People in Gaza are being burned alive, are suffocating to death under collapsed buildings, are having operations and amputations without anesthesia, are starving to death, are watching their loved ones die in front of them, are experiencing suffering of a degree that very few of us here in the west can even imagine. Image: CJ
COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
A man set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington today. He said he did it in protest of the genocide in Gaza.
Independent journalist Talia Jane reports that she was able to obtain footage of the incident, which the unnamed man — later named as apparently recorded himself.
Jane reports that the man said he is “an active duty member of the US Air Force” and that he “will no longer be complicit in genocide.” After igniting he repeatedly yelled “Free Palestine.”
According to Jane, a police officer showed up pointing a gun at the man’s burning body; I guess that’s just what American cops do when they aren’t sure what to do. Someone who was actually trying to save the man reportedly yelled “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers!”
This just might be the most American thing I have ever heard of. It’s more American than the fake bald eagle cries they put in Hollywood movies. It’s more American than monster trucks and mass shootings. You simply cannot fit more America into a single incident than a man dying a horrifying death in protest of war crimes while a first responder screams at cops to stop pointing their guns at him and go get fire extinguishers.
If you were to pick a single moment in history to sum up the essence and expression of the US empire, that would be it.
UPDATE: I got footage of the self-immolation at the Israeli embassy in DC.
The individual, wearing fatigues, introduces himself as “an active duty member of the U.S. Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide.”
The New York Times reports that the man “was taken to a nearby hospital with life-threatening injuries and remains in critical condition.”
“I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” the man reportedly recorded himself saying before the incident. “But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonisers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
The nameless protester is correct. People in Gaza are being burned alive, are suffocating to death under collapsed buildings, are having operations and amputations without anesthesia, are starving to death, are watching their loved ones die in front of them, are experiencing suffering of a degree that very few of us here in the West can even imagine. And our ruling class is absolutely attempting to normalise this for us.
I just watched a video of a little girl vomit animal-feed. And then die. If you don't care about that I have nothing further to say to you. #Gaza
This isn’t even the first self-immolation we’ve seen in protest of Israel’s US-backed atrocities after October 7; back in December an unnamed protester with a Palestinian flag self-immolated outside the Israeli consulate building in Atlanta.
And as I reflect on this I can’t help thinking, how many Israel supporters have self-immolated in protest of October 7? How many Israel supporters have self-immolated in protest of the super serious antisemitism crisis they claim is making Jews feel unsafe in their communities? Surely their claims are just as serious and sincere as those of Palestine supporters, no?
Of course not. This has not happened and the very idea is laughable. Israel apologists insist that it is they and their favorite ethnostate who are the real victims in all this, rather than the population of Gaza who has seen tens of thousands of Palestinians annihilated while Israeli soldiers openly celebrate their mass displacement and death.
But you don’t see them self-immolating; you see them cheerleading for ethnic cleansing and genocide. They wouldn’t do anything to cause themselves pain or inconvenience to promote their pet agenda. They wouldn’t even miss brunch for it.
It’s a horrific thing, burning alive. I suspect that pretty much everyone who’s ever self-immolated has had serious regrets about it within the first few seconds. There’s simply nothing one can do to prepare oneself for the experience of that kind of pain, or for how long it can take them to lose consciousness after it’s started.
At that point the only comfort they could possibly offer themselves is that it can’t go on forever.
But the fact that anyone would ever take such a measure at all shows how profoundly urgent they recognise this issue to be, and how much more sincere they are about it than those on the other side.
Young women Bisan Owda, Hind Khudary, Plestia Alaqad — and Motaz Azaiza, a young man also from Gaza — are among a new generation of journalists speaking to the world in Arabic and English through social media.
The New Arab
Rising female Palestinian voices — Bisan Owda, Hind Khudary and and Plestia Alaqad — have emerged from Gaza, wielding storytelling to illuminate realities often unseen and unheard in the course of Israel’s genocidal war on their homeland, in which Israel has deliberately targeted journalists.
