of human behaviour. It is the outcome of many individual choices involving resource acquisition, wastefulness and accumulation of wealth and status.
Some of these choices may have served humans well in the evolutionary past. In a modern global economy, however, they become maladaptive behaviours that threaten all complex life on Earth.
The ‘growth delusion’ Current interventions to restrain climate change — just one symptom of ecological overshoot — are failing to curb emissions. Last year, global emissions of carbon dioxide reached a new high, partly as a result of air travel rebounding after the covid pandemic.
We argue that trying to fix an accelerating problem with slow solutions is itself the problem. Instead, we need to treat the root causes of ecological overshoot and its behavioural drivers, rather than be distracted by patching up its many symptoms.
Japanese solar power system operator Advantec signed a memorandum of understanding with the Philippines on Thursday to supply renewable energy to factories, aiming to eventually set up emergency backup power systems in the country.https://t.co/SVMeveVCXS
A prime example is the current “solution” to climate change through a full transition to renewable energy systems. This simply replaces one form of energy with another, but doesn’t address the rising demand for energy that enabled overshoot in the first place.
Such interventions are incremental, resource intensive, slow moving and flawed: they aim to maintain rather than manage current levels of consumption. This “growth delusion” offers a false hope that technology will allow human society to avoid the need for change.
An emergency response To overcome the critical disconnect between science, the economy and public understanding of these issues, an interdisciplinary response will be needed.
Paradoxically, the marketing, media and entertainment industries — central to the manipulation of human behaviours towards resource acquisition and waste — may offer the best way to reorient that behaviour and help avoid ecological collapse.
Logically, the same behavioural strategies that fuelled consumerism can do the reverse and create the necessary desire for a stable state.
Understanding the many dimensions of the behavioural crisis, including the influence of power structures and vested interests in a market economy, is crucial. Defusing and even co-opting those forces to reform the economy and reverse the damage is the challenge.
It will require a concerted multi-disciplinary effort to identify the best ways to produce a rapid global adoption of new norms for consumption, reproduction and waste. The survival of complex life on Earth is the goal.
This research was led by Joseph Merz of the New Zealand-based Merz Institute and its Overshoot Behaviour Lab. Other authors include energy researcher Chris Rhodes; economist and ecologist Bill Rees; and behavioural science practitioner and vice chair of advertising company Ogilvy, Rory Sutherland.
The United Nations has called for an independent international investigation into the devastating blast at the packed Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City earlier this week which killed more than 470 people. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot/PMW
Major media organisations all over the world are copping criticism for the way they are reporting what is happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch has asked BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they are handling it — even when it is coming from the UK’s own government.
“Palestinian health officials in Gaza say hundreds of people have been killed in an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. They’re blaming an Israeli strike on the hospital.
“But the Israel DefenCe Forces said an initial investigation shows the explosion was caused by a failed Hamas rocket launch.”
That was how RNZ’s news at 8am last Tuesday reported the single deadliest incident of this conflict so far — and likely to be the deadliest one in all of the five times Israel and Hamas have fought over Gaza so far.
The Israeli Defence Force also singled out Islamic Jihad for the atrocity — but the absence of hard evidence put the media reporting it in a difficult position.
“It’s still absolutely unclear. There are varying bits of information that are coming out for now. I don’t think anybody can quite say . . . it’s most likely to have been Israel,” the BBC Middle East editor Sebastian Usher told RNZ on Wednseday night.
“They said it seems like it might be a misfired rocket,”
Huge anger on streets
“We can’t say for now, but I don’t think — in terms of the mood in the Arab world and the Middle East — that that really matters. People out on the streets are showing huge anger and they will reject any investigation, any Israeli claim, to say that Israel is not responsible,” he said.
Reporting those claims and counterclaims creates confusion among the audience. It’s also stoked the anger of those objecting to reporters’ choice of words.
CNN’s Clarissa Ward, for example, was criticised heavily on social media for mentioning the Israeli Defense Force claims — and then expressing doubt about them at the same time.
A video showing a pro-Palestinian protester calling Clarissa Ward “a puppet” has gone viral on social media. So did another falsely accusing her of faking a rocket strike.
The longer version of the video of Egyptian podcaster Rahma Zein confronting CNN reporter Clarissa Ward at the Rafah crossing. It’s raw, sincere, and powerful. Much respect for Rahma, she expressed our collective pain at the Western media’s dehumanization of the Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/yfB7zFYPwe
Her CNN colleague Anderson Cooper was also criticised online for referring to a huge civilian loss of life during the live report from Tel Aviv in Israel and repeating himself, but then without the word “civilian”.
“Who was behind the Gaza hospital blast? – visual investigation” Image: 4News Screenshot/PMW
“Israel and Hamas can tweet what they like. The truth of what happened here requires independent expert investigation — not happening,” was Alex Thompson’s bleak conclusion.
‘A fierce information war’
“Any doubt is due to a fierce information war that in truth matters little to the victims of the Gaza hospital tragedy,” another British correspondent — ITV Jonathan Irvine — said on Newshub at 6 last Tuesday.
At times, broadcasters have used the wrong words and given audiences the wrong idea.
Last week the BBC’s main evening news bulletin made a rapid apology for describing pro-Palestine protests in the UK as “pro-Hamas”.
“We accept that this was poorly-phrased and was a misleading description,” the presenter told viewers just before the end of the bulletin.
And earlier this month, people protested outside the BBC News headquarters in London about the BBC’s long-standing policy of not labeling any group as “terrorists”.
“You don’t seem to be particularly interested. If the BBC seems to refuse to call terrorists even though the British Parliament has legislated them terrorists — that is a question I haven’t heard the BBC answer yet,” UK government Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told the BBC radio flagship news show Today.
“Have you not seen any of the coverage on the BBC of the atrocities, the dead, the injured, the survivors?” the startled presenter asked him.
“How can you say that we’re not interested?” she replied, when Shapps said he had.
An obligation to audiences
The BBC’s deputy chief executive of news Jonathan Munro was at Sydney’s South by Southwest festival this week to talk about how the BBC delivers news from and about conflict zones.
BBC’s deputy chief executive of news Jonathan Munro . . . “We’ve already seen journalists lose their lives in this country, working for organisations who are also facing the same dilemmas as we are.” Image: RNZ Mediawatch
“We’ve already seen journalists lose their lives in this country, working for organisations who are also facing the same dilemmas as we are,” said Munro, who is also the BBC’s director of journalism.
“We’ve got an obligation to audiences to explain what’s going on and that involves lots of people on the ground as witnesses to events, but also the analysis that comes with expert knowledge,” he told Mediawatch.
