All you have to do to ensure that the so-called “free press” function as propaganda services for the Western empire is make sure the mass media elevate people who are loyal to the empire while denying a voice to those who oppose it. That’s all it takes. Image: Caitlin Johnstone/Narrative
COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
I saw a comment from an Israel defender saying “You just lack the intellect to comprehend the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!”
Just in the last few days we learned that Israeli snipers have been deliberately picking off children in Gaza by shooting them in the head, that Israeli troops summarily executed a prisoner in handcuffs after sending him into a hospital to deliver a message to evacuate, and that Egypt has begun constructing refugee camps in the Sinai Desert to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Gazans.
“Complexities”. This isn’t complex.
“It’s complicated” is just some nonsense people say about things they don’t want you looking at too closely, like their dysfunctional relationship or their active genocide.
I’ve actually stopped following people for getting Gaza wrong. People I’d previously followed for years. I disagree with literally everyone I follow on some issues at some times, but Gaza quickly became my red line. If you can’t get that one right, nothing else you have to say is worth a damn.
I’ve never done that before, made a single-issue red line like that. In anti-imperialist circles you normally have to accept that a lot of people who get one issue right will get other issues wrong — someone who’s right on Israel-Palestine might swallow propaganda about Russia, someone who’s good on Ukraine and Syria might swallow the propaganda on China, etc.
I also frequently have ideological differences with people I agree with on foreign policy, like US libertarians.
But Gaza is just SO obvious, such a clear-cut black and white case of right and wrong, that I have to assume there’s something seriously wrong with your internal navigation system if you can’t see it. If the teens on TikTok can see it but a professional foreign policy commentator cannot, then there’s something wrong with that professional foreign policy commentator.
And after four months I have no regrets. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. I try to cultivate diverse and heterodox information sources, but not so diverse and heterodox that it thinks genocide and ethnic cleansing are fine.
Keep an open mind but not so open your brain falls out, as they say.
❖
Next time the US-centralised empire is preparing to stage a “humanitarian intervention” to rescue the people of some resource-rich nation from their evil tyrannical overlords, remember how they backed an open genocide in Gaza.
❖
The claim that it’s Hitlery to say true facts about the things Israel is doing and the claim that everyone Israel wants to bomb is secretly Hamas are like lies that a child would make up if you put a child in charge of administering propaganda.
❖
Whenever I’m sad about a musician I like having died before their time, I comfort myself with the thought that at least they didn’t live long enough to become another Bono.
#U2 frontman Bono chanted Alexei #Navalny‘s name with the audience during his concert in Las Vegas
“Putin would never ever say his name. So I thought tonight people who believe in freedom must say his name. Not just remember it, but say it.” pic.twitter.com/lWwTwOs8Tw
All you have to do to ensure that the so-called “free press” function as propaganda services for the Western empire is make sure the mass media elevate people who are loyal to the empire while denying a voice to those who oppose it. That’s all it takes.
And that’s exactly what happens. You can’t get a prominent job in the mass media if you oppose the profound evils the US and its allies are inflicting upon our species around the world, if you seek the dismantling of the empire, if you endorse the end of capitalism.
You’ll never get a notice saying “YOU ARE BARRED FROM ALL MAINSTREAM PLATFORMS ON ORDERS OF THE EMPIRE” — you’ll just find yourself unable to get work. You’ll encounter locked door after locked door while watching your peers who toe the imperial line shoot to the top.
This doesn’t happen as part of any monolithic grand conspiracy for the most part; it primarily happens because those who are wealthy enough to control a media platform of major influence are also wealthy enough to have a vested interest in maintaining the political status quo upon which their wealth is premised.
In the early 20th century Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays began his work showing that the public can be made docile and compliant via mass-scale psychological manipulation. Flash forward a century and we’re in a mind-controlled dystopia that is saturated to the gills with a constant deluge of propaganda, and we’re allowing those who rule over us to inflict unfathomable horrors on our fellow humans in our name.
If we were living in a truth-based society instead of one where our understanding of the world is obfuscated by propaganda, government secrecy, censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, and the exclusion of dissident voices from all major platforms, none of this would be happening.
The powerful wouldn’t be able to manipulate us into sitting idly by while they commit a genocide in Gaza, or while they prepare to extradite Julian Assange to a US prison for the crime of good journalism. There are a whole lot more of us than there are of them, and if we didn’t consent to their actions they’d never dare stand against us.
Our consent for this has been carefully engineered by those who have a vested interest in maintaining it.
❖
Israel-Palestine has long been a kind of gateway drug for anti-imperialist sentiment in the West. People see that their government is backing something horrible and their media are lying about it, and they get curious where else that’s been happening and their eyes snap open.
Gaza has poured rocket fuel on this phenomenon. For months our social media feeds have been full of glaringly obvious evidence that a profound evil is being inflicted upon our fellow humans with the full support of our governments and with the propaganda cover of our media, in a much clearer and easy to understand way than the plight of the Palestinians has looked at other times.
It’s only a matter of time before this moment of clarity starts translating to other aspects of Western foreign policy. Russia. China. The Middle East. Latin America. Africa. Millions killed by US-led wars of aggression in the 21st century alone.
Hundreds of US military bases circling the planet. Nuclear brinkmanship. Starvation sanctions. Proxy warfare. Staged coups and color revolutions. Nonstop election interference. The US empire working relentlessly to subvert and destroy any nation who disobeys it, anywhere in the world.
Already we’re seeing the Biden administration’s attacks on Yemen, Iraq and Syria receiving way more pushback than such aggressions normally would, because those who’ve been shaken awake by Gaza understand those acts of military violence are related to Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians. Their consciousness has already begun to expand.
It’s not going to get any easier for the empire from here. Those eyes that have been opened will not be closed again. Insight beyond the veil of propaganda and information distortion is only going to penetrate more and more deeply. The imperial narrative managers certainly have their work cut out for them.
The initial Western media coverage of the terror allegations against UNWRA was perhaps the best example of this phenomenon of how Israel has been using legacy media organisations in the West to deceive the world . . . Image: New Zealand protest against Israel/David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
ANALYSIS: By Rami G Khouri
In the past three weeks, the Israeli government put on a masterclass on how to use the Western media to spread fake news and propaganda and to justify anti-Palestinian actions taken by the United States and its allies. It worked — but only in part.
On January 26, in a landmark preliminary ruling on South Africa’s genocide charge against Israel, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found it “plausible” that Israel is committing acts that violate the Genocide Convention; and demanded that it take “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel ignored this, and within hours, launched a deception campaign to weaken UNRWA, the UN’s main humanitarian agency for Palestinian refugees, to inflict further suffering and death on nearly two million displaced, injured, sick and starving Palestinians in the Strip.
Israel passed on to Western media a “dossier” alleging that about a dozen UNRWA staff in Gaza have been working for Hamas and even participated in the group’s October 7 attack on Israel.