While their journeys began separately, remarkable similarities bind their paths, painting a portrait of resilience, courage, and unwavering commitment to telling the story of the atrocities in Gaza, drowned out by Western media pro-Israel bias.
Owda, Khoudary and Alaqad gained international recognition for their firsthand accounts of life during the conflicts in Gaza.
Bisan, Hind, Plestia, Motaz Azaiza, a young man also from Gaza, are among a new generation of journalists speaking to the world in Arabic and English through social media.
Plestia evacuated from Gaza in November and Motaz Azaiza left in January, but Owda and Khoudary remain in Gaza at the time of writing.
Who is Bisan Owda? Owda is a 24-year old Palestinian filmmaker. Through her poignant social media videos starting with the chilling “I’m still alive,” she offers glimpses into the daily anxieties and struggles under siege.
Armed with her camera and unwavering spirit, Owda’s raw and unfiltered portrayals of life under siege in Gaza garnered international attention.
Major news outlets, including BBC News, Al Jazeera, and ABC News, shared her work, propelling her into the spotlight as a chronicler of a complex and often misunderstood narrative.
Bisan Owda, known as “Hakawatia”–[The Storyteller] for her captivating historical narratives, now paints a grimmer picture on social media — the stark reality of life under Israeli bombardment in Gaza.
Gone are the tales of cultural heritage, replaced by harrowing messages: “Peace be upon you. I’m Bisan from Gaza, Palestine. Thank God I’m still alive.”
The 24-year-old’s life, like countless others, has been upended by the month-long conflict.
At the start of the war, Israeli airstrikes targeted her office and equipment, forcing her and her family to seek refuge in the crowded Al-Shifa Medical Complex.
Undeterred, Bisan uses her phone to document the war’s toll — destroyed buildings, displaced families, and the tragic loss of almost 30,000 lives.
Amid the scenes of devastation, flickers of hope emerge in her reporting despite everything. Children diligently cleaning the bombed-out hospital and an elderly woman’s unwavering resilience offer solace.
But the ever-present threat of Israeli attacks looms large.
The children of Gaza, its stones, its sea, its buildings, its residents, and every grain of soil in it — these are the subjects of her stories.
Despite the nightmares, the constant fear, and the ever-present danger, Bisan persists. She moves between the rubble and the fallen, capturing the human cost of the conflict in audio and video.
Bisan on Instagram . . . “Peace be upon you . . . Thank God I’m still alive.” Image: Instagram
Who is Hind Khoudary?
Hind Khoudary, a 29-year-old Palestinian journalist from the Gaza Strip, has also earned widespread recognition for her work documenting life under siege and war in Gaza.
Her career path winds through various publications, including The New Arab, the Middle East Eye, Anadolu Agency, and +972 Magazine. Previously, she contributed to RT. Her online presence on platforms like Twitter and Instagram has garnered attention, with her posts cited by The New York Times, NPR, and Utusan Malaysia.
Khoudary’s human rights advocacy led her to work with Amnesty International in 2019. During the Great March of Return protests in 2018, she documented the events and reported on human rights concerns.
She was briefly detained and interrogated by Hamas, the ruling authority in Gaza, for her work.
Khoudary continues to shine a light on the lives and experiences of Palestinians living in Gaza, highlighting the ongoing impact of Israel’s genocidal war.
Who is Plestia Alaqad? Plestia Alaqad is 22 years old. Using platforms like Instagram, she shares personal narratives that resonate deeply, humanising the cost of conflict for global audiences.
Since before the current war, Owda, leveraging her platform, has become a powerful advocate for human rights, gender equality, and youth empowerment. Partnering with organszations like UNFPA and UN Women, she has tackled social issues and inspired others to find their voices.
Graduating in 2022 with a degree in Communication and Media Studies, Alaqad worked freelance and served as editor-in-chief of her university newspaper, gaining valuable experience.
