Silent Night is a well-known Christmas carol that tells of a peaceful and silent night in Bethlehem, referring to the first Christmas more than 2000 years ago.
It is now 2024, and it was again a silent night in Bethlehem last night, reports Al Jazeera’s Nisa Ibrahim. Not because of peace. But a lack of it.
Israel’s war on Gaza and violence in the occupied West Bank has frightened away visitors who would traditionally visit Bethlehem at this time of year.
Gone were the sparkling lights, the festive decorations and the towering Christmas tree that had graced Gaza City for decades.
The Square of the Unknown Soldier, once alive with the spirit of the season, now lies in ruins, reduced to rubble by relentless Israeli air strikes.
Amid the rubble, the faithful sought solace even as fighting continued to rage across the Strip.
“This Christmas carries the stench of death and destruction,” said George al-Sayegh, who for weeks has sought refuge in the 12th century Greek Orthodox Church of St Porphyrius.
“There is no joy, no festive spirit. We don’t even know who will survive until the next holiday.”
‘Christ still in the rubble’
On Friday, the Palestinian theologian and pastor Reverend Munther Isaac delivered a Christmas sermon at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, in occupied West Bank — the birthplace of Jesus — called “Christ Is Still in the Rubble.” He said in this excerpt from Democracy Now!:
‘“Never again” should mean never again to all peoples. “Never again” has become “yet again” — yet again to supremacy, yet again to racism and yet again to genocide.
‘And sadly, “never again” has become yet again for the weaponisation of the Bible and the silence and complicity of the Western church, yet again for the church siding with power, the church siding with the empire.
‘And so, today, after all this, of total destruction, annihilation — and Gaza is erased, unfortunately — millions have become refugees and homeless, tens of thousands killed.
‘And why is anyone still debating whether this is a genocide or not? I can’t believe it. Yet, even when church leaders simply call for investigating whether this is a genocide, he is called out, and it becomes breaking news.
‘Friends, the evidence is clear. Truth stands plain for all to see. The question is not whether this is a genocide. This is not the debate. The real question is: Why isn’t the world and the church calling it a genocide?
‘It says a lot when you deny and ignore and refrain from using the language of genocide. This says a lot. It actually reveals hypocrisy, for you lectured us for years on international laws and human rights. It reveals your hypocrisy.
‘It says a lot on how you look at us Palestinians. It says a lot about your moral and ethical standards. It says everything about who you are when you turn away from the truth, when you refuse to name oppression for what it is. Or could it be that they’re not calling it a genocide?
‘Could it be that if reality was acknowledged for what it is, that it is a genocide, then that it would be an acknowledgment of your guilt? For this war was a war that so many defended as “just” and “self-defense.” And now you can’t even bring yourself to apologise . . .
‘We said last year Christ is in the rubble. And this year we say Christ is still in the rubble. The rubble is his manger. Jesus finds his place with the marginalised, the tormented, the oppressed and the displaced.
‘We look at the holy family and see them in every displaced and homeless family living in despair. In the Christmas story, even God walks with them and calls them his own.’
Christ is still in the Rubble – Reverend Munther Isaac’s Christms message. Video: Reverend Isaac
Story of Jesus one of oppression
“Pastor Isaac joined journalist host Chris Hedges on a special episode of The Chris Hedges Report to revisit the story of Christmas and how it relates to Palestine then and now.
He wasted no time in reminding people that despite the usual jolly associations with Christmas, the story of Jesus Christ was one of oppression, one that involved the struggle of refugees, the rule of a tyrant, the witnessing of a massacre and the levying of taxation.
“To us here in Palestine,” Reverend Isaac said the terms linked to the struggle “actually make the story, as we read it in the Gospel, very much a Palestinian story, because we can identify with the characters.”
Journalist Hedges and Reverend Isaac invoked the story of the Good Samaritan to point out the deliberate blindness the world has bestowed upon the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza in the midst of the ongoing genocide.
The conclusion of the [Good Samaritan] story is that there is no us and them, Reverend Isaac told Hedges.
“Everybody is a neighbour. You don’t draw a circle and determine who’s in and who’s out.”
It was clear, Reverend Isaac pointed out, “the Palestinians are outside of the circle. We’ve been saying it — human rights don’t apply on us, not even compassion.”
Pope calls for ‘silence of arms’ in Gaza In his Christmas “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and world) address yesterday at the Vatican, Pope Francis denounced the “extremely grave” humanitarian situation in Gaza while appealing for the release of captives and a ceasefire in the war-torn coastal enclave.
He also appealed for peace in Ukraine and Sudan, reports Al Jazeera.
“I think of the Christian communities in Israel and Palestine, particularly in Gaza, where the humanitarian situation is extremely grave. May there be a ceasefire, may the hostages be released and aid be given to the people worn out by hunger and by war,” he said.
Israel has killed at least 45,361 Palestinians in its war on Gaza and wounded 107,803 since October 7, 2023, the day a Hamas-led operation was launched into Israel during which 1,139 people were killed and about 200 were taken captive.
The nativity scene on Christmas Eve in New Zealand’s St Patrick’s Cathedral in Auckland last night . . . no mention of Bethlehem’s oppression by Israel and muted celebrations, or the Gaza genocide in the sermon. Image: Asia Pacific Report
A "Christ in the Rubble" nativity scene recreated by the Fiji Women's Crisis Centre (FWCC) in Suva, Fiji . . . peacefully replicating Bethlehem and representing Gaza's "hell on earth". Image: FWCC screenshot APR
COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle
I have just attended a wonderful Christmas concert at St Mary of the Angels in Wellington – the Bach Choir, the Chiesa Ensemble and excellent soloists sent a thrill through my body. The final piece, Gloria by Antonio Vivaldi, triggered these thoughts.
The Gloria, of course, is a traditional element of the Catholic mass, and the maestro’s version is one of the Christmas favourites. But in 2024, in the midst of the Gaza genocide, surely Christian observance means more than, for example, turning up to church, enjoying the choir, and having a cup of tea and a scone.
How then should Christians translate Gloria in excelsis Deo?
Gloria in excelsis Deo. Glory to God in the highest.
The best way to venerate is to emulate. Which is why the American Christians like to ask themselves: “WWJD” (What Would Jesus Do?) — quite a practical question. The curious part is they come up with the craziest answers.
American bombs, delivered by Israeli soldiers, have torn thousands of Palestinian children apart. Thousands today need new artificial limbs. Most, for want of Christian charity, will never get them.
A year ago, in the early days of these crimes against humanity, I heard the best and wisest sermon of my life by Palestinian minister Reverend Munther Isaac, delivered in the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. He titled his sermon “Christ in the rubble” .
Christ in the Rubble sermon, Christmas 2023. Video: Democracy Now!
Fearing not just for Gaza but for all of Palestine and what will come next, he said:
“We are tormented by the silence of the world.
“Leaders of the so-called Free World lined up one after the other to give the green light to this genocide against a captive population.”
“Here we confront the Theology of Empire,” he said, a theology that enlists even the Bible to justify killing men, women and children on an industrial scale. A year later, hundreds are still being killed every week. All means of existence are being denied the people of Gaza.
Jurists and scholars from one end of the earth to the other say we are witnessing genocide. Do you think Jesus Christ would approve of such conduct by an all-powerful army supported by the richest Christian-majority nations?
Recall his righteous rage when he drove the moneychangers from the temple; their transgression is small-change compared to what is being done to the children of Gaza. WWJD?
Babes of Bethlehem . . . A version of this article first appeared as “Babes of Bethlehem & Gaza” in the New Zealand Catholic magazine Tui Motu. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz
Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. And peace on earth to people of good will.