“Expertise is just invaluable. People like Jeremy Bowen (former Middle East editor and current international editor of BBC News) and our chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and correspondents who are based in that region,” he said.
“But the main story here is the catastrophic loss of life and the appalling conditions that people are living in and that the hostages are being held in — the humanity of that,” he said.
A lot of reporting people will see, hear and read will come from Israel. Reporting from Gaza itself is difficult and dangerous — and access to Gaza at the border is restricted by Israel.
“We have a correspondent in Gaza, but he’s moved from Gaza City to Khan Yunis in the south of the strip, a safer option. But he can’t report 24 hours a day, and he is looking after his family which is paramount.
Need for transparency
“So we do have to add to that [with] reporting from Israel and from London by people who know Gaza very well,” he said.
“We have to be transparent about that and tell the audience and then the audience knows that wherever it’s coming from, and you still hold editorial integrity.”
A lot of what people will be seeing from Gaza is amateur footage and social media content that’s very difficult to verify.
The BBC recently launched BBC Verify, dedicated to checking out this kind of material and vetting its use.
“There’s a huge amount of video out there on social media we can all find at the touch of a button. The brand of BBC Verify is a signpost that the material . . . has been checked by us using methods like geolocation and looking at the metadata,” he said.
Even when verified, there are still ethical dilemmas.
For example, BBC Verify used facial recognition software to analyse images of an individual in the Hamas surprise attacks on October 8. It identified one gunman as a policeman from Gaza.
Independently verifying claims
“It’s case-by-case — but something shouldn’t go out on the BBC without us knowing it’s true. There are occasions we would broadcast something and we would tell the audience that we’ve not been able to independently verify a claim . . . and we need to caveat our coverage of the reaction to it with the fact that we do not have our own verification of source material,” he said.
Major media outfits all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch asks BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it – even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government https://t.co/gm8Fyv4ar1
Even before the Al Ahli hospital catastrophe amplified emotions, intense scrutiny of reporters’ work was adding to the stress of those reporting from the region.
“Every word you say is being scrutinised so closely and is likely to be contested by one side or the other more or both — and that definitely adds to the pressure,” Channel Four correspondent Secunder Kermani told the BBC’s Media Show last week from Gaza.
“In the Israel Gaza situation it is critical. Every word can be checked and rechecked and double checked for any implication which is either inferred or implied by accident.
“Because our job is to be impartial, tell the reality of the story, and most importantly, share the witnessing of that story by our correspondents,” Jonathan Munro told Mediawatch.
“That’s why we’ve got a significant number of correspondents in Israel and back in the newsroom in London are adding explanations and leaning into that scrutiny on language,” he said.
Adjectives ‘can be dangerous’
“We’re using expertise, our knowledge as an organisation and we’re making sure that at every stage of that every sentence, every paragraph is reflective of what we know to be true.
“But adjectives can be dangerous, because they may imply something which is more emotive than we mean. We have to be quite clean in our language in these circumstances,” he said.
“Of course, people can come on the BBC and express their views in language of their choice. All of those things help to keep our coverage straight and honest and ensure that correspondents on the ground aren’t in danger by slips or mistakes that are made in good faith elsewhere in the BBC output.”
Last week at its annual conference, senior members of the Conservative Party — which is in power in the UK — heavily criticised the BBC for alleged bias and elitism. Some — including home secretary Suella Braverman and former prime minister Liz Truss made a point of praising GB News — the new right-wing TV channel backed by billionaire Brexiteers — for disrupting the news.
“The criticism of the BBC from politicians is as old as the BBC itself. Just because they’re habitual critics doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but we’ve got a well developed set of editorial guidelines which have stood the test of time over many, many difficult stories,” Munro told Mediawatch.
“The editorial guidelines are robust and public. You can go online and look at them. All of our journalism abides by those guidelines and if you have guidelines that you believe in as an organisation, that’s a significant defence to some of the less well-founded attacks that we sometimes find ourselves on the end of,” he said.
Colin Peacock is RNZ Mediawatch presenter. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Fiji flag flies high in the middle of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Auckland’s Aotea Square today. Image: Del Abcede/APR
About 5000 pro-Palestinian supporters gathered in Auckland’s Aotea Square and marched down Queen Street today calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid in the War on Gaza. A co-organiser, Ming Al-Ansan, said: “We want our voices heard. Palestinian lives matter, so if we don’t do this then the media is not going to notice us.” Palestinian human rights advocate Janfrie Wakim gave the following address to the supporters.
“There is no ‘both sides’ to a genocide” . . . solidarity messages of New Zealand pro-Palestinian supporters in Auckland’s Aotea Square today. Image: David Robie/APR
SPEECH: By Janfrie Wakim
Tena koutou Tena koutou Tena koutou katoa
Salaam Aleikum Ma’haba
Greetings to you all and thank you for coming here today to express your solidarity with the Palestinian people — in Gaza particularly — but Palestinians everywhere.
Free Free . . . Palestine!
I acknowledge the indigenous people of Aotearoa — Māori tangatawhenua, who 183 years ago signed the Tiriti o Waitangi with colonists from Britain. Also, Ngati Whatua of Orakei, manawhenua, on whose land we gather today and who battled the settler-colonialism at Takaparawha-Bastion Point in the 1970s.
History matters!
I stand here in solidarity with the indigenous people of Palestine who also have been dispossessed by the settler-colonialism of Zionist Jews.
An unfolding catastrophe
Today we are especially mindful of Palestinians in Gaza who are experiencing an unfolding catastrophe of epic and genocidal proportions.
We appeal to our elected leaders, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, and outgoing prime minister Chris Hipkins, to demand an immediate ceasefire and stop the carnage.
“From the river . . . ” placard in Auckland’s Aotea Square. Image: David Robie/APR
Throughout the world we see the massive outpouring of support for Palestinians. Not from the leaders and politicians but from ordinary citizens — like us — especially those who have some capacity to act.
History matters. Facts matter. Human rights of all people matter.
To take a stand you must understand.
Rightly we know and are reminded of European racism which culminated in the Holocaust.
About 5000 pro-Palestinian marchers took part in today’s march down Queen Street in the heart of Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR
Sustained by lies
The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to the colonisation of Palestinian land and the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation.
Israel is sustained by lies: from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to its birth in 1948 when the indigenous Palestinians were driven out — most to Gaza. (750,000 of the 1 million inhabitants of historic Palestine).
It’s a lie that Israel wants a just and equitable peace and will support a Palestinian state.
It’s a lie that Israel respects the rule of law and human rights.
Free Free . . . Palestine.
We must ensure the history of the Palestinian struggle for justice is known and understood. Hold our media and leaders to account.
John Minto is the chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and he regularly speaks out.