She previously trained media professionals and participated in eco-journalism workshops. Her dedication garnered recognition from international media outlets like SBS News and Outlook India.
Alaqad fled the Gaza Strip via Egypt. She is now in Australia.
Alaqad, who garnered a following of 3.9 million on Instagram documenting the plight of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, announced her departure in November after 46 days of sharing videos and photos from the besieged territory.
“The decision is far from easy,” she said in a video message.
“Leaving my family, home, and people is difficult, but my presence has become a threat.”
Alaqad’s flight came amid a surge in violence against journalists. Since the war began in October, more than 119 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza — amounting to more than one journalist a day, according to the International Federation of Journalists — in addition to three Lebanese journalists in South Lebanon by Israeli fire.
Gaza media sources put the number killed higher, at 126.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate accuses Israeli forces of deliberately targeting media personnel.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the attacks, calling it the deadliest period for journalists in the organisation’s 30-year history of monitoring conflicts.
Who is Doaa Albaz? Doaa Albaz, a photojournalist working for Anadolu agency, continues to take pictures documenting the war as well.
Born in Gaza in 1989, she has been covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for several years, She studied journalism at the Islamic University of Gaza and began working as a photojournalist in 2010. She has covered a wide range of stories in Gaza, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the humanitarian crisis, and the daily lives of Palestinians.
In 2016, she was awarded the Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award. She was also a finalist for the 2017 Rory Peck Award for Freelance Photojournalism.
Republished from The New Arab. If there are more young voices from Gaza you think should be profiled? Email: editorial-english@newarab.com
A Pacific cohort at the Palestinian solidarity rally and march at Auckland's Te Komititanga Square today . . . they also gave an eulogy and sang a waiata for the loss of beloved Green MP and Pacific community advocate Fa’anānā Efeso Collins who died suddenly this week. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
While telling today’s Palestine solidarity rally in Auckland about the “good news” of creative humanitarian aid plans to help Palestinians amid the War on Gaza, New Zealand Kia Ora Gaza advocate and organiser Roger Fowler also condemned Israel’s genocidal conduct. He was interviewed by Anadolu News Agency after a Freedom Flotilla Coalition planning meeting in Istanbul with his views this week republished here.
By Faruk Hanedar in Istanbul
“Women, children, and families have no food. They are trying to drink water from puddles. People are eating grass.”
— Kia Ora Gaza advocate Roger Fowler
New Zealand activist Roger Fowler has condemned the Israeli regime’s actions in the Gaza Strip, saying “this is definitely genocide”.
“The Israeli regime has not hidden its intention to destroy or displace the Palestinian people, especially those in Gaza, from the beginning,” he said.
“They are committing a terrible act — killing tens of thousands of people, injuring more, and destroying a large part of this beautiful country.”
The death toll from the Israeli War on Gaza topped 29,000 this week – mostly women and children – and there were reports of deaths from starvation.
Fowler demanded action to halt the attacks and expressed hope about the potential effect of the international Freedom Flotilla — a grassroots organisation working to end the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza.
He noted large-scale protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza and emphasised efforts to pressure governments, including through weekly protests in New Zealand to unequivocally condemn Israel’s actions as unacceptable.
A Palestinian mother and family hug the dead body of their child who died in an Israeli attack in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on 18 February 2024. Image: Kia Ora Gaza
Long-standing mistreatment
He stressed that the “tragedy” had extended beyond recent months, highlighting the long-standing mistreatment endured by Palestinians — particularly those in Gaza — for the last 75 years.
Fowler pointed out the dire situation that Gazans faced — confined to a small territory with restricted access to essential resources including food, medicine, construction materials and necessities.
He noted his three previous trips to Gaza with land convoys, where he demonstrated solidarity and observed the dire circumstances faced by the population.
“Boycott is a very effective action,” said Fowler, underlining the significance of boycotts, isolation and sanctions, while stressing the necessity of enhancing and globalising initiatives to end the blockade.