Jesus, a Palestinian, died a violent death at the hands of a colonial regime working in concert with local elites. We know where his sympathies would lie today — with the refugees, the starved, the sick, the persecuted.
When confronted with something on this scale, it is important we refrain from despair or helplessness. We can be part of building a global movement of solidarity with suffering humanity.
This is a time for activism eg, join demonstrations in support of Palestine. They bring good people of all faiths and outlooks together.
Tell your bank and your stockbroker (if you have one) to divest from Israel. If you are an ASB customer, check out the Don’t Bank on Apartheid campaign.
Write to Parliamentarians, including Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters, about your concerns, eg, that it is time to
join South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ;
expel the Israeli ambassador in protest;
take our US ally to task for their part in the genocide;
call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire;
withdraw NZ troops from Operation Prosperity Guardian;
call on New Zealand to live up to its obligations under the International Court of Justice ruling 19th July 2024 “not to recognise as legal the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Territories and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation”; and
restore and massively increase funding to UNRWA and to condemn attacks on the United Nations and to call genocide by its name.
Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram. Thouwho takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer.
Jesus was not born in a stable so that thousands of Palestinians could be born in tents.
If God so loved the world, do we imagine God would approve of the satanic violence being meted out to 2.3 million Palestinians this Christmas?
Would God forgive the leaders of all the Western governments, including New Zealand’s, who have actively supported this daily slaughter of the Innocents?
The Babe Jesus isn’t the only baby we should be caring about this Christmas. All people of goodwill need to oppose these crimes and do all we can to bring to a close Israel’s war on Palestinians.
Miserere nobis. Have mercy upon us.
Come on, people, let us support the Palestinian people in their hour of need.
Amen
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz He is a lapsed Catholic who has maintained lifelong contact with some of the nuns who played an influential part in his upbringing.
By turns over his long career, Michael Leunig was a poet, a prophet and a provocateur . . . his greatness lay in how intensely he made his audiences think and feel. Image: Michael Leunig, CC BY-NC-ND
ANALYSIS:By Richard Scully, Robert Phiddian and Stephanie Brookes
Michael Leunig — who died in the early hours of Thursday December 19, surrounded by “his children, loved ones, and sunflowers” — was the closest thing Australian cartooning had to a prophet. By turns over his long career, he was a poet, a prophet and a provocateur.
The challenge comes in attempting to understand Leunig’s significance: for Australian cartooning; for readers of The Age and other newspapers past; and for the nation’s idea of itself.
On this day, do you remember the gently philosophical Leunig, or the savagely satirical one? Do you remember a cartoon that you thought absolutely nailed the problems of the world, or one you thought was terribly wrong-headed?
Leunig’s greatness lay in how intensely he made his audiences think and feel.
There is no one straightforward story to tell here. With six decades of cartooning at least weekly in newspapers and 25 book-length collections of his work, how could there be?
The light and the dark One thread is an abiding fondness for the whimsical Leunig. Mr Curly and Vasco Pyjama live on in the imaginations of so many readers.
Particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, Leunig’s work seemed to hold a moral and ethical mirror up to Australian society — sometimes gently, but not without controversy, such as his 1995 “Thoughts of a baby lying in a childcare centre”.
Feed the Inner Duck. Image: Michael Leunig, CC BY-NC-ND
Another thread is the dark satirist.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he broke onto the scene as a wild man in Oz, the Sunday Observer and the Nation Review who deplored Vietnam and only escaped the draft owing to deafness in one ear.
Then he apparently mellowed to become the guru of The Age, still with a capacity to launch the occasional satirical thunderbolt. Decidedly countercultural, together with Patrick Cook and Peter Nicholson, Leunig brought what historian Tony Moore has called “existential and non-materialist themes to the Australian black-and-white tradition”.
By 1999, he was declared a “national living treasure” by the National Trust, and was being lauded by universities for his unique contributions to the national culture.
But to tell the story of Leunig’s significance from the mid 90s on is to go beyond the dreamer and the duck. In later decades you could see a clear distinction between some cartoons that continued to console in a bewildering world, and others that sparked controversy.
Politics and controversy Leunig saw 9/11 and the ensuing “War on Terror” as the great turning point in his career. He fearlessly returned to the themes of the Vietnam years, only to receive caution, rebuke and rejection from editors and readers.
He stopped drawing Mr Curly and Vasco Pyjama. The world was no longer safe for the likes of them.
Then there was a cartoon refused by The Age in 2002, deemed by editor Michael Gawenda to be inappropriate: in the first frame, a Jew is confronted by the gates of the death camp: “Work Brings Freedom [Arbeit Macht Frei]”; in the second frame an Israeli viewing a similar slogan “War Brings Peace”.
Rejected, it was never meant to see the light of day, but ABC’s Media Watch and Crikey outed it because of the constraint its spiking represented to fair media comment on the Middle East.
That the cartoon was later entered, without Leunig’s knowledge, in the infamous Iranian “Holocaust Cartoon” competition of 2006, has only added to its infamy and presaged the internet’s era of the uncontrollable circulation of images.
A decade later, from 2012, he reworked Martin Niemöller’s poetic statement of guilt over the Holocaust. The result was outrage, but also acute division within the Australian Jewish community.
First They Came. Image: Michael Leunig, CC BY-NC-ND
Dvir Abramovich (chairperson of the Anti-Defamation Commission) made a distinction between something challenging, and something racist, believing it was the latter.
Harold Zwier (of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society) welcomed the chance for his community to think critically about Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank.
Mummy was Busy. Image: Michael Leunig, CC BY-NC-ND
Then from 2021 — a covid-19 vaccination needle atop an armoured tank, rolling towards a helpless citizen.
Leunig’s enforced retirement (it is still debated whether he walked or was pushed) was long and drawn-out. He filed his last cartoon for The Agethis August. By then, he had alienated more than a few of his colleagues in the press and the cartooning profession.
Support of the downtrodden Do we speak ill of the dead? We hope not. Instead, we hope we are paying respect to a great and often angry artist who wanted always to challenge the consumer society with its dark cultural and geopolitical secrets.
Leunig’s response was a single line of argument: he was “Just a cartoonist with a moral duty to speak”.
You don’t have to agree with every provocation, but his purpose is always to take up the cause of the weak, and deploy all the weaponry at his disposal to support the downtrodden in their fight.
“The role of the cartoonist is not to be balanced”, said Leunig, but rather to “give balance”.
For Leunig, the weak were the Palestinian civilians, the babies of the post-iPhone generation, and those forced to be vaccinated by a powerful state; just as they were the Vietnamese civilians, the children forced to serve their rulers through state-sanctioned violence, the citizens whose democracy was undercut by stooges of the establishment.
That deserves to be his legacy, regardless of whether you agree or not about his stance.
The coming year will give a great many people pause to reflect on the life and work of Leunig. Indeed, he has provided us with a monthly schedule for doing just that: Leunig may be gone, but 2025 is already provided for, via his last calendar.
New York prosecutors have charged Luigi Mangione with “murder as an act of terrorism” in his alleged shooting of health insurance CEO Brian Thompson earlier this month.
The report contains testimony from Israeli troops that civilians are being murdered in Gaza and are then being retroactively designated as terrorists to justify their execution.
“People need to know what this war really looks like, what serious acts some commanders and fighters are committing inside Gaza. They need to know the inhuman scenes we’re witnessing,” an Israeli commander who returned from the Netzarim corridor sayshttps://t.co/2y6ONxREy8
“We’re killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists,” a recently discharged officer told Haaretz.
These two stories together say so much about the way the label “terrorist” is used under the US-centralised power umbrella.