Western politicians and Western media are the source of the problem. If this war had been reported accurately from the outset, Palestinians would have the state of Palestine where religion, ethnicity and human rights were respected — as they were before European colonisation of Palestine early last century.
Hope is not enough. We must take action — Go to www.psna.nz and keep in touch with the local movement. Voice your alarm. Educate your friends, inform your workmates, challenge politicians — local as well as national.
Show your solidarity
Visit your MPs — insist on meeting face to face. This is especially important now that we have new MPs.
Join our monthly rallies in Takutai Square . . . show your solidarity.
That justice for Palestinians is achieved is not only a matter for the Palestinian people but also a symbol of overcoming injustice everywhere for all humanity.
As a mother and grandmother, I say: “Make Peace Not War!”
Nelson Mandela, who roundly applauded actions of the anti-apartheid movement in Aotearoa New Zealand, said: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Justice is the seed . . . peace is the flower. Kia Kaha Mauri Ora!
Janfrie Wakim is a New Zealand campaigner for human rights in Palestine.
“Israel and the USA have blood on their hands” and New Zealand’s “silence” over the Gaza genocide came in for condemnation in today’s pro-Palestinian demonstration. Image: David Robie/APR
As we prepared for this podcast, representatives of Arab states have presented a united front at the United Nations, criticising the UN Security Council of doing nothing to protect civilians from Israeli bombing and missile attacks on Gazan civilians and locations.
Since then, the UN Security Council has considered two resolutions, the latter calling for a pause in hostilities to allow a humanitarian effort to enter Gaza to assist civilians.
The United States vetoed that Security Council resolution.
Al Jazeera has detailed that Israel forces have targeted and bombed civilian facilities include hospitals, schools, residential areas resulting in the deaths of thousands of people, civilians – around one-third of the deaths are children.
It remains contested by all sides in this conflict as to who, or what, is responsible for the deadly attack on Gaza Hospital, resulting in the deaths of at least 471 people.
Additional to this, Israel has sealed the borders of Gaza while it prevents food, water and medical supplies from reaching civilians — in breach of international law requirements and laws of conflict.
Israel ordered Gazan civilians, who wish to get to safety, to get out of North Gaza and move toward the south, to the border with Egypt.
Heavy bombing, sealed border
But as people fled south toward what appeared to be safety, Israel bombed the southern Gaza region killing more civilians and sealing off that corridor for others who sought refuge.
As a consequence of the bombing, Egypt responded by sealing the Gaza-Egypt border.
Humanitarian aid now sits on trucks, waiting, on the Egypt side of the border, while United Nations officials implore Israel and Egypt to allow medical supplies, food and water to get through to those who are injured and dying.
The Israel Defence Force strikes followed a surprise-attack on Israeli citizens by soldiers operating under the Hamas banner.
Civilians were slaughtered and others taken hostage, only to be used as bargaining chips and leverage against their enemies.
Even Palestinian advocacy groups like the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa suggested that breaches of international humanitarian Law, crimes against civilians, have been committed by those Hamas-aligned fighters.
But they are clear, as others are too, that crimes against humanity, war crimes, have been committed by Israel, without consequence, as we all give witness to its response which is disproportionate, brutal, and disregarding of the thousands of Palestinian lives that have already been taken.
The View From Afar podcast about the War on Gaza.
Getting worse That is the grave current situation and it is likely to get much worse.
In this episode, Selwyn Manning and global security and geopolitics analyst Dr Paul Buchanan discuss the crisis on Thursday:
What are the world’s leaders doing to stop the carnage?
Are the world’s nations being drawn into what will be an ever-expanding war?
Are we witnessing the beginning of a war where on one side authoritarian-led states like Russia, Iran, the wider Arab states, and possibly China stand unified against the United States, Britain, Germany, and other so-called liberal democratic allies representing the old world order?
Is what we are witnessing, what happens when a global rules-based order, multilateralism and institutions like the United Nations no longer have influence to prevent war, or restore peace and stability, or assert principles of international justice and enforce the rights of victims to see recourse to the law?
Why has this slaughter become an opportunity for the US and Russia to square-off against each other at the UN Security Council — a body that was once designed to advocate and achieve peace, but has now become a geopolitically divided entity of stalemate and mediocrity?
Eventually, will humanitarianism prevail? Will the world recognise that all people, the elderly, women, children, people of all ethnicities and religions, that they all bleed and die irrespective of their state of origin, when leaders of all sides, while sitting back in their bunkers, unleash weapons designed to kill as many people as is possible?
This is how the city of Zahraa in the middle of the Gaza Strip was flattened after Israeli warplanes destroyed residential towers in it. This is a dynamic which has its roots in the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe) and erases Palestinian voices, history, presence, aspirations and identity. Image: @OnlinePalEng
ANALYSIS:By M. Muhannad Ayyash
American President Joe Biden is among the latest Western politicians to land in Tel Aviv in a show of support to Israel.
Biden was also set to meet Palestinian and Arab leaders in the Jordanian capital Amman. But Jordan cancelled the meeting after a reported airstrike on October 17 killed about 500 people at a Gaza hospital.
In the days after Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel, European and North American governments (with few exceptions) were quick to provide a unified and consistent message of support for Israel.
That message contains at least four interconnected elements:
Israel is the victim of an unprovoked terrorist attack;
The West fully stands with Israel against the barbaric and wanton violence of the Palestinians; and
Hamas is to blame (either partially or fully) for all civilian deaths on both sides since they began these hostilities and forced Israel’s hand while hiding behind civilians.
Palestinians erased There are a few important features of this message, but I want to focus on two that highlight the West’s double standards.
This is a dynamic which has its roots in the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) and erases Palestinian voices, history, presence, aspirations and identity from public discourse.
Political, media and educational institutions in the West regularly sideline and silence Palestinians and their supporters. This is not just an issue among the right-wing or even centrists, but occurs across the political spectrum.
Here in Canada, a statement by progressive Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow painted a rally in support of Palestinians as allegedly supporting violence and as a threat to the safety and security of Canadian Jews. That statement is still up on her X account.
This is precisely the anti-Palestinian narrative that has permeated in the West for years: that all support for Palestine is inherently violent and driven by antisemitic hatred of all Jews. Thus, in the name of anti-racism, Palestinians and their supporters are denounced and even criminalised.
Differing reactions to civilian death Second, the double standard is on display in the reactions we have seen to the killing of Israeli civilians and the reactions — or lack thereof — to the killing of Palestinian civilians. Many are rightly highlighting Western hypocrisy by drawing comparisons to how the West responded to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
We need to look at how Western governments have responded to the killing of Israeli civilians versus the killing of Palestinian civilians. For the Israeli state and Israeli victims, political, military, economic, cultural and social institutions have fully mobilised to provide support.