“I believe that boycotting has a great impact on pressuring not only major companies to withdraw from Israel and end their support, but also on making the Israeli government and our own governments understand that they need to stop what they are doing.”
Fowler also criticised the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) “genocide decision” for being ineffective due to the arrogance of those governing Israel.
South Africa brought a genocide case against Israel to the ICJ in December and asked for emergency measures to end Palestinian bloodshed in Gaza, where nearly 30,000 people have been killed since October 7.
Anadolu journalist Faruk Hanedar talks with Kia Ora Gaza organiser Roger Fowler (left) after the recent Freedom Flotilla Coalition planning meeting in Istanbul. Image: Kia Ora Gaza/Anadolu
World Court fell short
The World Court ordered Israel last month to take “all measures within its power” to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza but fell short of ordering a ceasefire.
It also ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective” measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip.
Fowler said all nations must persistently advocate and exert pressure for adherence to decisions by the UN court.
Fowler acknowledged efforts by UN personnel but he has concerns about their limited resources in Gaza, citing the only avenue for change is for people to pressure authorities to stop the genocide and ensure Israel is held accountable.
“It’s definitely tragic and heartbreaking. Women, children, and families have no food. They are trying to drink water from puddles. People are eating grass. This is a very desperate situation. No one is talking about the children. Thousands of people are under the rubble, including small babies and children,” he said.
Roger Fowler is a Mangere East community advocate, political activist for social justice in many issues, and an organiser of Kia Ora Gaza. This article was first published by Anadolu Agency and is republished with permission.
“Gaza is starving to death” . . . a banner in today’s Palestine solidarity rally in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report“Blood on your hands” . . . a protest banner condemning Israel and the US during a demonstration outside the US consulate in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau today. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
GREEN-LEFT EXCLUSIVE: Leila Khaled talks to Peter Boyle
Leila Khaled is an iconic Palestinian revolutionary activist. A famous mural of her (pictured above) adorns an Israeli apartheid wall isolating the West Bank in Palestine. She is a member of the national committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and a representative on the Palestine National Council. She lives in exile in Jordan today and gave this exclusive interview to Green Left on February 18.
By Leila Khaled and Peter Boyle
As the Israeli military commences its assault on Rafah, Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime is not even pretending to abide by the interim orders of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). What is your assessment of the ICJ case and the responses of the various world powers to its interim orders and the continuing genocide in Gaza?
Leila Khaled: South Africa, which is trying to prove in the ICJ that Israel is committing genocide, is now following up the case (as are other countries like Nicaragua) because Israel is not abiding by any rules of the court.
And there is a lot of pressure on Israel now. On February 26, the ICJ will have its second meeting [on the genocide issue] and now there is a lot of pressure on the court to meet because Israel is declaring they are going to attack Rafah.
There are 1.5 million people in Rafah now because they drove people from the north and from the city of Gaza to the south. They went there but now [Israel] won’t allow them to go back to their homes, even if they were not bombarded . . .
Israel is acting like it is above international law.
Israel is now already attacking Rafah. They are not on the ground yet but they are bombarding it by planes.
Until now the United States administration is not putting enough pressure on Israel. It is the only government that can put the pressure that is needed to stop the genocide in Rafah.
Israel says that they will open a safe road [out from Rafah].
Where to? There is no safe place in the whole Gaza strip.
Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled speaks out. Video: Green Left
The Israeli military is still in Khan Younis, a city beside Rafah, and when people went out of the hospital there were snipers who killed four doctors and they arrested the other medical workers.
So people could not leave Khan Younis to come to Rafah. Rafah is also a very small district to have so many people there.
Now it is time for people who demonstrated to support the Palestinians — and against the atrocities that Israel is committing — to pressure their governments which, like in Australia, are supporting Israel.
The attitude of the Australian government is that Israel has a right to defend itself. But Israel is not defending itself, it is attacking for four months!
Most of the casualties are women and children when they bombard and destroy their homes.