The guy who shot the health insurance CEO is a terrorist, but the people systematically slaughtering civilians in Gaza are not terrorists. The people fighting against those who are slaughtering the civilians are terrorists, and noncombatants are being categorized as belonging to this terrorist organisation in order to justify killing them. The al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria were terrorists, but now they’re a US puppet regime so soon they won’t be terrorists — but they need to be designated terrorists for a little while longer because the claim that Syria is crawling with terrorists is Israel’s justification for its recent land grabs there. The Uyghur militant group ETIM used to be a terrorist group, but now they’re not a terrorist group because they can be used to help carve up Syria and maybe fight China later on. The IRGC is a military wing of a sovereign nation, but it counts as a terrorist group because of vibes or something.
Is that clear enough?
Really the label “terrorist” is nothing more than a tool of imperial narrative control which gets moved around based on whether or not someone’s use of violence is deemed legitimate by the managers of the empire. Because Mangione’s alleged crime has ignited a public interest in class warfare, the label “terrorism” is being used to frame it as an especially heinous act of evil against an innocent member of the public.
The empire’s favourite trick is to begin the historical record at the moment its enemies retaliate against its abuses. Oh no, a health insurance CEO was victimised by an evil act of terrorism. Oh no, Israel was just innocently minding its own business when it was viciously attacked by Hamas. Oh no, Iran attacked Israel completely out of the blue and now Israel must retaliate. Oh no, Russia just launched an entirely unprovoked war on Ukraine.
Everything that led up to the unauthorised act of violence is erased from the record, because all of the violence, provocation and abuse which gave rise to the unauthorised act of violence were authorized by the empire. Authorised aggression doesn’t count as aggression.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. If you control the narrative you can control not only when the historical record of violence begins but what kinds of violence qualify as violence. Killing people by depriving them of healthcare because denying healthcare services is how your company increases its profit margins? That’s not violence. Inflicting tyranny and abuse upon a deliberately marginalised ethnic group in an apartheid state? That’s not violence. Violence is when you respond to those forceful aggressions with forceful aggressions of your own.
If we are to become a healthy society, we’re going to have to stop allowing some forms of violence, aggression and abuse to be redacted from the official records while others are listed and condemned. Those who care about truth and justice account for all forms of violence, aggression and abuse, not only those which inconvenience the rich and powerful.
It is an act of aggression to do things which sicken and impoverish others in order to advance your own wealth.
It is an act of aggression to pollute the biosphere we all depend on for survival in order to increase your profit margins.
It is an act of aggression to use your wealth to manipulate your nation’s politics in ways which exacerbate inequality and injustice.
It is an act of aggression to maintain an apartheid state which cannot exist without nonstop violence.
It is an act of aggression to surround the earth with military bases and encircle nations which disobey your dictates.
It is an act of aggression to try to rule the world using military violence, proxy conflicts, staged coups, threats, starvation sanctions, and financial and economic coercion.
These are all acts of aggression, and any retaliation against them will never be an unprovoked attack. As we move into the future while these abuses exacerbate, it’s going to become very important to maintain an acute awareness of this.
1News Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver in Port Vila . . . "searchers are racing against time to find survivors in the rubble." Image: 1News screenshot APR
The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) said late last night that a flight carrying 93 passengers, almost all Kiwis and their families, had left Port Vila at about 7.45pm New Zealand time.
“A small number of foreign nationals are also being assisted on this flight,” the NZDF said.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters confirmed the flight’s arrival overnight.
He wrote on X at about 5.30am today: “We are pleased to have evacuated 93 people from Port Vila on a @NZDefenceForce flight overnight.
People about to depart Vanuatu on a RNZAF Boeing 757. Image: NZDF
“The passengers were mostly New Zealanders and their families, but also included around 12 foreign nationals from Samoa, the United Kingdom, Singapore, France and Finland.
“Our consular team continues to assist New Zealanders affected by the earthquake in Vanuatu.”
Any Kiwis still in Vanuatu were urged to call MFAT on +64 99 20 20 20.
“New Zealand’s efforts to aid Vanuatu with its earthquake response, through the provision of personnel and relief supplies, continues,” Peters said.
NZ disaster response teams on the ground in quake-hit Vanuatu. Image: 1NewsRescue and recovery efforts continue after Vanuatu earthquake. Image: 1NewsThe moment the quake hit a car garage in Port Vila. Image: 1 News
Australian couple describe earthquake ‘mayhem’
Australian couple Susie Nailon and her partner Tony Ferreira were in the Billabong shop when the quake hit. Image 1News
Australian couple Susie Nailon and her partner Tony Ferreira told 1News about the “mayhem” of being inside the Billabong shop when the quake hit.
“It sort of started to rumble a little bit and I looked up in the ceiling and saw the ceiling start to come down on the fluorescent light. But it wasn’t just a shake, it no longer shook left or right, the whole ground started to wave,” said Ferreira.
“The whole roof had caved down . . . It just felt like a deck of cards. [It came] straight down, flattened everything.
“And the force of it just pushed all the windows, plastered glass straight out in the road from all that weight,” he said.
He said there were about six or seven others in the shop with them at the time, and said the couple only made it out by “literally seconds”.
“If my rack had been a couple more metres in, then there’s no chance. It was that quick. There was no warning,” he said.
Nailon said the aftershocks had been really triggering, and as soon as she felt something she was “straight out the door”.
“No one has a chance if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said.
Kiwi helping out in Vanuatu
Kiwi Jason Horan who lives in Port Vila. Image: 1News
New Zealander Jason Horan, who lives in Port Vila, told 1News it was “just chaos” in the aftermath of the quake.
“There [were] people lying on the ground everywhere, buildings falling down, so it was pretty scary,” he said.
He said he watched the road move “like a wave”.
Since the quake, Horan said he had been helping others simply because he wanted to.
“I’ve been running everybody around, just trying to supply everybody with food and water. So I go around to every hotel and resort making sure they know who to talk to and stuff like that.”
He said he wanted to do his part in “making sure people are okay”.
“All the locals are pulling together though . . . they’re resilient, so it’s really good.”
NZ High Commissioner on quake and what comes next
New Zealand High Commissioner to Vanuatu Nicci Simmonds. Image: 1News
New Zealand High Commissioner to Vanuatu Nicci Simmonds said the commission was in the top storey of a three-storey concrete building.
“I was at my desk at the time [of the quake], so that’s about as far away from the entry/exit as you can get,” she said.
“So you follow your schoolgirl training and you just get under the table, holding on while it jumped around a lot. A lot of noise.”
She said there was dust everywhere when the shaking stopped. She tried to check on a colleague.
“Very close to her desk, the building had completely separated. There was a three-storey drop.”
Everyone managed to get out of the building, Simmonds said. Initially, communications were the biggest challenge, she added.
“Now, it’s making sure that reliable safe drinking water, power, and basic infrastructure is up and running.”
Simmonds said the impact was “highly localised”, based on aerial surveillance.
“It’s a significant, major event in Port Vila, but it doesn’t appear that there have been villages buried by landslides elsewhere, so that’s been an enormous relief.”
She said the response was “the kind of job that surges, and peaks, and changes”.
Have you ever heard a comment which made you so outraged that you were compelled to debate it in your head years later?
One of my favourite shows is Unreported World, where journalists travel to cover an underreported human rights issue with an international “People vs Power” theme. I can easily pinpoint the worst episode for me, Series 33, Episode 7 (“Obesity in Paradise”).
This made me disappointed and angry at what I thought was an uncritical episode.