The same is entirely absent for the Palestinians. For the Palestinians, there are no evacuations. Aircraft carriers are not sent to provide military support. Mainstream political and cultural discourse does not humanise Palestinian life and mourn Palestinian death.
Aid relief is withheld and used as a bargaining counter. Economic support is not forthcoming. Institutions do not send Palestinians messages of support.
In some ways, this silence is not surprising. No one expressing support for Israel risks losing their livelihood. Many who have voiced solidarity with Palestinians have lost their jobs, been rebuked, suspended and faced doxing.
More than 400 congressional staffers signed a letter urging Congress to back a cease-fire in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/WT99B79n4f
Western self-interest States are not moral entities, but act purely in self-interest. Palestinian freedom and liberation does not align with the interests of the US-led West.
Therefore, Western institutions repeat the increasingly weak talking point that “terrorism” is the cause of all the violence. This talking point is used to provide Israel with the green light to unleash uninhibited violence against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Jerusalem.
The idea that Western governments and institutions are horrified by violence against civilians rings hollow because of their silence when it comes to violence against Palestinian civilians and other groups around the world.
This only scratches the surface of the violence that Palestinians continuously experience, and have experienced, since well before Hamas was formed.
I’m confused. When Ukrainians attacked back after Russia’s invasion, the US celebrated them. When Palestinians do the same against Israeli occupation, they’re condemned.
Filter the propaganda through this lens: the US empire will always choose sides based on its own interests.
Palestinians continue to suffer what Palestinian scholars Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha have called an ongoing Nakba and genocide of the Palestinian people. Yet, when Palestinians suffer, as they are now in Gaza, what Israeli historian and expert on genocide Raz Segal has called “a textbook case of genocide,” Western governments remain silent.
Western condemnations of the rampage were muted or non-existent.
Hundreds of scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies are now sounding the alarm about the possibility of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The stories of Palestinian lives that end with the sudden drop of a bomb are not told. Palestinian voices that explain the settler colonialism they suffer remain sidelined. And Palestinian aspirations for decolonised liberation are denied.
The West’s institutional reaction is not just hypocritical, it is an expression of where Western governments stand on the question of Palestine. The West is an active participant in the erasure of Palestine, and when moments of intensified violence like this happen, the West’s true position becomes clear for all to see.
However, people power across the world, including in the US, provide reason for hope. Increasingly, many in the West are disgusted and ashamed by the erasure of Palestine and the killing of Palestinian civilians.
More people are joining the protests and calling for the siege on Gaza to be lifted once and for all. More people power is needed to demand that governments do everything they can to resolve this issue, which can only begin to move towards peace and justice when the Palestinian people are free.
Te Pāti Māori's co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer . . . . "We have failed horrifically to do anything proactive since the beginning [on Gaza]." Image: RNZ
Te Pāti Māori wants the incoming and outgoing governments of Aotearoa New Zealand to use the country’s strong international voice to insist on an urgent ceasefire between Israel and Gaza.
“I’d like anyone in the government to come out loud and clear in the condemnation of the killing of thousands of innocent people in Palestine,” Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told RNZ Morning Report today.
“We’ve got a history in Aotearoa of indigenous people in a colonial context and I am deeply upset as Te Pāti Māori on the absolute failure of our [country’s] leadership and our foreign policy which talks about a values-based approach.
“We talk about supporting a peace-based approach and the two-state solution but we have failed horrifically to do anything proactive since the beginning.
“And we have seen the contradiction in [contrast to] how we have been with Afghanistan and Ukraine in the recent past.
“What we need to see is Aotearoa take a strong stance on the killing of innocent people.
‘Not two-sided’
“It is not a two-sided situation here [in the war on Gaza]. We only have one side living under military occupation and we need to be much stronger on what we have called for — absolute peace and allowing humanitarian aid in.”
Outgoing Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta declined RNZ’s request for an interview, citing the constraints of the current caretaker government provisions.
While National — which also said no to our request to speak to their foreign policy spokesperson Gerry Brownlee — referred to Prime Minister-elect Christopher Luxon’s statement that the government should be speaking for all New Zealanders on the situation.
Pacific Media Watch reports at least 3785 people have been killed in the bombing of Gaza and 81 in the Occupied West Bank and 12,493 have been wounded — including 2000 children and 1400 women.
Since the surprise Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, at least 1403 people have been killed, including 306 soldiers and 57 police.
Hamas is reported to be holding 203 civilian and military hostages.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and Asia Pacific Report.
The rise in drug trafficking through Fiji is just one part of a booming trans-Pacific trade that experts and law enforcement say has become one of the world’s most profitable. Graphic: James O’Brien/OCCRP/RNZ Pacific
By Aubrey Belford, Stevan Dojcinovic, Jared Savage and Kelvin Anthony in an OCCRP investigation
The operator of a Pacific-wide network of pharmacy companies, Aiyaz Mohammed Musa Umarji, was sentenced to four years prison in New Zealand in August for illegally importing millions of dollars worth of pseudoephedrine, a precursor chemical of methamphetamine.
Umarji, a Fijian national, had long been a target of police in his home country but had for years escaped justice thanks to what Fijian and international law enforcement say was an unwillingness by the previous authoritarian government of Voreqe Bainimarama to seriously tackle meth and cocaine trafficking.
Fiji’s new government, which was elected last December, is now investigating donations that Umarji and his family made to the previous ruling party, as well as “potential connections” to top law enforcement officials.
Until recently, Aiyaz Mohammed Musa Umarji was — in public at least — a pillar of Fiji’s business community.
With ownership of a Pacific-wide pharmacy network, Umarji and his family were significant donors to the party that repressively ruled the country until it lost power in elections last December. He was also a major figure in sports, serving as a vice president of the Fiji Football Association and as a committee member in soccer’s global governing body, FIFA.
And he did it all as an internationally wanted drug trafficker.
Umarji’s fall finally came in August this year, after he ended a period of self-imposed exile in India and surrendered himself to authorities in New Zealand to face years-old charges. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison for importing at least NZ$5-$6 million (US$2.9-3.5 million) worth of pseudoephedrine — a precursor for methamphetamine – into the country.
But behind the conviction of Umarji, 47, lies a far murkier story of impunity, a joint investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), The Fiji Times, The New Zealand Herald and Radio New Zealand has found.
Aiyaz Mohammed Musa Umarji (right) shakes hands with Fiji Football Association President Rajesh Patel. Image: Baljeet Singh/The Fiji Times
Umarji was able to thrive for years amid a failure by senior officials of Fiji’s previous authoritarian government to confront a rise in meth and cocaine trafficking through the Pacific Island country.