People have nowhere to go today unless the Rafah border is opened. But it is not opened yet [even] to receive humanitarian aid like medicines and food, even though the ICJ ordered Israel to let aid in to all parts of the Gaza Strip, especially in the north . . .
The Egyptians have the sovereignty over the Gaza Crossing but Israel does not allow anybody to go out or in. So it is a siege . . .
Governments are supposed to abide by rules but Israel is not following the ICJ’s [interim] orders. So they should take action. For example, they can cut diplomatic relations to pressure Israel to stop its genocide.
They can boycott Israeli products. This would put pressure on Israel.
But until now the governments that follow the US government are not taking those steps. They just hear their people shouting in the streets.
The Zionist regime has told many lies about October 7 to justify its latest genocidal attack on Gaza. What is the PFLP’s understanding of the reason for and what really happened in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood?
Leila Khaled: The freedom fighters did not attack ordinary people [on October 7] , they attacked the military settlements. But when the borders were open some other people took civilians.
Neither Israel nor the Western media could prove that there were massacres.
The civilian hostages [who were released in one of the deals negotiated] said they were dealt with very kindly . . .
So why are they speaking like this about massacres? Just to say that the freedom fighters are terrorists.
In international law, people who are under occupation have the right to defend themselves with all means, including armed struggle. And this was armed struggle.
We have the right to defend ourselves from occupation and the siege of Gaza.
So they made lies because they did not have any evidence. Even when [US President Joe] Biden showed some pictures, CNN said that he did not have evidence that this was what happened on October 7.
People around the world have been demonstrating because they know about the siege of Gaza that has been going on for 17 years. Israel has carried out a lot of attacks on the people of Gaza. Four times they attacked Gaza and caused many casualties, in the first attack killing about 2000 children. The second time they killed more than 2000 children. And then there was a third and fourth attack on Gaza.
What is the real reason that the US and its closest allies — including, shamefully, Australia — support the Zionist state?
Leila Khaled: Because this was their original project in 1948 for establishing a colonial settler state, Israel, occupying the land of Palestine. Because it protects their common interests.
This is why even yesterday Biden declared he would send $15 billion to support Israel.
Those countries that share the interests of the US administration support its policy which has ended up with this war against the Palestinian people, not against Hamas . . .
Hamas is part of the Palestinian resistance and are also freedom fighters.
What is your assessment of the so-called two-state “solution” that was begun with the Oslo Accords? Has it failed? If so, what would be the alternative and how can it be won?
Leila Khaled: This illusion of the two-state solution has been set for 40 years but they didn’t implement it. So that we don’t have any freedom in our occupied country.
The Oslo Accord stated Israel will withdraw and allow a Palestinian state. But Israel did not abide by the agreements that were signed . . .
In 1949 the UN declared that there would be two states, one a Jewish state and an Arabic state — not a Palestinian state.
But Israel also turned its back on all the UN resolutions that have been taken over the years.
For us, to solve the problem it has to be recognised, first, that Israel does not have the right to occupy Palestine and, second, the right of return for the Palestinians. This is the key to solving the conflict…
The UN hasn’t implemented its resolutions up until now.
Israel has denied our right of return even though it was a condition in the 1948 UN resolution. Israel would be accepted as part of the international community and have a state in Palestine on condition that the Palestinians had the right of return.
Because of the balance of forces at the time, Israel was accepted as a nation while the Palestinians remained refugees.
I am one of those refugees as a result of the crime that happened in 1948.
Now we are calling for a democratic state, with the return of the Palestinian refugees. Then, we can altogether live in Palestine and decide what kind of state we need.
Without this, the struggle will continue from generation to generation.
The Palestinians who are fighting today are the fourth generation.
There are also refugee camps in the West Bank, like Jenin, and we have seen them attacked and houses demolished on a daily basis.
Israel has arrested about 6000 people in the West Bank on top of the 7000 people who were detained before . . . So we are calling for the release of these political prisoners in exchange for the hostages held by Hamas, who are all Israeli military.