Unreported World: “Obesity in Paradise”. Video: Sophie Morgan
I interpreted the presenter as having a condescending and blaming tone to the locals she had been interviewing, instead of linking the health issues back to the source of food. When health issues disproportionately affect a group fast, there is some kind of systemic issue.
Also, I felt as though the locals were portrayed as ignorant, with the presenter picking at the food, showing disgust and insensitively raising topics of death.
I felt as though the locals were being mocked and given no dignity. This has since been scrubbed from the Unreported World social media outlets and YouTube, but can be found on Vimeo and at The Coconet TV.
The matter of personal responsibility and health is raised in any conversation about minorities. For example, food related illness, childhood obesity, obesity in general, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes; all often discussed to be caused by “lazy parenting”, “poor habits”, “genetic weakness” and more.
Food for thought
But I recently read a book which provided much food for thought to challenge often simple, overgeneralising and frankly racist explanations for obesity and health issues in Pacific communities.
The book Cheap Meat: Flap Food Nations in the South Pacific raises the fact that what food we have available is not a coincidence and that sourcing, buying and eating food is inherently political and tangled with human rights abuses in each step of production and purchase.
For example, workplace exploitation in plantations, the exploitation of migrants and undocumented workers, factory farming, environmental degradation and so on.
Cheap Meat: Flap Food Nations in the Pacific Islands. Image: University of California Press screenshot APR
Neocolonialism is defined as the subjugation and dehumanisation of another community through indirect economic, cultural or political pressures. The more the book progressed, this pattern became more evident.
Companies are knowingly selling items which have negative health impacts. How they determine the “disposable” communities to sell to is a human rights issue.
Enter: The world of the lobby Flaps are a food known and shown in discussions of the Polynesian diet: they are the fatty belly parts of a sheep often sold in many Pacific Islands. The Unreported World episode stops at the disgust of the journalist, but the episode does not investigate why this food is so common and where it is coming from.
This is where New Zealand comes in. Enter: Ross Finlayson, once dubbed the “Kissinger of the meat industry”, we get the impression of a man embedded in international matters…and for whom the ends justify the means.
The UK was previously one of the biggest consumers of New Zealand lamb. In the 1970s, the meat industry was under pressure with increased competition with foreign products, dropping meat quality and changes to British import policies with the then entry into the European Union (then the European Economic Community 1973) and thus, new arrangements with European trading partners.
So, what’s going to happen to the meat?
Deborah Gewerts and Frederick Errington apply the Marxist theory of the “fetishisation of commodities” to the sale of meat flaps. The theory can be broken down like this: To create value and demand of an item, we “fetishise” it, which means we can create an artificial value to it, which can make us stop thinking about the exploitation which created the item, or the actual poor value of the item, because we feel good when we purchase it.
An example could be designer goods for instance.
Let’s apply this to meat flaps. Using case studies, the book raises how in, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Tonga, meat is seen as a prestigious food because it is more expensive than other types of food.
A status symbol
It is also a status symbol as a foreign good from New Zealand, known for its prized food and drink. So flaps have the reputation as an affordable small luxury. But in reality, it is a waste product.
Necessity: Sales tactics and the skills of the lobby combine with cheap, meaty and foreign dinners. But we know the forgone conclusion of poor health outcomes.
So, is New Zealand complicit with this outcome? The question was raised in a 2002 article for The Independent quoting the then Health Minister, Annette King, who thought it would be inappropriate to interfere with other countries’ affairs.
There could be many reasons for this. Firstly, Pacific nations are culturally diverse, and intervention would be complex. Secondly, intervening can be seen as paternalistic and culturally inappropriate.
Thirdly, this touches on what I call the “Activist’s Dilemma” — how and when can we interfere with another nation’s sovereignty. We will need to play the long game and involve communities directly.
But thankfully, seeds have been sown for the public. There are no coincidences when it comes to what food is available and when. In New Zealand, there is a renewed sense of activism in lower-socioeconomic neighbourhoods against new fast food and liquor stores, a lot of which is led by Pasifika community groups who want to create safe and healthy environments.
There are also indications that the availability of healthy food or lack thereof is being understood in a policy level. For example, the Helen Clark Foundation, a New Zealand think tank based on the values of former Labour Prime Minster, Helen Clark, has taken an interest in the topic, with a 2022 report on “Healthy Food Environments” and the disproportional impact of unhealthy food advertising and availability in poorer neighbourhoods.
Part of New Zealand’s identity is as a protesting nation alongside friends, against nuclear testing in the Pacific. What’s to stop us now to defend against the deaths of our neighbours?
Well, with awareness, maybe the plucky little nation might just pay attention.
Post Script Overall, Gewerts and Errington’s Cheap Meat is a good initial tool to debunk existing blaming narratives towards Pacific people. However, I would like to note that I have some criticisms of the book for prospective readers, namely the use of the term “genocide” without a provided definition or analysis of intent and total ethnic/national/religious destruction.
The book would benefit from further analysis.
Second, the book presents perspectives of unions, Pacific communities and the lobbies as having the same “weight”.
I felt that these groups are not directly comparable, for instance, advocating for human rights matters is not the same in effect or technique as corporate lobbying. Therefore, I felt that by presenting all sides as “equal”, this encouraged a false equivalency of all groups.
Please keep these in mind as you explore the topic. Happy reading!
Keeara Ofren is a New Zealand-born and based Filipina. She is a law and politics and international relations graduate who does communications for the public sector. Republished with permission from her blog K for Kindling.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Israel is continuing to bomb Syria a week after Syria’s longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power. On Sunday night, Israel dropped what has been described as an “earthquake bomb” on Syrian military and air defence sites in the coastal Tartus region.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights described Israel’s bombing as the heaviest strikes in Syria’s coastal region in more than a decade. According to the group, Israeli forces have launched more than 800 strikes on Syria over the past week.
The Israeli government has also approved a plan to expand illegal settlements in the occupied Golan Heights. This comes days after Israel invaded Syrian territory to seize more of the Golan Heights. In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Strengthening the Golan Heights is strengthening the state of Israel, and is especially important at this time. We will continue to hold on to it, make it flourish, and settle it.”
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has confirmed the Biden administration has been in direct contact with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist Syrian armed group that led the surprise offensive that toppled Assad.
SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: So, first, yes, we’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties. We have impressed upon everyone we’ve been in contact with the importance of helping find Austin Tice and bringing him home.
And we’ve also shared the principles that I just laid out for our ongoing support, principles, again, that have now been adopted by countries throughout the region and well beyond. And we’ve communicated those.
REPORTER: That’s direct contact?
SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: That’s direct contact, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Blinken made the comments in Jordan. Over the weekend, he also visited Turkey and Iraq to discuss the future of Syria.
We go now to Marwan Bishara, senior political analyst at Al Jazeera. He’s joining us from Doha.
If you can start off by responding to the latest, Marwan? Thanks for joining us again.
MARWAN BISHARA: Well, thank you for having me. I’m glad that the both of you are there in the studio. The last time I was with you, the both of you were there, and I was with Noam Chomsky, and we discussed the Arab Spring. It was the first two weeks of it.
AMY GOODMAN: Wow! Well, it’s —
MARWAN BISHARA: Thirteen years ago.
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara . . . “So, it’s not just the incredible ugliness of it all, the rogueness of it all, the inhumanity of it all. What kills me is the silence in Israel, in the United States and elsewhere.” Image: Democracy Now! screenshot APR
AMY GOODMAN: Yeah, that’s absolutely amazing. Oh, and a belated happy birthday to Noam Chomsky, who turned, I think it was, 96 on December 7th. Marwan, if you can talk now — I wish we could have Noam Chomsky responding, as well, but if you can talk now about the latest news? And then we’re going to go back to look at the toppling of Assad, but right now this latest news of the attacks on Syria. I think the number of Israeli strikes is at about 800 now.