After the compliant media immediately relayed these unsubstantiated allegations to the world without bothering to do any independent verification, the US and other countries suspended vital funding to UNRWA.
Meanwhile, prominent politicians started calling for it to be “shut down” as Israel has long sought in its efforts to reverse the recognition of Palestinians it displaced as “refugees”, and invalidate their right of return to the lands in Israel stolen from them.
None of this was new or extraordinary.
Helped Israel spread propaganda
Mainstream media organisations in the West, from The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to CNN and NBC, have long helped Israel spread its propaganda and achieve its political aims.
For the past century, these organisations and their counterparts in Europe routinely disseminated Israeli narratives without questioning their veracity, while ignoring, downplaying or misrepresenting Palestinian perspectives. Their efforts helped Israel win the war on narratives and continue its settler-colonial assault on Palestinians with near total impunity.
Well, until recently — because the ugly tradition of Israel successfully laundering its lies and propaganda through Western legacy media is now being exposed and challenged, and appears to be starting to dissipate in the information era dominated by new media.
Indeed, since October 7, a flurry of independent investigations into events in Israel-Palestine and Western media reports about them exposed how Israel has been using legacy media organisations in the West to deceive the world, silence Palestinians and their allies, undermine international law, obscure its systemic human rights violations and further its settler-colonial agenda.
The initial Western media coverage of the terror allegations against UNWRA was perhaps the best example of this phenomenon.
Israel suddenly came up with an “explosive” dossier on alleged links between Hamas and UNRWA staff because it wanted to divert attention from the ICJ ruling on its own genocidal acts, and instead raise doubts about the crucial UN agency’s credibility.
Thanks in large part to the Western media’s uncritical reporting, Israel’s plan succeeded, at least partially, as it triggered significant funding cuts and a congressional hearing in the US on “ UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures”.
Law against UNRWA
Members of Congress accused UNRWA of having “longstanding connections to terrorism and promotion of antisemitism” seemingly based on nothing other than Israeli claims circulated in the media. They also introduced a bill titled the “UNRWA Elimination Act” calling for the complete disbanding of the humanitarian agency and transfer of all its responsibilities to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
But independent reports and investigations quickly revealed major holes in the Israeli narrative that mainstream media had eagerly adopted and disseminated.
As Western journalists outside the mainstream, Global South media like Al Jazeera, activists and scholars started to ask questions about the claims against UNRWA, Israel’s story started to unravel.
Unable to provide any hard evidence on UNRWA staff involvement in the October 7 attacks, the intelligence agency that distributed the “dossier” said its information came from “interrogations of Palestinian prisoners”. The revelation further raised suspicions among journalists and scholars who follow the conflict, as Israel is known to use torture to extract false confessions from Palestinian prisoners.
Realising the global community is questioning their story, Israel’s intelligence agents simply changed it and started to say they obtained the information through surveillance.
As numerous countries stood up for UNRWA, and Israel faced scrutiny about its allegations against the US agency, and shared its shaky “intelligence documents” with even more journalists.
An analysis of the dossier by Britain’s Sky News revealed that these documents claim only six, not 12 as initially suggested, UNRWA staff entered Israel on October 7. It noted that “the Israeli intelligence documents make several claims that Sky News has not seen proof of and many of the claims, even if true, do not directly implicate UNRWA”.
No evidence provided After also analysing the documents, Britain’s Channel 4 reached a similar conclusion and said the six-page-long dossier “provides no evidence to support the explosive claim that UN staff were involved in terror attacks on Israel”.
The terror accusations against UNRWA were perhaps the most striking example of exposing major Western media for uncritically circulating Israeli fabrications and propaganda since October 7. But it was hardly the only one.
The Israeli claims about “terror tunnels” and “Hamas command centres” under Gaza hospitals, which were repeated by most Western media without any scrutiny or attempt at verification were also proved to be baseless by several open source investigations, in-depth reporting by local journalists on the ground and extensive video evidence.
In February, Al Araby TV filmed what Israel claimed was a “Hamas tunnel” it discovered under Sheikh Hamad Hospital in northern Gaza, which proved to be nothing but a water well.
Earlier, in December, an explosive New York Times report on Hamas’s weaponisation of sexual violence during the October 7 attack was criticised for its weak sources and sloppy reporting. The paper of record eventually had to pull a podcast episode it had prepared on the subject.
Speaking of the Times’ sexual violence report and podcast, The Intercept investigative site said,“the critics have highlighted major discrepancies in the accounts presented in the Times, subsequent public comments from the family of a major subject of the article denouncing it, and comments from a key witness seeming to contradict a claim attributed to him in the article.”
The Electronic Intifada published several articles and podcasts with more details of The New York Times’ investigation of its mass rape story, mostly confirming the lack of credible evidence or eye-witnesses in the stories that Israeli institutions, including the armed forces, shared with the global media.
‘We deserve the truth’
The progressive investigative website Mondoweiss explained in a report, entitled “We deserve the truth about what happened on October 7”, that “researchers cross-referencing claims against the list of terror victims maintained by Israel’s own Social Security Administration have shown that several horrifying stories first responders and [Israeli military] members initially told reporters do not reflect actual people or deaths”.
Britain’s Guardian published an extensive report on how “CNN is facing a backlash from its own staff over editorial policies they say have led to a regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the censoring of Palestinian perspectives in the network’s coverage of the war in Gaza”.
The Oct7factcheck project — an exhaustive collection of claims, where they originated, who propagated them, and whether the evidence confirms or refutes them put together by the Tech for Palestine initiative — has also published the results of independent investigations into a dozen or so of the most dramatic Israeli accusations and reports about the Hamas attack, which were uncritically repeated by most of Western media, debunking most of them as untrue and lacking evidence.
They show, for example, that some of the evidence Israel submitted to the ICJ hearing — evidence republished by mainstream Western media without question — was false.
“Over the last four months, claims about October 7 have influenced the public narrative,” they noted. “Stories of atrocity, sometimes cobbled together from unreliable eyewitnesses, sometimes fabricated entirely, have made their way to heads of state and been used to justify Israel’s military violence.”
As new evidence reveals that stories that Israel offers the media about Palestinians and Hamas are fabricated, unsubstantiated, or exaggerated, international journalists tend to spend more time checking the veracity of Israel’s propaganda offerings — and more time doing their job of reporting the facts and the truth.
Dr Rami G Khouri is a distinguished fellow at the American University of Beirut, and a journalist and book author with 50 years of experience covering the Middle East. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
Westerners who don’t appreciate the extreme dysfunctionality of Western civilisation are like someone in an abusive marriage who hasn’t yet recognised that there’s a problem, or someone who had a violent and chaotic childhood who still thinks their home life was basically normal.
