NewzIntel.com

Category: international criminal court

  • MIL-Evening Report: 12 countries agree to confront Israel collectively over Gaza after Bogotá summit

    ANALYSIS: By Mick Hall

    Collective measures to confront Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people have been agreed by 12 nations after an emergency summit of the Hague Group in Bogotá, Colombia.

    A joint statement today announced the six measures, which it said were geared to holding Israel to account for its crimes in Palestine and would operate within the states’ domestic legal and legislative frameworks.

    Nearly two dozen other nations in attendance at the summit are now pondering whether to sign up to the measures before a September deadline set by the Hague Group.

    New Zealand and Australia stayed away from the summit.

    The measures include preventing the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, military fuel and dual-use items to Israel and preventing the transit, docking or servicing of vessels if there is a risk of vessels carrying such items. No vessel under the flag of the countries would be allowed to carry this equipment.

    The countries would also “commence an urgent review of all public contracts, in order to prevent public institutions and public funds, where applicable, from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territory which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory, to ensure that our nationals, and companies and entities under our jurisdiction, as well as our authorities, do not act in any way that would entail recognition or provide aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.

    The countries will prosecute “the most serious crimes under international law through robust, impartial and independent investigations and prosecutions at national or international levels, in compliance with our obligation to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes”.

    They agreed to support universal jurisdiction mandates, “as and where applicable in our legal constitutional frameworks and judiciaries, to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes in the Occupied Palestine Territory”.

    This will mean IDF soldiers and others accused of war crimes in Palestine would face arrest and could go through domestic judicial processes in these countries, or referrals to the ICC.

    The statement said the measures constituted a collective commitment to defend the foundational principles of international law.

    It also called on the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to commission an immediate investigation of the health and nutritional needs of the population of Gaza, devise a plan to meet those needs on a continuing and sustained basis, and report on these matters before the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September.

    Following repeated total blockades of Gaza since October 7, 2023, Gazans have been dying of starvation as they continue to be bombed and repeatedly displaced and their means of life destroyed.

    The official death toll stands at nearly 59,000, mostly women and children, although some estimates put that number at over 200,000.

    The joint statement recognised Israel as a threat to regional peace and the system of international law and called on all United Nations member states to enforce their obligations under the UN charter.

    It condemned “unilateral attacks and threats against United Nations mandate holders, as well as key institutions of the human rights architecture and international justice” and committed to build “on the legacy of global solidarity movements that have dismantled apartheid and other oppressive systems, setting a model for future co-ordinated responses to international law violations”.

    Countries face wrath of US
     Ministers, high-ranking officials and envoys from 30 nations attended the two-day event, from July 15-16, called to come up with the measures. It is now hoped some of those attendees will sign up to the statement by September.

    For countries like Ireland, which sent a delegation, signing up would have profound implications. The Irish government has been heavily criticised by its own citizens for continuing to allow Shannon Airport as a transit point for military equipment from the United States to be sent to Israel.

    It would also face the prospect of severe reprisals by the US, as would others thinking of adding their names to the collective statement. The US is now expected to consult with nations that attended and warn them of the consequences of signing up.

    The summit had been billed by the UN Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, as “the most significant political development of the last 20 months”.

    Albanese had told attendees that “for too long, international law has been treated as optional — applied selectively to those perceived as weak, ignored by those acting as the powerful”.

    “This double standard has eroded the very foundations of the legal order. That era must end,” she said.

    Co-chaired by Colombia and South Africa, the Hague group was established by nine nations in late January at The Hague in the Netherlands to hold Israel to account for its crimes and push for Palestinian self-determination.

    Colombia last year ended diplomatic relations with Israel, while South Africa in late December 2023 filed an application at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide, which was joined by nearly two dozen countries.

    The ICJ has determined a plausible genocide is taking place and issued orders for Israel to protect Palestinians and take measures to stop genocide taking place, a call ignored by the Zionist state.

    Representatives from the countries arrived in Bogota this week in defiance of the United States, which last week sanctioned Albanese for attempts to have US and Israeli political officials and business leaders prosecuted by the ICC over Gaza.

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it an illegitimate “campaign of political and economic warfare”.

    It followed the sanctioning of four ICC judges after arrest warrants were issued in November last year for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

    Ahead of the Bogota meeting, the US State Department accused The Hague Group of multilateral attempts to “weaponise international law as a tool to advance radical anti-Western agendas” and warned the US would “aggressively defend” its interests.

    Signs of division in the West
     Most of those attending came from nations in the Global South, but not all.

    Founding Hague Group members Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa attended the Summit. Joining them were Algeria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Djibouti, Indonesia, Iraq, Republic of Ireland, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

    However, in a sign of increasing division in the West, NATO members Spain, Portugal, Norway, Slovenia and Turkey also attended.

    Inside the summit, former US State Department official Annelle Sheline, who resigned in March over Gaza, defended the right of those attending “to uphold their obligations under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.

    “This is not the weaponisation of international law. This is the application of international law,” she told delegates.