MARWAN BISHARA: It’s truly incredible. Israel is setting new precedents in the Middle East. It has been doing so for the past 75, 80 years, but this week, in the way it’s acting so lawlessly against Syria, as a rogue state basically, bombing the hell out of its neighbor, simply because there has been a change of rulers in Damascus attempting a peaceful transitional governing there, taking care of the people, and sending all kinds of signals that they have absolutely zero intentions of getting into war with anyone.
And yet, this is what’s called “strategic opportunism” on the part of the Netanyahu government; also political opportunism just while he’s on trial for corruption and the rest of it, being a war criminal also, he’s stealing the show by deflecting from what’s going on in Israel, attacking Syria everywhere in Syria, while at the same time expanding in the southern part of Syria beyond the already-occupied Golan Heights.
And, as you said, he’s trying to double the illegal settlements in the Golan Heights. So, all in all, Israel, Netanyahu are sending exactly the wrong messages, doing exactly the wrong provocations, and at the same time setting precedents for rogueness, that I think it might not come to bite them soon, but it probably could later.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And your response, Marwan, to the summit that was held in Jordan over the weekend? What do you think came out of it, and especially Secretary of State Blinken being there?
MARWAN BISHARA: You know, the first impression is to remember back the leaders’ parole, parole, parole. You know, sometimes things like only words, words and more words come out of Arab leaders and Arab summits, especially those with the United States. But then, if you look a little more deeply into it, you would know that a lot of those people who — a lot of those leaders who were convening the summit in Aqaba — have already been normalising relations with the former Assad regime, despite its murderous corruption, despite its narco-state criminal kleptocracy.
They had invited him back in the Arab League in 2022 and embraced him in 2023, and they were actually strengthening economic relations in most of them. But now they were suddenly meeting together and to talk about human rights and peaceful transition and minority rights in Syria, as if, moving forward, or as if the past 60 years, it was merely the majority rights that were violated in Syria by the Assad dictatorship.
Be that as it may, I think while they sing from the same sheet, I think they have very different, very different approaches to what security means, to what stability means in Syria, to what even terrorism means. They don’t agree on this, that and the other thing.
Israel bombs Syria 800 times. Video: Democracy Now!
And, in fact, each and every one of the major powers in that meeting supports different militia, different military forces in Syria. Just to give you a simple example, we have now what? Five or six military forces in Syria. We have the Free Syrian Army; we have the National Syrian Army; we have the militias, Syrian forces in the south; we have the Syrian Democratic Forces; and we have, of course, HTS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — all in addition to Assad’s forces that remain there, as well as ISIS.
A lot of these groups are supported by some of these people convening, including the Turks and the Emiratis and the Jordanians and so on and so forth. So, it’s going to be a very complicated way forward, and I remain doubtful that the Arab regimes are serious about assisting the Syrian people, moving forward.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I want to turn to President Biden speaking last week after the fall of Assad.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: So we carried out a comprehensive sanction programme against him and all those responsible for atrocities against the Syrian people.
Second, we maintained our military presence in Syria, our counter-ISIS — to counter the support of local partners, as well, on the ground, their partners, never ceding an inch of territory, taking out leaders of ISIS, ensuring that ISIS can never establish a safe haven there again.
Third, we’ve supported Israel’s freedom of action against Iranian networks in Syria and against actors aligned with Iran who transported lethal aid to Lebanon.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was President Biden taking credit for the fall of Assad. Your response, Marwan?
MARWAN BISHARA: I tell you, it’s mind-boggling, mind-boggling, trying to whitewash genocide by saying, “Well, after all, 15 months of genocide, maybe, you know, we were on the right track after all. Look at us. You know, we are so great,” you know, and basically tapping himself on the shoulders after all the war crimes that were committed in Lebanon and in Palestine.
And now he’s taking credit for some change that happened in Syria by the Syrian people — by the Syrian people — despite the complicity and the conspiracies against the Syrian people, and despite the embrace of the Assad regime by Biden’s allies in the region.
The second thing that came to mind is that, you know, Blinken and Biden keep warning us about ISIS, without mentioning that ISIS is basically the creation of the American invasion and occupation in Iraq, of the stupidities committed by everyone from Bush to Obama, how they dealt with the question of Iraq, including the de-Ba’athifications, including the dissolving of the Iraqi military, that basically led directly to the rise of ISIS.
So, really, American intervention in the region, whether it is in Iraq or in Syria, and certainly in Palestine, has been catastrophic. Trying to claim credit for what happened in Syria or could happen in Syria is just beyond the pale.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to the [White House] spokesperson Matt Miller, who was questioned by journalists recently.
MATTHEW MILLER: So, we support the work of the ICC. I know that, obviously, we have disagreed with their —
MATT LEE: Wait a second.
MATTHEW MILLER: Hold on. Hold on. I’m going to — let me address it.
MATT LEE: No, you support the work of the ICC —
MATTHEW MILLER: We do support —
MATT LEE: — until they do something like with Israel.
MATTHEW MILLER: We — so, we have had a lot — let me just answer the question.
MATT LEE: And then you don’t like them at all, or the U.S.
MATTHEW MILLER: You know what, Matt? Let me — Matt, let me answer the question, because I was addressing that before you interrupted me.
We obviously have had a jurisdictional dispute with them as it relates to cases against Israel. That is a long-standing jurisdictional dispute. But that said, we have also made clear that we support broadly their work, and we have supported their work in other cases, despite our jurisdictional dispute when it comes to Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s State Department spokesperson Matt Miller being questioned by AP’s Matt Lee, talking about why he would support Assad being brought up on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court but doesn’t feel the same way about Netanyahu and Gallant. In fact, that was just a few days after Gallant had been in Washington, DC, even though the ICC has issued this arrest warrant, meeting with US officials. Marwan Bishara?
MARWAN BISHARA: You know, Amy, it’s funny, right? I mean, each and every era has an image that speaks to it, that represents it, that reflects it. This was one of them, laughing out, laughing at the State Department spokesperson, the Biden administration’s spokesperson, for again underlining, emphasizing and basically speaking clearly to his double standard and hypocrisy.
But, you know, as an international relations observer, let me tell you, America does not have double standards in the Middle East. It has a single standard. And that’s American interest, American-Israeli interest. So, it’s not really a double standard. I mean, you know, global powers, empires, and notably the United States, it looks like, for us intellectuals and others, moralists, that there is double standard, but in the end of the day, they have a single, narrow American strategic, Israeli strategic interest, and they’ve always spoken to it, defended it, justified it.
So, that’s why for 15 months we’ve seen — at Al Jazeera, we’ve reported from — live from Gaza the unraveling genocide, the war on doctors, the war on journalists, the war on children, on schools and hospitals. And a lot of this has trickled down to the American media, and we’ve seen it.
And I think the Biden administration understands that there is a genocide, trying to get off on technicality. Of course, again, this was exposed to be the total hypocrisy which it is. It’s OK for Putin to be taken or indicted by the ICC, and Assad, it’s OK, even the Myanmar generals, it’s OK, but not the Israeli leaders.
It’s hypocrisy and double standard for the rest of us. For America, it’s the one single standard: American-Israeli interest.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I also wanted to ask you about Gaza, which the rest of the world keeps trying to forget, the atrocity still going on there. At least three journalists killed in Israeli attacks this weekend, including Al Jazeera cameraman Ahmed Al-Louh, as well as Mohammed Balousha, who last November was first to report — about the intensive care babies who died after Israeli soldiers forcibly evacuated of the Al-Nasr Hospital. Your response to these latest attacks on your fellow journalists?