And when New Zealand authorities finally issued an international warrant for his arrest, Umarji was able to flee Fiji under suspicious circumstances.
Reporters found that Umarji and his family donated at least F$70,000 (US$31,000) to the country’s former ruling party, FijiFirst, in the years after he was first put under investigation. This included F$20,000 (US$8,700) given to the party ahead of last December’s election — roughly three years after he was first charged.
The party’s general secretary, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, was Fiji’s long-serving attorney-general and justice minister at the time.
Reporters also found that the Umarji family’s business network has continued to expand despite his legal troubles, and currently operates in three Pacific countries. The newest of these pharmacy companies, in Vanuatu, was founded just last year.
Fiji’s Minister for Immigration and Home Affairs, Pio Tikoduadua, told OCCRP an investigation has been opened into how Umarji was able to flee the country.
Ships at anchor in the harbour of Fiji’s capital, Suva. Image: Aubrey Belford/OCCRP/RNZ Pacific
He said authorities are also investigating donations Umarji and his family made to FijiFirst, and any “potential connections” he may have had to top officials in the former government, including Sayed-Khaiyum and the now-suspended Police Commissioner, Sitiveni Qiliho.
“Certainly, I am deeply concerned about the potential influence of drug traffickers in Fiji, especially over officials and law enforcement,” Tikoduadua said.
“The infiltration of these criminal elements poses a significant risk to our society and institutions.”
Umarji declined a request for an interview and did not respond to follow-up questions. His Auckland lawyer, David PH Jones, said a request from reporters contained “numerous loaded questions which contain unsubstantiated assertions, a number of which have little or nothing to do with Mr Umarji’s prosecution”.
Sayed-Khaiyum and Qiliho did not respond to written questions.
‘A hub of the Pacific’ The rise in drug trafficking through Fiji is just one part of a booming trans-Pacific trade that experts and law enforcement say has become one of the world’s most profitable.
In Australia, the most recent data shows that drug seizures have more than quadrupled over the last decade, and Australians now consume 4.7 tonnes of cocaine and 8.8 tonnes of meth a year. In much smaller New Zealand, drug users strongly prefer meth to cocaine, consuming roughly 720 kilograms a year.
Consumers in both countries pay some of the highest prices on earth for cocaine and meth, much of it exported from the Americas. Lying in the vast blue expanse between the two points are the Pacific Islands.
The Pacific meth cocaine route map. Map: Edin Pasovic/OCCRP/RNZ Pacific
“Fiji is a hub of the Pacific. You’ve got the ports, you’ve got the infrastructure, and you’ve got the ability to come in and out either by [water] craft or by airplane,” said Glyn Rowland, the New Zealand Police senior liaison officer for the Pacific.
“So that really leaves Fiji quite vulnerable to be in that transit route off to New Zealand and off to Australia.”
Fiji has long been eyed by international organised crime for its strategic location close to Australia and New Zealand’s multi-billion dollar drug markets.
In the early 2000s, for example, an international police operation took apart a “super lab” in Fiji’s capital, Suva, run by Chinese gangsters with enough precursor chemicals to produce a tonne of meth.
But after early successes, Fiji in recent years went cold on the fight against hard drugs.
The previous government of Voreqe Bainimarama, who first took power in a 2006 coup, showed little interest in tackling meth and cocaine trafficking, according to current and former law enforcement officers from Fiji and the US. Despite recent signs that trafficking was increasing, the police force under Bainimarama’s hand-picked commissioner, Qiliho, seemed to overlook the problem, the officers told OCCRP.
Bainimarama did not respond to questions.
Ernie Verina, the Oceania attaché for US Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), said his agency had become worried about trafficking through Fiji.
In mid-2022, HSI assigned an agent to be based in the country. But when the agent raised the issue of meth with top officials from Bainimarama’s government, he was met with total pushback, Verina said.
“Categorically, like, ‘There is no meth’,” Verina said of the Fijian response.
“That’s what they told the agent.”
A lot of influence Despite high-level denials, Fiji’s narcotics police were very much aware of the country’s drug trafficking crisis. In fact, they had long had Umarji in their sights. But he was a difficult target.
As far back as 2017, Umarji was identified as “one of the tier one” suspected traffickers in the country, said Serupepeli Neiko, the head of the Fiji Police’s Narcotics Bureau.
Umarji’s hometown of Lautoka, Fiji. Image: Aubrey Belford/OCCRP/RNZ Pacific
While the drug trade through Fiji is also the domain of transnational organised crime groups, Umarji was suspected of having carved out a niche for himself by using his network of pharmacies, Hyperchem, to legally import pseudoephedrine and divert it onto the black market, Neiko said.
In early 2017, Umarji and one of his colleagues were charged with weapons possession after scores of rifle bullets were found on his yacht, moored in his hometown of Lautoka. But the charges were “squashed in court,” Neiko said.
“So that gave a red flag to us that a [drug trafficking] case against Umarji would have been challenging as well.”
A former senior Fijian officer, who declined to be identified because he is not authorised to speak to the media, put it more bluntly: “Umarji had a lot of influence with the previous government.”
Reporters found no evidence that any senior Fijian officials intervened against investigations into Umarji. But the perception that he had influence was powerful, current and former police officers said.
Indeed, since the fall of Bainimarama’s government last year, multiple senior officials have faced charges that they abused their positions, but none have been convicted.
The suspended police commissioner, Qiliho, and the former prime minister, Bainimarama, were both acquitted by a court on October 12 of charges that they had illegally interfered in a separate police investigation.
Former Attorney-General Sayed-Khaiyum is also currently facing prosecution in another unrelated abuse of office case.
Despite becoming a top-level police target, Umarji continued to expand his influence in Fiji.
Company records show that, in 2015, he and his wife, Zaheera Cassim, opened Hyperchem companies in Fiji, Solomon Islands, and a now-defunct branch in Samoa.
In May 2017, Umarji opened a new company, Bio Pharma, in New Zealand.
Ahead of elections the following year, Umarji and his relatives donated a total of at least F$50,000 to the FijiFirst party, declarations from the Fiji Elections Office show.
Umarji also made a name for himself in soccer, getting elected a vice-president of the Fiji Football Association in December 2019.
Pills and cash By 2019, it was clear that avenues for a Fijian investigation were closed. So police in New Zealand stepped in instead. Reporters were able to reconstruct what happened next via court records and interviews.
While seconded that year to Fiji’s Transnational Crime Unit, New Zealand detective Peter Reynolds heard whispers about Umarji’s alleged criminal activity from his local colleagues. On returning to New Zealand, he decided to take things into his own hands.