There were no Israelis in Palestine before 1948. There were Jews who were Palestinians but we don’t discriminate on the basis of religion. The Zionist movement brought people to Palestine after World War II to establish an Israeli state, which was guaranteed by the British colonial government of that time.
We had our identity as Palestinians, including the Jews who were living with us. We didn’t drive out the Jews from Palestine. Its history, Palestine is Palestine.
Now the balance of forces is coming a little bit more in our favour. It is a step forward that people around the world have declared their support for free Palestine. “Free Palestine” has become a slogan of the peoples of the world, including in Australia . . .
But the Australian government, which is still under the British crown, is supporting Israel along with the other colonial powers.
The latest Zionist genocidal war on Gaza has cost so many Palestinian lives but the there has also been a historic global mass solidarity for Palestine and opposition to this war — on a scale not seen since the Vietnam War. A whole new generation of activists has stepped forward in this movement. What is your message to this new generation of solidarity activists? What lessons can you share from your own experience of a life in struggle?
Leila Khaled: I would say we are thankful for all those who have declared this attitude to the Palestinians and what is happening in Palestine. The peoples of the world now understand the core issues of this struggle — and we, the Palestinians, will not forget this — that in this war, Israel is doing genocide.
I saw on the TV, and from the video that comrades sent from Australia, the huge demonstrations in Melbourne and Sydney which showed that people began to realise the reasons behind what is going on.
They are demanding that the Israeli army cease fire and withdraw from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
This is what I am telling the world’s people, especially the new generation: Keep on fighting for just causes.
The Palestinian cause is a human cause. Now we are defending humanity, not only in the Gaza Strip . .
We are trying to build a new history in the region against the imperialists, especially American imperialism, because they are the ones who launch wars and they are supporting Israel with all means and new arms . . . But they don’t give anything for the children of Palestine.
Leila Khaled will be a featured international speaker at the Ecosocialism 2024 conference in Perth from June 28-30. Ecosocialism 2024 brings together ecosocialist activists from around the Indo-Pacific region. Republished from Green-Left with permission.
"Culture shocking, overwhelming" . . . speaking at COP26 on the climate crisis-threatened future of Tuvalu. Image: PINA /Wansolwara News
By Monika Singh of Wansolwara
The fourth smallest country in the world with a population of just over 11,000 people — Tuvalu — fears being “wiped off its place on the map”.
A report by ABC Pacific states that the low-lying island nation is widely considered one of the first places to be significantly impacted by rising sea levels, caused by climate change.
According to the locals the spring tides this year in Tuvalu have been the worst so far with more flooding expected with the king tides that usually occur during late February to early March.
Tuvalu residents are fighting for their home in the face of worsening tides and climate change. Image: Wahasi/ Wansolwara News
In 2021, Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister, Simon Kofe, addressed the world in a COP26 speech while standing knee-deep in the sea to show how vulnerable Tuvalu and other low-lying islands in the Pacific are to climate change.
A 27-year-old climate activist from Tuvalu said he loved his home and his culture and did not want to lose them.
Kato Ewekia spoke to Nedia Daily and said seeing the beaches that he used to play rugby on with his friends had disappeared gave him a wake-up call.
“I was worried about my children because I wanted my children to grow up, teach them Tuvaluan music, teach them rugby, teach them fishing. But my island is about to disappear and get wiped off it’s place on the map.”
First youth Tuvaluan delegate
Ewekia was also at COP26 and made history as the first youth Tuvaluan delegate to participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Despite only speaking limited English, he took to the global stage to tell the world about his home.
“Since I was the first Tuvaluan activist, people didn’t really know where Tuvalu is, what Tuvalu is,” he said.
“It was culture shocking, overwhelming. But the other youth gave me the confidence to just speak with my heart, and get my message out there.”