MARWAN BISHARA: You know, we’ve been covering this for a while. And at one point, you start asking yourself the question: Is this intentional? Or is it actually, you know, war, as it were, you know, just it happens? But then, when we started investigating and others started investigating and when the UN started looking at it, as we did when our own journalists were killed in the West Bank, clearly there is an intentional policy of assassinating journalists in Gaza.
They are the eyewitnesses of the unraveling genocide, and hence getting rid of them is a thing that Israel has been doing now for 15, 16 months.
Now, why has this become more and more believable is when, then, more and more human rights organisations start reporting about how children are being targeted, I mean, you know, shooting at children in the head and in the chest. We’ve seen that by doctors, including Western doctors, American doctors, reporting about that.
Then, slowly but surely, one starts to believe that, in fact, there is a government, there is an army, that is capable of killing doctors intentionally, killing journalists intentionally, in fact, killing children intentionally.
And all that happens while — I don’t want to talk about American journalists — while Israeli journalists are silent. Israeli journalists are silent as countless Palestinian journalists are killed by their military. Israeli doctors are silent as Israel assassinates countless doctors in the 15, 16 clinical or hospital facilities in Gaza, or what remains of them.
So, it’s not just the incredible ugliness of it all, the rogueness of it all, the inhumanity of it all. What kills me is the silence in Israel, in the United States and elsewhere.
AMY GOODMAN: Marwan Bishara, we thank you for being with us, Al Jazeera senior political analyst, speaking to us from Doha.
A student is arrested at a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas on April 24, 2024 . . . crackdown over the past year has had a chilling effect in quashing protests at predominantly white universities attended by America’s educational and socioeconomic elites. Image: Press TV
COMMENTARY: By Donald Earl Collins
Universities in the United States have been especially repressive over the past year. Several like Columbia University and New York University have redefined protests against the state of Israel and its founding ideology Zionism as acts of “anti-Semitism”.
Campus after campus brought in law enforcement to have their own students, faculty, and staff arrested and charged for demanding an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ever expanding illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.
It wasn’t as if universities in the US had been tolerant of mass protests in the past. Universities called the police on their students back in the 1960s and 1970s when they staged sit-ins for civil rights or protested against America’s war in Vietnam as well.
In May 1970, the US National Guard killed four student protesters and wounded nine others at Kent State University in Ohio. That same month, two students were also killed and 12 others wounded by local law enforcement at Jackson State University in Mississippi.
It has always been in the nature of universities in the US — with their top-down approaches to running campuses — to do everything they can to suppress civil disobedience in any form, to punish students for even attempting to organise protests.
With the widespread strong-armed responses to the anti-genocide protests this year and the broad revisions to regulation at almost every campus aimed at squashing any potential renewal of such protests, however, one thing is clear.
Peak repression
Today, the American university — just like the American nation-state — is once again at peak repression. It has transformed fully into a corporate-like entity that view silencing dissent and maintaining order and obedience as part of its mission statement.
At Towson University, for example, the punishment for the handful of students who did a “die-in” in November 2023 to draw attention to Israel’s genocide in Gaza included requiring them to write essays explaining how they mobilised student protests.
Illinois state’s attorney Julia Rietz, at the behest of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is still considering filing felony “mob action charges” against four students for building a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus.
Many others have required students to complete mandatory modules about the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, expression, and assembly, which include explanations on various limits universities can legally impose on each.
Other institutions now require students to register themselves as an organised group and seek prior approval for where, when, and how they can protest.
The overall result has been far fewer protests in the latter part of 2024 than there were earlier in the year. It’s as if higher education leaders and university donors do not understand that the purpose of protest — and really, any organised attempt at civil disobedience — is to disrupt.
Disruption ensures those in power cannot turn their heads away from the issues protesters amplify, like with Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine and America’s complicity in it.
Only weak protests wanted
It seems as if universities only want weak protests, the kind that will not force them to change how they operate or how they invest their endowments — protests with no teeth at all.
I have experienced this first hand, many decades before the beginning of the genocide in Gaza that laid bare the oppressive nature of the American university in the past year. As an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh, I was a member of the Black Action Society (BAS).
After years of meetings, flyers, and petitions demanding that the university divest from the apartheid regime in South Africa, Pitt’s administration agreed to allow BAS to march around the campus.
By then it was my senior year, the fall of 1990, and our little march was too little too late. South Africa was already on the path toward a post-apartheid future by the time Pitt’s administration acquiesced.
Our university-approved protest was in stark contrast with the anti-apartheid protests that hit New York in 1985, as part of which a coalition of student groups blockaded Hamilton Hall (now Mandela Hall) at Columbia University for three weeks. These unauthorised protests eventually forced Columbia to divest from its financial holdings in South Africa.
Universities approve protest action only when they know it is unlikely to make much difference. And polite protests seldom achieve anything other than uneasy complacency.
This year, besides students who missed out on graduation, an untold number of faculty and staff have seen themselves out of jobs or outright fired over their participation in pro-Palestine protests. Most of them, though, are not like former Muhlenberg College professor Maura Finkelstein, so far the only tenured faculty member fired because of her anti-genocide speech.
Many academics sacked
Colleges have sacked a considerable number of anti-genocide contingent and adjunct faculty, who were already vulnerable due to their “short-time contract labour” status. Many more contingent faculty who have spoken out about Palestine, however, have simply been put “under investigation,” and their contracts quietly allowed to expire without renewals.
As Anita Levy, senior programme officer with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) said during an interview with The Intercept earlier this year, “the bulk of our inquiries, even our cases, have to do with violations of due process” for contingent faculty.
I may be one of these contingent academics whose contract was not renewed and employment ended without any due process. A month after publishing my Al Jazeera article “The American centre’s embrace of the far right fuels Israel’s war machine” in October 2023, my history department chair at Loyola University Maryland gave me unofficial word that my contract would not be renewed.
I reached out to Loyola through AAUP for more details in June 2024, but they refused to provide any explanation. I will likely never be sure what role my anti-genocidal stance against Israel played in my non-renewal compared to other politics internal to my department and my university. But the timing of my unofficial notification of my contract’s non-renewal is quite curious.
Last March, anti-genocide students slapped a Palestinian flag sticker on my office hours sign. My department wanted to know if I wanted this sign taken down, calling it “an act of vandalism”.
I said, “No, it’s perfectly fine. Students should be able to express themselves. Who am I not to support them?” None of my colleagues stopped by my office for the remainder of the semester, except to ask about my departure date so that they could move a new faculty member into my office.
That I am not alone in what some have called “the new McCarthyism” at US universities is cold comfort. It is not lost on me that a disproportionate number of the encampments, protests, arrests, suspensions, and non-renewals that took place and are in the public record occurred at elite public and private universities.
Chilling effect on campus
The crackdown over the past year has had a chilling effect in quashing protests at predominantly white universities attended by America’s educational and socioeconomic elites. For the rest of academia, the academic freedom and the liberal arts aspect of a college education is on life support.
The sheer amount of pressure coming from centre-right and far-right politicians, state legislatures, and the US Congress — not to mention university donors and boards — has put even the most well-meaning university administration in a repressive role.
All US universities — whatever their size, influence and economic power, want an unpolitical and uncritical faculty and student body, that would not cause trouble, scare donors or hinder their day-to-day comfort. They hope for a campus community that remains as quiet and docile as church mice after drinking communion wine.
Whether this is a new era of McCarthyism remains to be seen. In light of the past year of protest, though, maybe one’s right to say something about an injustice and to express it in art and in protest with other like-minded individuals should be a serious criterion when students consider what college they would like to attend.