Digging through police files, Reynolds found a lucky break in a case from nearly two years prior.
In late 2017, an anonymous member of the public had reached out to an anti-crime hotline with a tip that a businessman, Firdos “Freddie” Dalal, had a suspicious amount of money in his home in suburban Auckland.
Acting on a warrant, police made their way inside and found NZ$726,190 in cash and 4000 boxes of Actifed, a cold and flu medicine that contains pseudoephedrine.
Umarji NZ route map. Image: Edin Pasovic, James O’Brien/OCCRP/RNZ Pacific
Known as Operation Duet, the investigation that led to Dalal’s conviction provided the information that Reynolds needed to go after Umarji. It turned out that Dalal, who owned an Auckland-based freight forwarding company, was also listed as the director of Umarji’s New Zealand company, Bio Pharma.
Reynolds soon figured out how it all worked. Using his Pacific-wide Hyperchem network, Umarji ordered Actifed pills to be delivered from abroad to his pharmacies in Fiji and Solomon Islands. The shipments were set to transit through New Zealand, where Dalal’s forwarding company was responsible for the cargo.
While the drugs sat in a restricted customs holding area, Dalal simply went inside and swapped them out for other other medicine, such as anti-fungal cream, which was then sent on to their island destinations. The purloined pseudoephedrine was sold on New Zealand’s black market.
Dalal did not respond to questions.
In just three shipments between January and October 2017, Umarji’s operation brought in an estimated 678,000 Actifed pills containing about 40.7 kilograms of pseudoephedrine, Auckland District Court would later find.
But if deciphering Umarji’s operation was straightforward, arresting him would prove anything but.
New Zealand Police filed charges against Umarji in December 2019, but Reynolds told the Auckland court that he believed they faced little chance of getting Umarji to voluntarily fly to Auckland and show up in court.
“If the summons were to be served it would likely result in Umarji fleeing [Fiji] to a country that has no extradition arrangements with New Zealand,” the detective said in an affidavit.
So New Zealand authorities decided to go through the arduous process of requesting extradition. In November 2021, a Fijian court agreed to the request, and New Zealand Police issued an Interpol red notice.
Despite all the effort, within days Fiji Police had to contact their New Zealand counterparts with an embarrassing admission: Umarji had fled the country, and was in India.
New Zealand Police’s Pacific liaison, Rowland, declined to comment on how Umarji was able to flee Fiji, but added: “The reality is, sometimes corruption isn’t about what you do. Sometimes corruption is about what you don’t do, or turn a blind eye to.”
Despite his legal troubles, Umarji remained a respectable public figure in Fiji, thanks in part to a restrictive media environment that made it difficult for reporters to look into him in detail.
In May 2021, while Umarji was still in Fiji and his extradition case was pending, he was elected to FIFA’s governance, audit and compliance committee. He kept the position even after his flight abroad later that year, and was re-elected unopposed as Fiji Football Association vice president this June. He only resigned both positions on August 7, two days before his sentencing.
FIFA and the Fiji Football Association did not respond to questions.
Umarji also made little effort to hide during his exile in India. At one stage last year, he recorded an online video testimonial for a stem cell clinic outside of Delhi where he said he was getting treatment for diabetes.
His family’s second round of donations to FijiFirst, F$20,000 ahead of last December’s elections, were similarly made while Umarji was on the run.
But the drug trafficker eventually tired of exile.
In early 2022, he first contacted his high-powered Auckland lawyer, Jones, to arrange his surrender to New Zealand Police. He pleaded guilty to the Auckland court earlier this year and was allowed to return to Fiji to sort his affairs before handing himself in for sentencing.
Hyperchem’s warehouse and office in Lautoka. Image Aubrey Belford/OCCRP/RNZ Pacific
New focus With Umarji now in prison, Fijian authorities say they are continuing to investigate his operations.
Umarji’s pharmaceutical business continues to run with his wife, Cassim, at its head. Cassim has for years been a significant public face for the businesses, including publicising its charitable work. She declined to respond to reporters’ questions.
OCCRP visited Umarji’s companies in Lautoka in late June, during the period in which he was allowed by the New Zealand court to briefly return to Fiji. Reporters found a bustling network of businesses, including a well-staffed warehouse and office on the edge of town for Hyperchem.
Reporters contacted Umarji by phone from the warehouse’s reception area, but he declined to come out for an interview and referred reporters to his lawyer.
Homeland Security Investigations’ Verina said the new government of Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has since removed roadblocks to investigating these sort of trafficking operations.
“We have started to see enforcement operations and arrests and holding individuals accountable for the methamphetamine smuggling,” Verina said.
A Palestinian child being rescued alive from the rubble of his family home, bombed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. Image: @OnlinePalEng/Screenshot from video/APR
COMMENTARY: By Jonathan Cook
Let’s say it again: The BIGGEST fake news comes from the establishment media. When the stakes are high, it barely bothers to hide its role as mouthpiece for Western propaganda.
This is another Iraqi WMD moment. We are being gaslit. Believe your eyes and ears, and the laws of physics, not the lies being peddled by our leaders and media about Tuesday night’s missile strike on the Baptist hospital in Gaza:
1. No Palestinian group has a rocket that can hit a hospital, killing hundreds. What they have are glorified fireworks that can cause minor damage and the occasional death or two. If Hamas or Islamic Jihad could cause the kind of damage that happened last night, you would hear about it happening in Tel Aviv or Ashkelon too.
2. Israel’s apologists (and there are lots of them) are sharing all sorts of videos unrelated to the hospital strike. But the video of the strike itself shows that an incredibly large and powerful weapon is used. Listen to the noise the missile makes just before the hit — that whooshing noise is caused by its phenomenal velocity as it cuts through the air. That is *not* the noise of a falling Palestinian rocket.
If you watch videos being shared of Palestinian rockets being fired, notice how slowly they travel. Almost at a snail’s pace. If they fail, they drop at free fall speed, not the near-supersonic speed of the missile that hit the hospital. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the laws of physics.
3. Israel’s apologists are trying to further muddy the waters by suggesting that either a Palestinian rocket fell, or was intercepted, and the rocket or fragments of it hit a very large ammo dump in the hospital. Let’s just accept the racist premise that hundreds of families were quite happy to seek safety next to a huge stash of explosives in the middle of a relentless Israeli bombing campaign.
Let’s also accept the fantastical idea that a falling glorified firework or fragment of it could penetrate the hospital’s strong walls and set off such an explosion. If all this was true, you would still see a series of secondary explosions as the arms were detonated by the initial explosion.
You don’t because there is only one explosion — from an enormous missile.
Israel told over 1 million Palestinians in occupied Gaza to flee south, then bombed them in their sleep.