Ewekia has been the national leader of the Saving Tuvalu Global Campaign, an environmental organisation that aims to amplify the voices and demands of the people of Tuvalu since 2020.
“Going out there, it’s not easy. We really, really love our home and we want how our elders taught us how to be Tuvaluan, we want our children to experience it — not when it disappears and future generations will be talking about it (Tuvalu) like it’s a story.”
He shared that in the four years that he has been advocating for Tuvalu on the public stage, there have been many moments of frustration that are specifically directed towards world leaders who aren’t paying attention.
“My message to the world is I’ve been sharing this same message over and over again,” he said.
“If Tuvalu was your home and it [was] about to disappear, and you wanted your children to grow up in your home in Tuvalu — what would you have done? If you were in our shoes, what would you have done to save Tuvalu?”
Asia Pacific Report collaborates with The University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme newspaper Wansolwara.
King tide, Funafuti, Tuvalu in February 2024. Image: Wahasi/Wansolwara News
PNG's Prime Minister James Marape has pledged to Parliament that he will "restore police leadership to stabilise Enga" . . . as the PNG Post-Courier calls for a state of emergency in the province. Image: PNG Post-Courier
EDITORIAL: The PNG Post-Courier
Some people are literally making a killing in Enga.
Yes, they really are.
Hired gunmen are getting rich by the day and picking up women and girls as payments as well, leaving deaths and destruction in their wake in what is apparently becoming a booming industry.
The news is disturbing, to say the least, for a province that has got so much going at the moment.
As the illegal industry takes root by the day, we do not see this deadly business which is already stretching the limits of tolerance and the resources of the law and justice sector, ending soon.
Police Commissioner David Manning promised more manpower will be deployed into the province to assist those on the ground to curb the tribal fighting.
At the same time, he is asking for help from the provincial leaders to get down to their communities to stop the fighting and killing.
Grabbed world attention
The recent massacre in Wapenamanda has grabbed world attention again and this time the Australian government, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese describing the event as “very disturbing”, promising more technical aid to PNG to address this madness.
Tribal fighting has always been a curse in Enga for years. What started as bow and arrow affairs in the past have now gone high-tech with the deployment of drones, Google maps and high-powered guns, resulting in the high number of deaths
Genocide is the word to describe what is happening.
Powerful tribes are eliminating the weak, and leaving the disciplinary forces helplessly watching by the roadsides as the massacre continues to go.
There is no concern for the lives killed, the injuries or the plight of the hundreds of mothers and children caught up in this mayhem.
In the words of Provincial Police Commander, Superintendent George Kakas, businessmen, educated elites and well-to-do people fund these activities, hire gunmen and purchase firearms and ammunitions.
We would like to add politicians to the list because we suspect that they procured the weapons and left them with their supporters during the elections and these guns are now coming out.
How could they sleep peacefully?
How could these people find the peace to sleep peacefully in the night when their money, the technology, the guns and bullets they supplied are killing in big numbers and the murderers are uploading images of the dead bodies online for the world to see?
Prime Minister James Marape recently promised new legislation to curb domestic terrorism and we wait to see whether this law will ever get passed by Parliament.
This law is needed now to make the facilitators and the killers account for their actions.
In the interim, the government must declare a State of Emergency in Enga to deploy the full force of the law into the fighting zones to deal with the perpetrators.
They are known to the police, the leaders and even the Prime Minister.
What is stopping the police from arresting these culprits? Are they above the law? Are they protected species, vested with the power to end lives of other people in this manner?
Entire tribes wiped out
What are we waiting for?
To see entire tribes wiped out from the face of Enga before we move in to collect the bodies, take the women and children to care centres and keep watching from the roadsides.
Enough is enough. Declare the SOE in Enga. Enact the domestic terrorism legislation. Arrest those that facilitate and kill.
So much is going for Enga today and if nothing is done to end this ugly disease, Enga is doomed.
This PNG Post-Courier editorial was originally published under the title “Genocide in Enga” on 21 February 2014. Republished with permission.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