If anyone were to rank universities by their willingness to embrace protests, I suspect nearly all higher education institutions would flunk this measure. The blanket attempt to shut down and shut up students and faculty will likely backfire, perhaps even leading to violent protests and a disproportionately deadly and violent response.
But whatever this era is, the idea that the US university is a place of critical thinking, social justice, liberal arts, and making the world a better place is as false as the day is long.
Donald Earl Collins is the author of Fear of a “Black” America: Multiculturalism and the African American Experience (2004). This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, has condemned Israel’s extensive airstrikes on Syrian installations — reportedly almost 500 times in 72 hours, comparing them to historic Israeli actions justified as “security measures”.
He criticised the hypocrisy of Israel’s security pretext endorsed by Western powers.
Asked why Israel was bombing Syria and encroaching on its territory just days after the ousting of the Bashar al-Assad regime after 54 years in power, he told Al Jazeera: “Because it can get away with it.”
Lawyer and senior law lecturer Dr Myra Williamson speaking about Israel’s violations of international law today at the New Zealand solidarity rally for Palestine in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau . . . “You have to be aware . . . that the ICC is being threatened.” Image: David Robie/APR
Al Jazeera analyst Marwan Bishara . . . Israel aims to destabilise and weaken neighbouring countries for its own security. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Bishara explained that Israel aimed to destabilise and weaken neighbouring countries for its own security.
He noted that the new Syrian administration was overwhelmed and unable to respond effectively.
Bishara highlighted that regional powers like Egypt and Saudi Arabia had condemned Israel’s actions, even though Western countries had been largely silent.
He said Israel was “taking advantage” of the chaos to “settle scores”.
“One can go back 75 years, 80 years, and look at Israel since its inception,” he said.
“What has it been? In a state of war. Continuous, consistent state of war, bombing countries, destabilising countries, carrying out genocide, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.
“All of it for the same reason — presumably it’s security.
A “Palestine will be free” placard at today’s Auckland solidarity rally for Palestine. Image: David Robie/APR
“Under the pretext of security, Israel would carry [out] the worst kind of violations of international law, the worst kind of ethnic cleansing, worst kind of genocide.
“And that’s what we have seen it do.
“Now, certainly in this very particular instance it’s taking advantage of the fact that there is a bit of chaos, if you will, slash change, dramatic change in Syria after 50 years of more of the same in order to settle scores with a country that it has always deemed to be a dangerous enemy, and that is Syria.
“So I think the idea of decapitating, destabilising, undercutting, undermining Syria and Syria’s national security, will always be a main goal for Israel.”
In an Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau solidarity rally today, protesters condemned Israel’s bombing of Syria and also called on New Zealand’s Christopher Luxon-led coalition government to take a stronger stance against Israel and to pressure major countries to impose UN sanctions against Tel Aviv.
A prominent lawyer, Labour Party activist and law school senior academic at Auckland University of Technology, Dr Myra Williamson, spoke about the breakthrough in international law last month with the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants being issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Lawyer and law school academic Dr Myra Williamson speaking at the Auckland rally today. Video: Asia Pacific Report
“What you have to be aware of is that the ICC is being threatened — the individuals are being threatened and the court itself is being threatened, mainly by the United States,” she told the solidarity crowd in Te Komititanga Square.
“Personal threats to the judges, to the prosecutor Karim Khan.
“So you need to be vocal and you need to talk to people over the summer about how important that work is. Just to get the warrants issued was a major achievement and the next thing is to get them on trial in The Hague.”
ICC Annual Meeting — court under threat. Video: Al Jazeera
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Syria, where tens of thousands of people gathered at the Great Mosque of Damascus for the first Friday prayers since longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad was toppled by opposition fighters.
DAMASCUS RESIDENT: [translated] Hopefully this Friday is the Friday of the greatest joy, a Friday of victory for our Muslim brothers. This is a blessed Friday.
AMY GOODMAN: Syria’s new caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir was among those at the mosque. He’ll act as prime minister until March.
This comes as the World Food Programme is appealing to donors to help it scale up relief operations for the approximately 2.8 million displaced and food-insecure Syrians across the country. That includes more than 1.1 million people who were forcibly displaced by fighting since late November.
Israel’s Defence Minister has told his troops to prepare to spend the winter holding the demilitarized zone that separates Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Earlier today, Prime Minister Netanyahu toured the summit of Mount Haramun in the UN-designated buffer zone. Netanyahu said this week the Golan Heights would “forever be an inseparable part of the State of Israel”.
On Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an urgent deescalation of airstrikes on Syria by Israeli forces, and their withdrawal from the UN buffer zone.
In Ankara, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Turkey’s Foreign Minister and the President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Blinken said the US and Turkey would [work] to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group in Syria. Meanwhile, Erdoğan told Blinken that Turkey reserves the right to strike the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey considers “terrorist”.
For more, we go to Damascus for the first time since the fall of longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad, where we’re joined by the Associated Press investigative reporter Sarah El Deeb, who is based in the Middle East, a region she has covered for two decades.
Sarah, welcome to Democracy Now! You are overlooking —
SARAH EL DEEB: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: — the square where tens of thousands of Syrians have gathered for the first Friday prayers since the fall of Assad. Describe the scene for us.
Report from Damascus: Searching for loved ones in prisons and morgues. Video: Democracy Now!
SARAH EL DEEB: There is a lot of firsts here. It’s the first time they gather on Friday after Bashar al-Assad fled the country. It’s the first time everyone seems to be very happy. I think that’s the dominant sentiment, especially people who are in the square. There is ecstasy, tens of thousands of people. They are still chanting, “Down with Bashar al-Assad.”
But what’s new is that it’s also visible that the sentiment is they’ve been, so far, happy with the new rulers, not outpour — there is no criticism, out — loud criticism of the new rulers yet. So, I’d say the dominant thing is that everyone is happy down there.
HAYAT AL-TURKI: [translated] I will show you the photo of my missing brother. It’s been 14 years. This is his photo. I don’t know what he looks like, if I find him. I don’t know what he looks like, because I am seeing the photos of prisoners getting out. They are like skeletons.
But this is his photo, if anyone has seen him, can know anything about him or can help us. He is one of thousands of prisoners who are missing. I am asking for everyone, not only my brother, uncle, cousin and relatives.”
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this mad search by Syrians across the country.
SARAH EL DEEB: This is the other thing that’s been dominating our coverage and our reporting since we arrived here, the contrast between the relief, the sense of relief over the departure of Bashar al-Assad but then the sadness and the concern and the no answers for where the loved ones have gone.
Thousands — also, tens of thousands of people have marched on Sednaya [prison]. It’s the counter to this scene, where people were looking for any sign of where their relatives have been. As you know really well, so many people have reported their relatives missing, tens of thousands, since the beginning of the revolt, but also before.
I mean, I think this is a part of the feature of this government, is that there has been a lot of security crackdown. People were scared to speak, but they were — because there was a good reason for it. They were picked up at any expression of discontent or expression of opinion.
So, where we were in Sednaya two, three days ago, it feels like one big day, I have to say. When we were in Sednaya, people were also describing what — anything, from the smallest expression of opinion, a violation of a traffic light. No answers.
And they still don’t know where their loved ones are. I mean, I think we know quite a lot from research before arriving here about the notorious prison system in Syria. There’s secret prisons. There are security branches where people were being held. I think this is the first time we have an opportunity to go look at those facilities.
What was surprising and shocking to the people, and also to a lot of us journalists, was that we couldn’t find any sign of these people. And the answers are — we’re still looking for them. But what was clear is that only a handful — I mean, not a handful — hundreds of people were found.