All of us understand that there are problems with our society, and most of us understand that a lot of of those problems are severe. But few Westerners really get just how bad it is.
In reality, we are living in a profoundly sick dystopia that is built on a foundation of human corpses and fueled by an endless river of human blood. Our news media are propaganda services, our entertainment is brainwashing, and our mainstream culture is social engineering, all built to keep us turning the gears of a vast globe-dominating empire.
There’s a widespread assumption throughout the Western world that while things might not be perfect our society is certainly much better than what people experience in a nation like China, smugly believing ourselves to be a free society full of free thinkers and free people in contrast with those unfortunate thought-controlled communist conformists.
In fact, Western civilisation is one giant thought-controlled conformity machine where people’s minds are shaped by mass-scale psychological manipulation far more effectively than anywhere else in the world, exactly because Westerners don’t know this is happening and believe they are free.
We think this dystopia is normal. Video: Caitlin Johnstone
Western minds don’t like to be told this, because it goes against everything they’ve been trained to believe about their nation, their society, and their world. Obviously we are much freer here than those poor saps to the east; here in the west we are free to choose between 197 flavours of frosted breakfast cereal and 20,000 different superhero movies.
We are free to choose between voting for warmongering capitalist authoritarian Democrats or warmongering capitalist authoritarian Republicans. We are free to sell our labour at a fraction of the value it generates to any exploitative ecocidal employer of our choosing.
We are free to think whatever thoughts we’ve been trained to think by our education systems, mass media, and Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation. We are free to speak our minds, which have been shaped and conditioned to serve the interests of the powerful and never to say anything that falls outside the Overton window of acceptable opinion.
Sure there are outliers in the margins, Westerners who’ve slipped outside the matrix of thought control and have gained the ability to traffick in unauthorised opinions – if you’re reading this you’re probably one of them. But our numbers are deliberately kept too small to have any political consequence, and if those numbers start getting too big for comfort we immediately see influence ops to sow division and confusion and herd people back toward the mainstream flock.
Sure we in our small numbers are free to voice unauthorised opinions on marginal platforms where we can’t have much impact – we’re free to dig a hole in the ground and whisper whatever we want into it, too.
The single biggest obstacle to our freedom in the West is our widespread belief that we are free. Until we collectively realise we’re human livestock being continually herded into our respective gear-turning stations to keep the imperial juggernaut trudging ever forward on the world stage, we’ve got no chance to break free and bring the whole abusive system crashing down.
Until this is seen we’re like the wife who thinks it’s perfectly normal that her husband controls all her finances and dictates every aspect of her life, and who’d be shocked and angered if anyone tried to tell her that this is what an abusive relationship looks like. We’re like the man who insists he had a happy childhood despite remembering a lot of body trauma and screams.
The truth is all around us — we’re marinating in it 24/7/365. But we can’t see it, because it’s all we’ve ever known. We’ve been conditioned to think that this murderous ecocidal mind-controlled dystopia is normal, and we can’t imagine it being any other way. The prospect of ending it can actually feel scary and intimidating, just as it can for someone who’s thinking about fleeing an abusive relationship.
But real freedom is just on the other side of that fear. All we’ve got to do is become sufficiently conscious of what’s really going on here.
The toll of four months of war in Gaza on journalism is “nothing short of horrifying” — Palestinian journalists killed, wounded, and prevented from working without any possibility of safe refuge, reports the Paris-based global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
RSF has strongly condemned the “eradication of journalism and the right to information” in Gaza by the Israeli army, and has called on states and international organisations to increase pressure on Israel to “immediately cease this carnage”.
In 124 days of conflict, at least 84 journalists have been killed in Gaza, including at least 20 in the course of their journalistic work or in connection with it, according to RSF statistics.
Journalists are being decimated as the days of this interminable war go by, through incessant Israeli strikes from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip, the watchdog said.
Journalists who had survived these four months were “living a daily hell” — in inhumane conditions, they suffered shortages of all kinds, particularly of equipment, as well as regular media blackouts, RSF said.
“In four months of conflict, Palestinian journalism has been decimated by Israeli armed forces with complete impunity, with a staggering death toll of more than 84 journalists killed — at least 20 in the line of duty,” said RSF’s Middle East desk in their statement.
“After filing two complaints with the International Criminal Court and making repeated appeals to States and international organisations, RSF is once again urging the UN Security Council to immediately enforce Resolution 2222 (2015) on the protection of journalists.
Journalists trapped in Rafah Journalists in Gaza have no way out or any place of safe refuge. Forced to flee to the south of the enclave since October 7, the vast majority have taken refuge in Rafah, where the crossing point with Egypt is still closed and where an invasion of the city could lead to a new bloodbath.
Rafah was described by Israel as a “security zone” at the start of the conflict. Despite RSF’s calls for the Rafah gate to be opened, the Israeli authorities continue to prevent Gazan journalists from leaving and to block access to the enclave for foreign journalists.
As Gaza killings rise, so does the toll on Palestinian journalists. Video: Al Jazeera
A chilling toll According to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS), about 50 local and international media outlets in Gaza have been totally or partially destroyed by the Israeli army since October 7, in addition to the appalling death toll.
RSF filed two complaints with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 31 October and 22 December 2023 in connection with the killings of journalists and the destruction of media outlets.
In the aftermath of the killings of independent videographer Moustafa Thuraya and Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh on January 7, RSF obtained a decision from the ICC prosecutor to include crimes against journalists in its investigation into the situation in Palestine.
Two days later, RSF called on the UN Security Council to urgently address Israel’s violations of Resolution 2222 on the protection of journalists.
The struggle of journalists in the field Against this terrifying backdrop, Palestinian reporters in Gaza are showing untold courage in continuing to report on the war.
Most have lost loved ones. Forced to move, they live in tents, with no electricity and very little food or water.
Wounded journalists have very limited access to medical care. In partnership with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), RSF has been providing grants to Gazan journalists since the start of the war to support their reporting work.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
A man visits the spot where Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli snipers on 11 May 2022 while covering an Israeli raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the north of the occupied West Bank. Image: AJ/RSF
Al Jazeera rejects Israeli forces’ attempt to justify crimes against journalists
Al Jazeera Media Network has rejected the Israeli occupation forces’ attempt to justify the killing and targeting of journalists.
In a statement this week, the network has condemned the accusations against its journalists and recalled Israel’s “long record of lies and fabrication of evidence through which it seeks to hide its heinous crimes”.
“At a time when its correspondents and field crews are making great sacrifices to cover what is happening in Gaza, Al Jazeera’s employment policies stipulate that employees are not to engage in any political affiliations that may affect their professionalism, and to adhere to the controls and directives contained in the Network’s code of ethics and code of conduct.
“Al Jazeera ensures that all its journalists and correspondents adhere to the editorial standards.