Hours later, at least 500 people were killed in an attack on a hospital in central Gaza, say Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/Yc9zJfIQj1
4. It’s a desperate psyop, so Israel has now released a recording of two Hamas militants conveniently having a chat after the missile strike, discussing whether they or Islamic Jihad did it.
This is the same Israel that did not detect months of planning by Hamas that was needed to organise its breakout 10 days ago. But Israel got lucky this time, it seems, and just happened to be listening in when Huey and Louie decided to self-incriminate.
Remember Israel has a whole unit of “mistaravim”, Israeli Jewish undercover agents trained to pose as Palestinians and secretly operate among Palestinians.
Israel produced a highly popular TV series about such people in Gaza called Fauda. You have to be beyond credulous to think that Israel couldn’t, and wouldn’t, rig up a call like this to fool us, just as it regularly fools Palestinians in Gaza.
Most of the people spreading these lies know they are lies, including the media, and most especially the Middle East and defence correspondents.
At least a few, like the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen and Jon Donnison, are trying cautiously to suggest it’s unlikely a Hamas rocket could cause damage on the scale seen at the Gaza hospital.
But it’s not unlikely. It’s impossible, and they know it. They just don’t dare say it.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.
Palestinians and community supporters mourn the deaths in the Gaza hospital bombing and the "massacre" of civilians in the besieged enclave at a vigil in Auckland last night. Massive protests against the Israeli bombing of civilians have spread around the world, including a Jewish Voices for Peace demonstration at Capitol Hill , Washington. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
The October 17 attack led instantly to mass protests throughout Palestine and the Middle East and forced the Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian leaders to cancel a summit meeting the following day with US President Biden.
The deadly bombing of the hospital was preceded by bombardment of a UN-run school on the same day, in which at least six people were killed.
These tragedies have highlighted the humanitarian consequences of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, waged under the pretext of “self-defence”. Which mirrors its long history of pursuing maximum security at the expense of Palestinian lives, through disproportionate and indiscriminate use of military force.
Israel has tried to muddy the waters as it did after the assassination of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, by blaming the Palestinians for the hospital bombing.
It is easy to get lost in the midst of mayhem, death and destruction and forget how and why we have arrived at such madness.
Disenchanted old-timers, like the baffled newcomers, find it ever more challenging to make sense of the perpetual bloodshed and the endless recriminations, and wonder if there is ever a solution to this protracted and tragic conflict, after a dozen wars, countless peace initiatives and innumerable “creative” solutions failed to resolve the conflict.
Main contradiction
That is why it is paramount during these chaotic times to zero in on the main contradiction driving and inflaming the conflict, namely the clash between what Israel claims is its “security” drive and what Palestinians demand as their rights under international law.
This primary contradiction has evolved over the years into a zero-sum conflict, as Israel has pursued maximum “security” at the expense of justice for the Palestinians.
Since its inception, Israel has defined its security all too broadly, in both military and nonmilitary terms that undermine basic Palestinian rights and freedom.
After its establishment through terror and violence, the tiny colonial entity developed a formidable security doctrine that matches its heightened perception of threats — real and imagined — from a cynical world, a hostile region, and a defiant indigenous population.
From the outset, Israel focused on the relentless preparation for and pursuit of war; even when its state of affairs did not require it, its state of mind justified it.
First and foremost, Israel pursued military superiority, strategic preemption and nuclear deterrence, to compensate for its strategic depth and small population, and to ensure the country does not lose a single war, believing any such loss would mean total annihilation.
Armed with an aggressive military doctrine, Israel went on to win three wars in 1948, 1956 and 1967, resulting in its permanent control of all of historic Palestine, including a perpetual military occupation of millions of Palestinians, all under the pretext of preserving its security.
“Stop massacre on Gaza” placards abound at last night’s candlelight vigil in Auckland for the deaths of Palestinian civilians in the Israeli bombing of the besieged enclave. Image: David Robie/APR
Israel perpetuated injustices
Israel has perpetuated injustices against the Palestinians, incessantly breaking international law. After the Nakba of 1948, Israeli “security” has meant preventing millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants from returning to their homes and homeland in contravention to UN Resolution 194.
It also led to the confiscation of their land in order to settle new Jewish immigrants and ensure Jewish demographic majority.
Likewise, after the 1967 war and the subsequent occupation, Israel confiscated Palestinian lands to settle hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers, whose illegal presence became a justification for a greater, more repressive Israeli military deployment, rendering Israeli withdrawal in line with United Nations Security Council resolutions ever more improbable.
Even after Israel reached “historic peace accords” with the Palestinians in 1993, it continued to settle Jewish immigrants onto occupied Palestinian land, with the population of illegal Jewish settlers reaching 700,000 today.
It has had to massively expand its national security provision to include the security of these settlements. This, of course, was done at the direct expense of Palestinian life, land, dignity and well-being.
To safeguard its illegal settlements, Israel has also carved up and fragmented the Palestinian territories into 202 separate cantons, erecting a system of apartheid, and diminishing the Palestinians’ access to employment, health and education.
Like other settler colonial powers, Israel’s ideological approach to security has been no less dangerous than its strategic approach to its military doctrine.
Security the magic word
Security became the magic word that trumps all others; it explains all and justifies all. Its mention silences any criticism or dissent.
It is the answer to every question: why build here not there — security; why sustain the occupation — security; why expand the Jewish settlements — security; why carry out the bloodshed — security; why maintain a state of no war or peace — security.
Indeed, security emerged as the state ideology; it is Zionism’s answer to its colonial reality. It is no coincidence that what Israel calls security, the Palestinians call hegemony.
In that way, security went beyond police, military, intelligence and surveillance, to an all-encompassing hegemonic, even racist concept covering demography, immigration, settlement, land confiscation, as well as, theology, archaeology, indoctrination and propaganda.
These became the essential and complimentary ingredients to Israeli military power, deterrence, prevention and preemption.
But Israel’s disproportionality in response to the Palestinian struggle for freedom has always failed to deter Palestinian resistance. The suffering of the Palestinian people has produced greater frustration and anger, leading to cycles of retaliations, as we have seen this month in Gaza.
Since it withdrew its several thousand illegal settlers and redeployed its forces outside the Gaza in 2005, Israel has laid siege, an unjust and inhumane blockade to the densely populated strip, making life ever more unbearable for its over 2.3 million Palestinians, most of whom are refugees from the southern part of what today is Israel.
Preparing land invasion
Eighteen years, five wars, and tens of thousands of casualties later, Israel is back to bombing the ill-fated Palestinian territory, in retaliation for Hamas’s October 7 attack on its soldiers and civilians, and is preparing for a full land invasion of Gaza with incalculable cost to its residents.