Many of them were also found in morgues. There were apparent killings in the last hours before the regime departed. One of them was the prominent activist Mazen al-Hamada. We were at his funeral yesterday. He was found, and his family believes that — he was found killed, and his family believes his body was fresh, that he was killed only a few days earlier. So, I think the killing continued up until the last hour.
AMY GOODMAN: I was wondering if you can tell us more about —
SARAH EL DEEB: What was also — what was also —
AMY GOODMAN: — more about Mazen. I mean, I wanted to play a clip of Mazen’s nephew, Yahya al-Hussein.
YAHYA AL-HUSSEIN: [translated] In 2020, he was taken from the Netherlands to Germany through the Syrian Embassy there. And from there, they brought him to Syria with a fake passport.
He arrived at the airport at around 2:30 a.m. and called my aunt to tell her that he arrived at the airport, and asked for money. When they reached out to him the next day, they were told that air intelligence had arrested him.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Mazen’s nephew, Yahya al-Hussein. Sarah, if you can explain? This was an activist who left Syria after he had been imprisoned and tortured — right? — more than a decade ago, but ultimately came back, apparently according to assurances that he would not be retaken. And now his body is found.
SARAH EL DEEB: I think it’s — like you were saying, it’s very hard to explain. This is someone who was very outspoken and was working on documenting the torture and the killing in the secret prisons in Syria. So he was very well aware of his role and his position vis-à-vis the government. Yet he felt — it was hard to explain what Mazen’s decision was based on, but his family believes he was lured into Syria by some false promises of security and safety.
His heart was in Syria. He left Syria, but he never — it never left him. He was working from wherever he was — he was in the Netherlands, he was in the US — I think, to expose these crimes. And I think this is — these are the words of his family: He was a witness on the crimes of the Assad government, and he was a martyr of the Assad government.
One of the people that were at the funeral yesterday was telling us Mazen was a lesson. The Assad government was teaching all detainees a lesson through Mazen to keep them silent. I think it was just a testimony to how cruel this ruling regime, ruling system has been for the past 50 years.
People would go back to his father’s rule also. But I think with the revolution, with the protests in 2011, all these crimes and all these detentions were just en masse. I think the estimates are anywhere between 150,000 and 80,000 detainees that no one can account for. That is on top of all the people that were killed in airstrikes and in opposition areas in crackdown on protest.
So, it was surprising that at the last minute — it was surprising and yet not very surprising. When I asked the family, “Why did they do that?” they would look at me and, like, “Why are you asking this question? They do that. That’s what they did.” It was just difficult to understand how even at the last minute, and even for someone that they promised security, this was — this would be the end, emaciated and tortured and killed, unfortunately.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah, you spoke in Damascus to a US citizen, Travis Timmerman, who says he was imprisoned in Syria. This is a clip from an interview with Al Arabiya on Thursday in which he says he spent the last seven months in a prison cell in Damascus.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: My name is Travis.
REPORTER: Travis.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: Yes.
REPORTER: So, [speaking in Arabic]. Travis, Travis Timmerman.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: That’s right.
REPORTER: That’s right.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: But just Travis. Just call me Travis.
REPORTER: Call you Travis, OK. And where were you all this time?
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: I was imprisoned in Damascus for the last seven months. … I was imprisoned in a cell by myself. And in the early morning of this Monday, or the Monday of this week, they took a hammer, and they broke my door down. … Well, the armed men just wanted to get me out of my cell. And then, really, the man who I stuck with was a Syrian man named Ely. He was also a prisoner that was just freed. And he took me by the side, by the arm, really. And he and a young woman that lives in Damascus, us three, exited the prison together.
SARAH EL DEEB: I spent quite a bit of time with Travis last night. And I think his experience was very different from what I was just describing. He was taken, he was detained for crossing illegally into Syria. And I think his description of his experience was it was OK. He was not mistreated.
He was fed well, I mean, especially when I compare it to what I heard from the Syrian prisoners in the secret prisons or in detention facilities. He would receive rice, potatoes, tomatoes. None of this was available to the Syrian detainees. He would go to the bathroom three times a day, although this was uncomfortable for him, because, of course, it was not whenever he wanted. But it was not something that other Syrian detainees would experience.
His experience also was that he heard a lot of beating. I think that’s what he described it as: beating from nearby cells. They were mostly Syrian detainees. For him, that was an implicit threat of the use of violence against him, but he did not get any — he was not beaten or tortured.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Sarah, if you could also —
SARAH EL DEEB: He also said his release was a “blessing.” Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: If you could also talk about Austin Tice, the American freelance journalist? His family, his mother and father and brothers and sisters, seem to be repeatedly saying now that they believe he’s alive, held by the Syrian government, and they’re desperately looking for him or reaching out to people in Syria. What do you know?
SARAH EL DEEB: What we know is that people thought Travis was Tice when they first saw him. They found him in a house in a village outside of Damascus. And I think that’s what triggered — we didn’t know that Travis was in a Syrian prison, so I think that’s what everyone was going to check. They thought that this was Tice.
I think the search, the US administration, the family, they are looking and determined to look for Tice. The family believes that he was in Syrian government prison. He entered Syria in 2012. He is a journalist. But I think we have — his family seems to think that there were — he’s still in a Syrian government prison.
But I think, so far, we have not had any sign of Tice from all those released. But, mind you, the scenes of release from prisons were chaotic, from multiple prisons at the same time. And we’re still, day by day, finding out about new releases and people who were set free on that Sunday morning.
U.N. Calls on Israel to Stop Bombing Syria and Occupying Demilitarized Zone https://t.co/iHNIkKKOrs
I want to turn to Gaza. Tell us about the Palestinians searching for their family members who went missing during raids and arrests by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. And talk about the lack of accountability for these appearances. You begin your piece with Reem Ajour’s quest to find her missing husband and daughter.
SARAH EL DEEB: I talked to Reem Ajour for a long time. I mean, I think, like you said, this was a pivot, but the themes have been common across the Middle East, sadly. Reem Ajour last saw her family in March of 2024. Both her husband and her 5-year-old daughter were injured after an Israeli raid on their house during the chaotic scenes of the Israeli raids on the Shifa Hospital.
They lived in the neighborhood. So, it was chaotic. They [Israeli military] entered their home, and they were shooting in the air, or they were shooting — they were shooting, and the family ended up wounded.
But what was striking was that the Israeli soldiers made the mother leave the kid wounded in her house and forced her to leave to the south. I think this is not only Reem Ajour’s case. I think this is something we’ve seen quite a bit in Gaza. But the fact that this was a 5-year-old and the mom couldn’t take her with her was quite moving.
And I think what her case kind of symbolises is that during these raids and during these detentions at checkpoints, families are separated, and we don’t have any way of knowing how the Israeli military is actually documenting these detentions, these raids.
Where do they — how do they account for people who they detain and then they release briefly? The homes that they enter, can we find out what happened in these homes? We have no idea of holding — I think the Israeli court has also tried to get some information from the military, but so far very few cases have been resolved.
And we’re talking about not only 500 or 600 people; we’re talking about tens of thousands who have been separated, their homes raided, during what is now 15 months of war in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah El Deeb, we want to thank you for being with us, Associated Press investigative reporter based in the Middle East for two decades, now reporting from Damascus.
Next up, today is the 75th day of a hunger strike by Laila Soueif. She’s the mother of prominent British Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah. She’s calling on British officials to pressure Egypt for the release of her son. We’ll speak to the Cairo University mathematics professor in London, where she’s been standing outside the Foreign Office. Back in 20 seconds.