“The network recalls the systematic targeting of Al Jazeera by the Israeli authorities, which includes:
the bombing of its office in Gaza twice,
the assassination of its correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh,
the killing of colleagues Samer Abu Daqa and Hamza Al-Dahdouh,
the deliberate targeting of a number of Al Jazeera journalists and their family members, and
the arrest and intimidation of its correspondents in the field.
“Given Israel’s unprecedented campaign against journalists, Al Jazeera urges media outlets worldwide to exercise the utmost caution and responsibility when headlining Israel’s justifications for its crimes against journalists in Gaza.”
A pro-Palestinian protest in Auckland last Sunday . . . millions of people have been protesting across the world for an immediate ceasefire in Israel's War on Gaza and the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Image: David Robie/Café Pacific
ANALYSIS: By Hina Rabbani Khar
Over the past decade and a half, I have attended many meetings and conferences, and met many people in Western governments, think tanks and academia who have been concerned about the rise of autocracies across the world. Many of them believe that authoritarian tendencies are the biggest threat to the liberal world order and rules-based system.
But I beg to differ. I believe the biggest threat to the liberal world order comes from liberal democracies and not their autocratic nemeses. That is because there is a widening chasm between the values Western governments proclaim to uphold and their actual conduct.
That has triggered a credibility crisis that threatens to unravel the liberal world order.
What we say about our value system and how we project our foreign policy objectives in our statements is important, but even more important is what we do afterwards. People have eyes and ears, and when what they see is the opposite of what they hear, they lose trust.
This is what is happening now with Western rhetoric and actions in relation to Israel and Palestine. This mismatch between what is said and what is being done is, of course, nothing new.
‘In supporting Israel and enabling it to kill tens of thousands of civilians, the majority of them women and children in the name of “self-defence”, Western countries are putting themselves at the opposite end of the values and principles of multilateralism and respect for human rights they have put mammoth effort in promoting in the past.’
— Hina Rabbani Khar
I come from a region where we have suffered immensely as a result of the great liberal promise of the West; our neighbour Afghanistan faced disaster not once, but twice because of it.
As we moved from one war to another after the 9/11 attacks in the US, the Western-made liberal order started to lose its credibility faster than the West had time to realise. It left behind a debris of chaos, bloodshed and broken promises of “democratisation” and “emancipation”.
The “others” started questioning the Western narrative and its legitimacy.
Aftershocks are felt for generations
Wars leave behind devastation that persists long after the fighting and funding for “reconstruction” end and long after the media spotlight, the fervent hashtags and impassioned posts move on, as the world’s collective conscience loses interest. The aftershocks are felt in the geography where the wars are conducted for generations, as people continue to experience a conflict’s intended and unintended consequences.
I was in office when the Russian war on Ukraine started and I experienced firsthand how the US, the EU, the UK and other Western countries tried to convince many in the developing world that they must not stand on the side of aggression, that they must not be “on the wrong side of history”.
As the UN Security Council could not pass any resolution because of Russia’s veto, the West expended a great deal of political capital to bring resolution after resolution in the General Assembly in support of Ukraine. It aimed to show the world that Russia was using its veto power against the global consensus and was in fact isolated on the world stage.
And then came the war in Gaza. I watched with incredulity when pleas echoed from Gaza in the form of resolutions brought forward to the UN Security Council urging an end to the bloodshed and asking for a humanitarian ceasefire only to be vetoed by the US.
As the UN pleaded for action — calling Gaza a “graveyard for children” and reporting that more UN aid workers had died in the last few months in Gaza than in any other conflict — the West, which had historically been a champion of multilateralism, did nothing. In fact, it came in the way of those who were trying to stop the indiscriminate killing of civilians.
This forced UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to invoke in early December Article 99 — used only at times when international peace and security are threatened. Even then, the West took no action; the US vetoed a subsequent resolution for a humanitarian ceasefire at the UNSC and then voted against a nonbinding resolution at the General Assembly supported by 153 countries.
The UK abstained in both votes. Let that sink in.
More unpalatable
What makes this more unpalatable than Russia’s veto at the Security Council is that unlike Russia, the US and UK sanction people and countries on human rights violations and call for interventions on human rights grounds. How can the rest of the world have trust in the West’s self-declared “value-based leadership” when countries like the US and UK abdicate their responsibility and side with the aggressor?
This obvious hypocrisy is reminiscent of the tale of the emperor’s new clothes: Everyone can see Western rhetoric is naked.
The West talks about commitment to human rights and democratic values, while at the same time offering full diplomatic cover to the state of Israel and ensuring its impunity in massacring as many Palestinians as it desires in the pursuit of its official, declared goal of complete extermination of the Palestinian people.
In supporting Israel and enabling it to kill tens of thousands of civilians, the majority of them women and children in the name of “self-defence”, Western countries are putting themselves at the opposite end of the values and principles of multilateralism and respect for human rights they have put mammoth effort in promoting in the past.
They are going against the very fundamentals on which the United Nations was built.
I believe in the commonality of our values, I believe that the West has much to celebrate in its human rights and development records, but I also know that the West has shown glaring disregard for these principles outside of its own geography.
Anyone concerned with the US’s global leadership or retention of its status as the leader of “the free world” should certainly be asking themselves why it has decided to isolate itself on the world stage and why it is willing to pay such a high diplomatic price that will have reputational and credibility repercussions for decades.
The widening chasm between the values Western governments proclaim to uphold and their actual conduct has triggered a credibility crisis that threatens to unravel the liberal world order. My oped for @AJEnglishhttps://t.co/Vl1FvqsEZZ
Washington’s stance undermining
Washington’s stance today would not only undermine efforts to promote it as the only reliable world power, but would also sabotage its ability to play the role of a peace builder in the future.
If the US wants to save its global reputation, it should first and foremost stop standing in the way of UN Security Council resolutions demanding a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. It should also stop opposing General Assembly resolutions that commit to a two-state solution and condemn Israeli settlements; both of these elements are already part of US-stated policy.
Finally, it needs to respond to the appeals of UN institutions and stop obstructing its actions.
Those who claim the UN has failed in the wake of this crisis are grotesquely wrong. The UN continues to unambiguously report what is happening on the ground and call for global action. Whether it is the UNGA, the voice of the collective conscience of the world, or the secretary-general, or the WHO chief or the UNICEF chief — they have all made incredible efforts to get the world to act and stop the violence.
I have served in government long enough to know that as officials, we often make the mistake of thinking our job is to maintain positions on certain issues that our countries have historically held.
But this is the wrong way to go about building policy. Our job should be to hold principles not positions. Leadership requires strength to stand on the side of what is right not on the side of historical positions.
Hina Rabbani Khar is a former foreign minister of Pakistan, commissioner of the Climate Overshoot Commission and an international speaker on geopolitics. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
The United States and more than a dozen other countries quickly moved to suspend funding to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, a vital lifeline for millions of people in Gaza, shortly after Israel accused a handful of the agency’s staff of taking part in the Hamas attack on October 7.