Israel’s insistence on the exclusive right to defend its citizens, while denying the Palestinians the right to protect their own civilians under military occupation and siege, has long backfired. This month, it backfired spectacularly.
The myth of Israel’s security and invincibility has been shattered once and for all. It is high time to pursue security through a just peace, instead of pursuing peace through bloody security.
This is the reality the new self-appointed sheriff in town, Joe Biden, must address during his visit to the region, instead of egging Israel on as in its genocidal war in Gaza.
As my brother, seasoned scholar Azmi Bishara, argued in his recent book, Palestine: Matters of Truth and Justice, at the heart of the conflict lies not a dilemma in need of creativity, but rather a tragedy in dire need of justice.
Any decent mediator will have to find and maintain the balance between the two, starting with putting an end to Israel’s occupation and the colonial mindset that governed the conflict.
It’s not bothsidesism and it’s not whataboutism, it’s common sense and sober reading of the historical dynamic that governed the reality in the land.
Marwan Bishara is a senior analyst for Al Jazeera English. He is an author who writes extensively on global politics and is widely regarded as a leading authority on US foreign policy, the Middle East and international strategic affairs. He was previously a professor of international relations at the American University of Paris.
Massive protests in Middle East over the Israeli bombing of a hospital in Gaza with at least 500 casualties. A UN-run school housing refugees was also struck in a raid. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot/APR
An Israeli air strike has hit Al Ahli hospital in Gaza City where thousands of civilians are seeking medical treatment and shelter from relentless attacks. The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 500 people were killed in the hospital blast. Donna Miles, an Iranian-Kiwi columnist, penned this article before news of the attack on the hospital.
COMMENTARY:By Donna Miles
Of everything that I have read and watched about the unfolding events in Israel and Gaza, a tweet and a short video have stood out the most.
The tweet came from Dov Waxman, a professor of Israel studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. It read:
“To the people celebrating the mass murder of Israeli citizens, you have lost your humanity. To the people enthusiastically calling for Israel to decimate Gaza, densely populated with 2 million Palestinian citizens, you have lost your humanity. Israelis and Palestinians are real people, just like you and me.”
The video, posted on X, is a short clip of an interview with the distressed father of the young Israeli woman whose video of being taken hostage on a motorbike went viral on social media.
The father speaks in Hebrew with a voice full of pain. A written translation reads:
”Also Gaza has casualties… mothers who cry… let’s use this emotion, we are two nations from one father, let’s make peace, a real peace.”
The heroic words of this Israeli father and his belief in peace, despite his incredible suffering, reduced me to tears.
To the people celebrating the mass murder of Israeli civilians, you have lost your humanity. To the people enthusiastically calling for Israel to decimate Gaza, densely populated with 2 million Palestinian civilians, you have lost your humanity. Israelis and Palestinians are real…
We, the international community, bear a big responsibility for the bloodbath of the past few days and the hell that is to come by failing to bring “a real peace” for Palestinians and Israelis.
A Gazan schoolgirl looks into the BBC camera and says: “I wish I could be a normal child, living with no war”.
We, the international community, have failed this child and one million other Gazan children who are about to pay “a huge price” for the crimes that they’ve had no parts in.
Protesters at the Auckland rally last Saturday in solidarity with the Palestinian right to freedom and calling for an end to the killing of civilians. Image: David Robie/APR
For more than 40 years, hundreds of UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, including one co-sponsored by New Zealand, have stated that “Israel’s annexation of occupied territory is unlawful, its construction of hundreds of Jewish settlements are illegal, and its denial of Palestinian self-determination breaches international law”, but there has been no accountability for Israeli occupation and its apartheid practices.
But now that we have this horror unfolding before our eyes, we are, at last, prepared to pay attention and listen to Palestinians as they are finally invited to the likes of CNN and BBC to tell us that what we have seen in the past few days, they have been experiencing for the past 75 years.
Husam Zomlot, the head of Palestinian Mission to the UK, described Gaza as the biggest open air prison, where 2 million people have been taken hostage by Israel for the last 17 years.
As I type this, Israel has ordered a total siege of the densely-populated Gaza, cutting off fuel, food and electricity to an already deprived population while conducting massive retaliatory airstrikes.
Half of Gaza is children
Half of Gaza’s 2.2 million population are children. These children have no Iron Dome to stop the rockets, and no sophisticated army to protect them as their houses are flattened and their bodies are charred and mangled.
An airstrike has already wiped out 19 members of the same Palestinian family who were sheltering in their house in a jam-packed refugee camp in Gaza.
A shell-shocked survivor of the strike said he didn’t understand why Israel struck his house. “There were no militants in his building, he insisted, and his family was not warned”.
Many Gazans have already lost family members, including children and infants, in previous wars.
The 2-year-old son and wife of Israel’s most wanted man, the leader of Hamas’ military arm, Mohammed Deif, were killed as Israel tried and failed to kill him during the 2014 Israeli offensive on Gaza which, shockingly, killed over 500 Palestinian children.
Targeting schools, hospitals, mosques and marketplaces, as Israel is doing now and has done in the past, in a densely populated area where people have nowhere to flee, can only reflect Israel’s total disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians.
If we expect occupied people not to target civilians then surely we must demand the same from their powerful occupier.
It’s rare to find a full body with all its parts the deeper we went into the hospital the more shocking and terrifying the scene became in gaza in result of the israeli air strike that hit the #baptisthospital#Gazapic.twitter.com/tR9KC5sRvb
Staggering failure
There has been much talk about the staggering failure of Israeli intelligence on multiple fronts. But Israel’s biggest intelligence failure is the ongoing assumption that occupation can ever co-exist with peace — it cannot.
Columnist Donna Miles . . . “We have been here before, and have learnt that collective punishment of Palestinians will only strengthen their resolve to fight for their freedom.” Image: DM/APRColumnist Donna Miles . . . “We have been here before, and
I have no doubt that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will do as he has promised and will exact “a huge price” for Hamas’ murderous attacks.
But we have been here before, and, time and time again, have learnt that collective punishment of Palestinians will only strengthen their resolve to fight for their freedom.
In his first message after the attacks, Netanyahu quoted from the poet Hayim Nahman Bialik: “Vengeance… for the blood of a small child, / Satan has not yet created.”
Netanyahu left out the preceding line: “Cursed be he who cries out: Revenge!”.
Killing more Palestinians will not solve Israeli’s security problems. The only path to peace is by ending the illegal settlements, annexations and dispossession of Palestinians.
Donna Miles is an Iranian-Kiwi columnist and writer based in Christchurch. This article was first published in The Press last Friday and is published here with the permission of the author.