But the UK broadcaster Channel 4 obtained the intelligence dossier on UNRWA that Israel shared with allied countries, and found “no evidence to support its explosive new claim.”
The Financial Times and Sky News also reviewed the materials and came to the same conclusion.
Israel’s claims about UNRWA are just the latest example of what journalist Jeremy Scahill says is a “deliberate propaganda campaign” to justify its brutal assault on Gaza.
“This is one of the most epic frauds in modern history, reminiscent of the lies told to explain and justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq,” says Scahill, senior reporter and correspondent at The Intercept.
Jeremy Scahill on Israeli propaganda. Video: Democracy Now!
NERMEENSHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Nermeen Shaikh, with Amy Goodman.
A key Israeli intelligence document used by over a dozen countries, including the United States, to justify defunding UNRWA, the primary aid group for Palestinian refugees, contains no evidence to back up Israel’s claims, according to several news reports.
The allegations made in the Israeli document include accusations that several UNRWA employees participated in the Hamas attack on October 7th. Britain’s Channel 4 obtained the document and found that it, quote, “provides no evidence to support its explosive new claim that UNRWA staff were involved with terror attacks on Israel.”
The Financial Times, which also reviewed the materials, came to the same conclusion, as did Sky News. Now the aid agency, which is critical to providing humanitarian support in Gaza, says it will run out of funds by March as a result of the funding cuts.
The allegations made by Israel are just the latest in what journalist Jeremy Scahill calls, quote, “Israel’s information warfare campaign,” which is aimed at, quote, “flood[ing] the public discourse with a stream of false, unsubstantiated, and unverifiable allegations.”
In his latest article, published today in The Intercept, Scahill writes, quote, “Nearly every week, sometimes every day, the Israeli government and military have unloaded a fresh barrage of allegations intended to justify the ongoing slaughter.”
He adds, “The tactic is effective, particularly because the U.S. and other major allies have consistently laundered Israel’s unverified allegations as evidence of the righteousness of the cause.”
Jeremy, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you could just begin by laying out the case that you make in your latest piece?
“Netanyahu’s war on truth: Israel’s ruthless propaganda campaign to dehumanise Palestinians.” Image: The Intercept
JEREMYSCAHILL:Well, in the early morning hours of October 7, members of Hamas from the Qassam Brigades, the Nukhba, their elite special forces, as well as members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, led a multipronged attack in Israel. Everyone is familiar with this.
And the initial targets that they hit constituted almost the entirety of Israel’s infrastructure in what Tel Aviv calls the “Gaza envelope,” and they were able to actually quite swiftly overpower the Gaza Division, the main entity of the Israeli state responsible for enforcing the prison conditions of the people of Gaza, for carrying out drone strikes, for waging war, for conducting all manner of warfare against the people of Gaza.
And then the militant Palestinian fighters made their way into a series of settlements in the area.
And the intent was quite clear: They were trying to take hostages captive so that they could negotiate the release of their own prisoners. But what they did on that day was nothing short of shattering the paradigm, of sending a message that the big lie that is promoted by Israel — not just under Netanyahu, but certainly under Netanyahu — that Israelis could somehow live in peace a stone’s throw away from what is effectively a concentration camp filled with 2.3 million people that are deprived anything vaguely resembling a human existence, that that is tenable.
And Israel was, by all accounts, caught off guard, despite the fact that its own intelligence analysts had been warning that it appeared that Hamas was preparing and training for something that was quite spectacular, and not simply some small, one-off attempts to fire rockets or even do a minor incursion into Israeli territory. And by all accounts, those were overlooked and dismissed.
And what we saw happen then, as the Palestinian fighters made their way across these various Israeli communities and overtook the Gaza Division and took many, many military personnel prisoner and brought them back to Gaza, was the Israeli government engage in sustained counteraction, including with Apache attack helicopters, with drones.
When the military did finally arrive in some of these communities — and, mind you, it was hours and hours before any official Israeli security forces were responding to some of these civilian areas — they engaged in widespread firefights.
At Kibbutz Be’eri, we know that eyewitnesses have said that Israel forces shelled a house, likely killing at least a dozen Israelis who were being held captive by Palestinian fighters. And so, the Israeli government then was reeling from the shock of having these crucial military bases overrun, communities being flooded with Palestinian fighters.
And within hours of these attacks happening, the Netanyahu government began to craft a very deliberate propaganda campaign to sell the United States, other Western leaders and the global public on a scorched-earth war of annihilation against Gaza.
And this campaign kicked into such high gear immediately. And what they did, what was central to this, is that the Israelis began showing President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, the heads of state of NATO countries and other Western nations images and videos that they then proceeded to tell an unverified story about what they depicted.
And the characterisation from Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant was that this was the greatest act of violence against Jewish people since the Holocaust, that the tactics that Hamas used included rape, beheading of babies, mutilation of bodies, torture of families, the bounding of children in groups, including in a nursery in one of the kibbutzes, and then engaging in mass execution of small children, setting children on fire.
And President Biden, Secretary Blinken and many Western leaders then started to repeat these claims.
But what happened is that when the Israeli social security agency began to actually document the deaths on October 11, they documented 1,139 deaths; 695 of them were civilians. And we started reviewing the public documentation of the deaths.
It turns out that there was only one infant that was killed in all of the attacks combined on October 7, a 9-month-old baby named Mila Cohen. And she was hit by a bullet during gunfire while she was in her mother’s arm.
There were also — I think there were 36 children under the age of 19 that died that day. Fourteen of them were actually killed in Hamas rocket attacks. So, when journalists started actually looking then at the official death toll — and you can go — the Israelis have published the stories, the photos of many, many, many of the victims — you realise that these were all lies.
It was a massive fraud that was perpetrated on the world, particularly this business about mass decapitation of babies. And Joe Biden, on numerous occasions, said that he saw actual photographic evidence of the beheading of babies and the bounding and burning alive with kerosene whole families.
And what I discovered in my research was that these stories appear to have ended up in the heads of Biden and Blinken and others based on the totally fraudulent version of events on October 7 that was offered by private Orthodox rescue operations — the most famous of them is Zaka — telling stories, you know, about a pregnant woman who had a fetus cut out of her body, and then the fetus was decapitated in front of the woman and her two children.
There’s no evidence whatsoever to indicate that that happened. In fact, there’s no documentation that any pregnant woman died on October 7. There was one pregnant woman who was shot while in her car on the way to deliver her baby. She was a Bedouin woman.
And the doctors were able to save her life. They tried to deliver the baby. The baby died some hours later. But that wasn’t Hamas cutting a baby out of a stomach.
And yet these lies were sold. And some of the most obscene things that Israel said, that we now know are false, were repeated by Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, in testimony in front of the Senate, by Joe Biden himself. And this has gone on and on and on. I’ve just given you a couple of the most graphic examples of this.
But what’s clear is that the Israeli government understood that they needed to sell this as like the worst crime against humanity in modern times, in order to justify a long-planned siege of Gaza that Benjamin Netanyahu — he represents the most extreme and violent version of the Israeli state project.
And it’s very, very clear that they sold this fraud, and the White House laundered it, and that’s why we’ve seen — and I think 27,000 people killed in Gaza is a conservative estimate. I think it’s much greater than that, because there’s an estimated 7000 or 8000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home. So, this is one of the most epic frauds in modern history, reminiscent of the lies told to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
AMYGOODMAN: Jeremy, I’m wondering if we can jump for a moment to the beginning of this segment, from October 7 to the UNRWA story, that something like, what, the Israeli government was alleging 12 — and then that number got larger — members of UNRWA, which has something like 13,000 workers in Gaza, were involved with the October 7 attack. Talk about, if you will, the way you do in your piece, take apart, as Channel 4 did, as a number of news organisations have, the evidence for this, that has been used by now almost 20 countries to defund this essential organisation that supports the hospitals and the schools of Gaza for over 2 million people.
JEREMYSCAHILL:Well, UNRWA is nothing short of the most important humanitarian organisation operating in Gaza. In fact, it was explicitly established in 1949 during the Nakba, where 750,000-plus Palestinians were forced from their homes in an extermination/annihilation campaign that then paved the way for the establishment of the state of Israel in the aftermath of World War II.
And the mandate of UNRWA was to care for those Palestinians and ensure that their right of return to their homes and land was going to be protected. And so, the Israeli government, certainly under Netanyahu, but under other heads of state, as well, has always wanted UNRWA eliminated, because this represents a very serious problem for the Israeli agenda of eliminating Palestinian territory in its entirety. So, just to give that context.
But then, the Israelis decide that — immediately after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rules in favour of South Africa and orders provisional measures that include the prevention of genocidal acts, the stopping of killing Palestinians, that the court recognised as a protected group, and to allow, with immediate effect, the entry of aid sufficient to confront the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the Israeli war on Gaza, the Israelis then choose to open a new front and just blast the public and the ears of Western leaders with a propaganda campaign aimed at trying to get them to join the crusade to eliminate UNRWA.
And Israel then prepared what it called an intelligence dossier, alleging that 12 employees of UNRWA — it has 13,000 or so employees in Gaza, 30,000 employees spread out across the Middle East where displaced Palestinians reside.
And the response from the Biden administration was to immediately announce it was suspending all funding to UNRWA. And Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted publicly that the United States had not even done its own review or investigation of these assertions that 12 members of a 30,000-member organisation had some link to the October 7 attacks.
And then what happened — and this is so reminiscent of Judy Miller, The New York Times, the mushroom cloud, Dick Cheney, build-up to the War in Iraq — they go to The Wall Street Journal, and the Israelis provide the The Wall Street Journal with what the Journal then advertises as a dossier, an intelligence dossier.
And they go further than the 12. They say that a full 10 percent of UNRWA’s Gaza staff, 1200 employees, are connected to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and they say this is not just a few bad apples.
Well, this laundering of Israeli propaganda in the form of an article for a major American newspaper was — the lead author of that article was Carrie Keller-Lynn. She’s a new contributor to The Wall Street Journal. I started digging into who is this person, because she didn’t have a full bio on The Wall Street Journal website.
Well, it turns out that she is a veteran of the Israeli Defence Forces. She was a militant opponent of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement when she was at university in the United States. And her close friend, who she did a joint interview with for an organisation that takes American grad students to Israel, she credits her with, during the 2009 Gaza war, creating the social media strategy for the Israeli Defence Forces. This is the reporter that was the lead journalist writing this UNRWA story for The Wall Street Journal.
And once we started to draw attention to that and put photos of her in her IDF uniform and talking about her ties to someone she said helped create the social media strategy for the IDF during a previous war in Gaza, then these organisations she was affiliated with scrubbed all of these articles and photos from the internet. The Journal has locked her Twitter account.
But this was very, very clearly a sophisticated propaganda campaign, where they knew which journalists to go to, they knew which governments would buy into it. And what they got is the Biden administration now being actively complicit in violating the orders of the International Court of Justice, which has Israel under watch for potential plausible genocidal actions in Gaza.
AMYGOODMAN: Finally, Jeremy, do you think, on the October 7 investigation, that it wasn’t simply enough for Israel to say over a thousand Israelis and other people, majority of them civilian, were killed in the Hamas attack, was not enough of a justification to go into [Gaza] and then multiply that over 27,000 [sic] times — 27 times, to more than 27,000 dead today?
JEREMYSCAHILL:The Israelis, particularly the civilians who were killed that day, deserve the truth about what happened. The Israeli government responded with very heavy firepower. There’s indications that the Hannibal Directive may have been invoked, which says that it’s better to injure and possibly even kill Israelis than let them be taken hostage.
They also made sweeping allegations about sexual violence being systematically committed by Hamas, that they have provided no proof that such a systematic campaign took place. The victims in Israel deserve the truth. And the 30,000-plus Palestinians who have been murdered with American bombs, whose deaths have been justified by the killing of those Israelis, possibly including by their own government, they also deserve the truth, and they deserve justice.
NERMEENSHAIKH: Jeremy, I’m afraid, I’m sorry, we’re going to have to leave it there. Jeremy Scahill, senior reporter and correspondent at The Intercept. His latest piece, out today, “Netanyahu’s war on truth: Israel’s ruthless propaganda campaign to dehumanise Palestinians.”
And that does it for the show. I’m Nermeen Shaikh, with Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.
One of the Israeli atrocity stories that local media in Aotearoa New Zealand have missed . . . or ignored. Bodies of Palestinian detainees who were handcuffed, blindfolded have been discovered in plastic bags near a northern Gaza school.
Al Jazeera
Palestinian authorities have demanded an international investigation after a mass grave was found in Gaza with the decomposing bodies of Palestinian detainees who were blindfolded and handcuffed.
At least 30 bodies were found in “black plastic bags” near the Hamad school in northern Gaza, with Palestinian officials accusing Israeli soldiers of killing the civilians “execution-style”.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called for an international investigation last week into what it described as Israeli “massacres”, demanding that a team visit Gaza “to find out the truth and dimensions of the genocide to which our people are exposed”.
Witnesses told Al Jazeera that the deceased were blindfolded, tortured and killed before being placed in the bags.
“As we were cleaning, we came across a pile of rubble inside the schoolyard. We were shocked to find out that the dozens of dead bodies were buried under this pile,” one witness told Al Jazeera.
“The moment we opened the black plastic bags, we found the bodies, already decomposed. They were blindfolded, legs and hands tied,” the witness added.
Bodies of ‘torture victims’ found at school. Video: Al Jazeera
“The plastic cuffs were used on their hands and legs and cloths straps around their eyes and heads.”
Hamas said human rights organisations should “document” the mass grave.
“This heinous crime and others committed by the neo-Nazis against our Palestinian people will remain a curse that haunts them, and the day will come when they will be held accountable for their brutality and crimes that exceed the most horrific violations known to humanity in our modern era,” the Palestinian armed group said in a statement on Telegram.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Rafah in southern Gaza, said the “condition of these bodies ranges from severely decomposed to mere skeletal remains . . . making it hard to identify them”.
“But people still come to the site, searching for closure in this place of tragedy,” he added.
Palestinian human rights lawyer Diana Buttu told Al Jazeera that this incident was “precisely why Israel was taken to the ICJ“.
Buttu added that the discovery of the mass grave was “clearly a war crime” and urged that it must be investigated.
The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to take “all measures within its power” to avoid Palestinian casualties and acts that could amount to “genocide”.
The Foreign Ministry said the discovery of the mass grave was evidence of the forms of “genocide committed by the occupation forces against our people in the Gaza Strip without accountability or oversight”.
Palestinian detainees are routinely abused by Israeli forces in the enclave, subjected to weeks of imprisonment in unknown locations, beatings and verbal abuse.
Last month, a United Nations human rights official called for an end to Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian detainees and said he had met men who had been held for weeks and were beaten and blindfolded.
“These are men who were detained by the Israeli security forces in unknown locations for between 30 to 55 days,” Ajith Sunghay, a UN human rights representative, told reporters by video link from Gaza, who met released detainees in the enclave.
“There are reports of men who are subsequently released, but only in diapers without any adequate clothing in this cold weather,” he said, adding that it was not clear why they were made to wear diapers but that “they were clearly visibly shocked and even shaken when I met them”.
Several videos shared by the Israeli army since the war began show hundreds of Palestinian men stripped to their underwear, sitting outdoors in the cold, sometimes blindfolded. In a few videos, women and children were also seen.
Much of the densely populated Gaza Strip has been destroyed after four months of intense Israeli bombardments and ground offensive.
Gaza’s health authorities have said almost 28,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began on October 7, following Hamas attacks in Israel that killed at least 1,139 people.
This article was first published by Al Jazeera on 1 February 2024.
They call different parts of it the Israel-Hamas War, the Iraq War, the War on Terror, but really it’s all the same war: the war on disobedience. Image: Caitlin Johnstone
COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
So it turns out the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) has been running a Telegram channel featuring homemade snuff films in which Gazans are brutally murdered by Israeli forces, captioned with celebrations of the gore and pain therein like “Burning their mother . . . You won’t believe the video we got! You can hear their bones crunch.”
The IDF had previously denied any association with the channel, 72 Virgins – Uncensored, but Haaretz now reports that it was directly run by an IDF psychological warfare unit.
This is one of those many, many times where Israel is so awful that at first you’re not sure what you’re looking at. You think you must be misreading the report. Then you read it again and go, “Oh wow, that’s SO much worse than I would have guessed.”
However bad you think Israel is, you can always be sure that information will come out later that proves it’s even worse.
Tucker Carlson has been spotted in Moscow, generating speculation that he’s there to interview President Vladimir Putin, and the liberal commentariat are losing their minds about it.
There’s no valid basis for Westerners to object to Putin being interviewed by a Western pundit. There’s no moral basis because Israeli officials have had unfettered access to a wildly sympathetic Western press throughout four months of administering an active genocide.
There’s no basis on the grounds that it hurts US information interests, because that would be admitting that US information interests depend on hiding information from the public about matters as basic as what a foreign leader thinks about his own actions, and essentially acknowledging that the Western media are supposed to function as propaganda services for US military and intelligence agencies.
Every possible objection is also a confession about what the US empire and its media actually are.
❖
Americans: healthcare please
US government: Sorry did you say bomb Syria, Iraq and Yemen in facilitation of an active genocide?
Americans: no, healthcare
US government: Alright you drive a hard bargain but let’s go bomb Syria, Iraq and Yemen in facilitation of an active genocide.
❖
Biden isn’t technically lying when he says the US does not seek conflict in the Middle East. The US seeks DOMINATION in the middle east, and would prefer to receive that domination willingly from submissive subjects. Only when Middle Easterners refuse to submit is there conflict.
❖
The US has never done anything good for the Middle East. All it’s brought to the region is a bunch of murderous military operations and the nonstop murderous military operation that is the state of Israel.
❖
Setting up a bunch of military bases in countries on the other side of the planet and then going to war with anyone who tries to kick them out is pretty much the exact opposite of how a sane and ethical military would be used.
❖
US foreign policy is essentially one big long war against disobedience. Bombing, regime changing, starving and destabilising any population anywhere on earth who dares to insist on its own self-sovereignty instead of letting itself be absorbed into the folds of the global empire.
They call different parts of it the Israel-Hamas War, the Iraq War, the War on Terror, but really it’s all the same war: the war on disobedience. One long operation to brutalise the global population into obedience and submission, year after year, decade after decade.
❖
When it comes to Israel the main difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives support Israel because they like it when Muslims get murdered while liberals support Israel because mumble mumble something something antisemitism Israel has a right to defend itself but we have serious concerns about the humanitarian, HEY LOOK OVER THERE IT’S TRUMP!
❖
If the Gaza genocide had happened pre-internet it would’ve been a fringe issue hardly anyone knew about. The Western press would have been able to get away with exponentially more cover-ups of Israeli crimes, Western politicians would’ve been able to get away with way more lies about what’s really happening, Israeli officials would have been far less careful about their statements of genocidal intent in their own media, and the IDF would’ve been vastly more blatant and obvious about its extermination campaign.
It’s only because normal people are getting eyes into what’s really happening that this issue is subject to worldwide outcry and condemnation that has placed the empire on the back foot.
The political/media class never does the right thing because it wants to, it does the right thing when it is forced to by normal human beings with healthy consciences. The fate of humanity rests on the ability of ordinary people to freely circulate truth.
About 1000 people marched onto the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, all echoing a call that has gone out again and again over the past few days - Uphold te Tiriti - Toitū te Tiriti! Image: Peter de Graaf/RNZ
Standing in the footprints of those who first signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi, they listened to sermons from church ministers and Bible readings from politicians, while singing hymns.
But as always, the highlight was the spectacular sunrise, which washed the grounds in golden rays.
It was a moment which made standing in the longest queue in the world for coffee seem fine.
The waka came back to the beach — Kaihoe paddling strongly and proud just like their tūpuna — and the rowers were called ashore, then entertained the thousands of onlookers with a haka.
Watch a livestream of this morning’s ceremony:
The Waitangi dawn Service. Video: RNZ News
The grounds were awash with thousands of people again later in the morning, holding or wrapped in Tino Rangatiratanga and Te Whakaputanga flags for the hīkoi — another tradition.
About 1000 people marched onto the Treaty grounds, all echoing a call that has gone out again and again over the past few days — Uphold te Tiriti — Toitū te Tiriti!
Hīkoi leader Reuben Taipari acknowledged those who walked with him and encouraged everyone to continue the fight for their mokopuna.
The sun rises over the Treaty Grounds in Waitangi on Waitangi Day 2024. Image: RNZ
“This new generation coming through now, it’s a powerful generation. They are the raukura, they are the graduates of kōhanga reo, kura kaupapa, whare wānanga,” he said.
“They don’t have a struggle with who they are . . . so we need to support that new generation.
“We have the experience, but they have the energy.”
The hīkoi crossing Waitangi Bridge. Photo: RNZ/Angus Dreaver
It did not take long for the grounds and surrounding markets to fill up, with every piece of shade taken as the sun was scorching.
Lines for drinks, ice creams or anything cold were endless, while teens jumped from the bridge into sea below to cool off and show off.
The roads in and out of Waitangi ground to a stand-still as an endless stream of cars kept coming.
A boy on a horse south of Kawakawa. Image: RNZ
The festival was pumping — each stage was packed with spectators as kapa haka and bands entertained. All the free rides and bouncy castles were full of happy kids.
The most popular item being sold was anything with a Tino Rangatira or Whakaputanga flag on it, or iwi merch.
All accommodation was booked out weeks ago, but it did not stop people coming — some sleeping in their cars just to be part of the day.
This could be one of the biggest turn-outs in Waitangi on Waitangi Day, with tens of thousands of people attending, coming to Waitangi to be part of the Kotahitanga movement, and enforce the message of Toitū te Tiriti.
Pokere Paewai isRNZ News Māori issues reporter and Shannon Haunui-Thompson is Te Manu Korihi editor. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and Asia Pacific Report.
A common view persists that the English and Māori versions of the Treaty are fundamentally at odds with each other, especially over the central issue of sovereignty. Incorrect. Image: 1News screenshot APR
ANALYSIS: By Paul Moon
When it comes to grappling with the Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi, one of the commonest responses is that it is a matter of interpretation. It seems to be a perfectly fair reaction, except that historical interpretation generally requires adherence to rules of evidence.
It is not a licence to make any claims whatsoever about the Treaty, and then to assert their truth by appealing to the authority of personal interpretation.
Yet since the 1970s New Zealanders have been faced with the paradoxical situation of a growing body of Treaty scholarship that has led to less consensus about its meaning and purpose.
It is therefore worthwhile to investigate some of the more common misconceptions about the Treaty that have accrued over recent decades.
This will not lead to a definitive interpretation of the Treaty. But it might remove a few obstacles currently in the way of understanding it better.
The government has been warned to “be careful” with its policies affecting Māori at the National Iwi Chairs Forum (NICF) on Friday.https://t.co/8SskRWTxGo
1. The Treaty or Te Tiriti? A common view persists that the English and Māori versions of the Treaty are fundamentally at odds with each other, especially over the central issue of sovereignty.
But research over the past two decades on British colonial policy prior to 1840 has revealed that Britain wanted a treaty to enable it to extend its jurisdiction to its subjects living in New Zealand.
It had no intention to govern Māori or usurp Māori sovereignty. On this critical point, the two versions are essentially in agreement.
2. The Treaty is not a contract The principle of contra proferentem — appropriated from contract law — refers to ambiguous provisions that can be interpreted in a way that works against the drafter of the contract.
However, there are several problems in applying this principle to the Treaty. Firstly, treaties are different legal instruments from contracts. This explains why there are correspondingly few examples of this principle being used in international law for interpreting treaties.
Secondly, as there are no major material differences between the English and Māori versions of the Treaty when it comes to Māori retaining sovereignty, there is no need to apply such a principle.
And thirdly, under international law, treaties are not to be interpreted in an adversarial manner, but in good faith (the principle of pacta sunt servanda). Thus, rather than the parties fighting over the Treaty’s meaning, the requirement is for them to work with rather than against each other.
Nearly 400 people have marched down the main street of Kaitāia in a show of support for Te Tiriti o Waitangi.https://t.co/3BGtm8BMbw
3. Relationships evolve over time No rangatira (chief) ceded sovereignty over their own people through the Treaty. Nor was that Britain’s intention — hence Britain’s recognition in August 1839 of hapū (kinship group) sovereignty and the guarantee in the Treaty that rangatiratanga (the powers of the chiefs) would be protected.
Britain simply wanted jurisdiction over its own subjects in the colony. This is what is known as an “originalist” interpretation — one that follows the Treaty’s meaning as it was understood in 1840.
This has several limitations: it precludes the emergence of Treaty principles; it wrongly presumes that all involved at the time of the Treaty’s signing had an identical view on its meaning; and, crucially, it ignores all subsequent historical developments.
Treaty relationships evolve over time in numerous ways. Originalist interpretations fail to take that into account.
4. Questions of motive British motives for the Treaty were made explicit in 1839, yet in the following 185 years false motives have entered into the historical bloodstream, where they have continued circulating.
What Britain wanted was the right to apply its laws to its people living in New Zealand. It also intended to “civilise” Māori (through creating the short-lived Office of Protector of Aborigines) and protect Māori land from unethical purchases (the pre-emption provision in Article Two of the Treaty).
And Britain wanted to afford Māori the same rights as British subjects in cases where one group’s actions impinged on the other’s (as in the 1842 Maketū case, involving the conviction for murder and execution of a young Māori man).
The Treaty was not a response to a French threat to New Zealand. And it was not an attempt to conquer Māori, nor to deceive them through subterfuge.
5. Myths of a ‘real’ Treaty and 4th article Over the past two decades, some have alleged there is a “real” Treaty — the so-called “Littlewood Treaty” – that has been concealed because it contains a different set of provisions. Such conspiratorial claims are easily dispelled.
The text of the Littlewood Treaty is known and it is merely a handwritten copy of the actual Treaty. And, most obviously, it cannot be regarded as a treaty on the basis that no one signed it.
Another popular myth is that there is a fourth article of the Treaty, which purportedly guarantees religious freedom. This article does not appear in either the Māori or English texts of the Treaty, and there is no evidence the signatories regarded it as a provision of the agreement.
It is a suggestion that emerged in the 1990s, but lacks any evidential or legal basis.
Finally, there is the argument that the Treaty supports the democratic process. In fact, the Treaty ushered in a non-representative regime in the colony. It was the 1852 New Zealand Constitution Act that gave the country a democratic government – a statute that incidentally made no reference to the Treaty’s provisions.
This list is not exhaustive. But in dispensing with areas of poor interpretation, we can improve the chances of a more informed and productive discussion about the Treaty.