    The US and Israel deny accusations that genocide is taking place in Gaza, while Western media have collectively refused to adjudicate the claims or frame stories around Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the strip, despite ample evidence by the UN and genocide experts.

    Since 7 October 2023, US allies have offered diplomatic cover for Israel by repeating it had “a right to defend itself” and was engaged in a legitimate defensive “war against Hamas”.

    Israel now plans to corral starving Gazans into a concentration camp in the south of the strip, with many analysts expecting the IDF to exterminate anyone found outside its boundaries, while preparing to push those inside across the border into Egypt.

    Asia Pacific and EU allies shun Bogota summit
     Addressing attendees at the summit yesterday, Albanese criticised the EU for its neo-colonialism and support for Israel, criticisms that can be extended to US allies in the Asia Pacific region.

    Independent journalist Abby Martin reported Albanese as saying: “Europe and its institutions are guided more by colonial mindset than principle, acting as vessels to US Empire even as it drags us from war to war, misery to misery.

    “The Hague Group is a new moral centre in world politics. Millions are hoping for leadership that can birth a new global order, rooted in justice, humanity and collective liberation. It’s not just about Palestine. This is about all of us.”

    The Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was asked why Foreign Minister Penny Wong did not take up an invite to attend the Hague Group meeting. In a statement to Mick Hall in Context, a spokesperson said she had been unable to attend, but did not explain why.

    She said Australia was a “resolute defender of international law” and added: “Australia has consistently been part of international calls that all parties must abide by international humanitarian law. Not enough has been done to protect civilians and aid workers.

    “We have called on Israel to respond substantively to the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

    “We have also called on Israel to comply with the binding orders of the ICJ, including to enable the unhindered provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale.”

    When asked why New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters had failed to take up the invitation or send any of his officials, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) spokesperson simply refused to comment.

    She said MFAT media advisors would only engage with “recognised news media outlets”.

    Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, as well as a number of his ministers, have been referred to the ICC by domestic legal teams, accused of complicity in the genocide.

    Evidence against Albanese was accepted into the ICC’s wider investigation of crimes in Gaza in October last year, while Luxon’s referral earlier this month is being assessed by the Chief Prosecutor’s Office.

    Delegates told humanity at stake
     Delegates heard several impassioned addresses from speakers on what was at stake during the two-day event in Bogota.

    Palestinian-American trauma surgeon, Dr Thaer Ahmad, told the gathering that Palestinians seeking food were being met with bullets, describing aid distribution facilities set up by the US contractor-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) as “slaughterhouses”. More than 800 starving Gazans have been killed at the GHF aid points so far.

    “People know they could die but cannot sit idly by and watch their families starve,” he said.

    “The bullets fired by GHF mercenaries are just one part of the weaponisation of aid, where Palestinians are ghettoised into areas where somebody in military fatigues decides if you are worthy of food or not.”

    Palestinian diplomat Riyad Mansour had urged the summit attendees to take decisive action to not only save the Palestinian people, but redeem humanity.

    “Instead of outrage at the crimes we know are taking place, we find those who defend, normalise, and even celebrate them,” he said.

    “The core values we believed humanity agreed were universal are shattered, blown to pieces like the tens of thousands of starved, murdered and injured civilians in Palestine.

    “The mind and heart cannot fathom or process the immense pain and horror that has taken hold of the lives of an entire people. We must not fail — not just for Palestine’s sake — but for humanity’s sake.”

    At the beginning of the summit, Colombian Deputy Foreign Minister Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir told summit delegates the Palestinian genocide threatened the entire international system.

    Colombian President Gustavo Petro wrote in The Guardian last week: “We can either stand firm in defence of the legal principles that seek to prevent war and conflict, or watch helplessly as the international system collapses under the weight of unchecked power politics.”

    Meanwhile, EU foreign ministers, as well as Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, met in Brussels at the same time as the Bogota summit, to discuss Middle East co-operation, but also possible options for action against Israel.

    At the EU–Southern Neighbourhood Ministerial Meeting, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas put forward potential actions after Israel was found to have breached the EU economic cooperation deal with the bloc on human rights grounds. As expected, no sanctions, restricted trade or suspension of the co-operation deal were agreed.

    The EU has been one of Israel’s most strident backers in its campaign against Gaza, with EU members Germany and France in particular supplying weapons, as well as political support.

    The UK government has continued to supply arms and operate spy planes over Gaza over the past 21 months, launched from bases in Cyprus, while its military has issued D-Notices to censor media reports that its special forces have been operating inside the occupied territories.

    Mick Hall is an independent Irish-New Zealand journalist, formerly of RNZ and AAP, based in New Zealand since 2009. He writes primarily on politics, corporate power and international affairs. This article is republished from his substack Mick Hall in Context with permission.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: 12 countries agree to confront Israel collectively over Gaza after Bogotá summit

    ANALYSIS: By Mick Hall

    Collective measures to confront Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people have been agreed by 12 nations after an emergency summit of the Hague Group in Bogotá, Colombia.

    A joint statement today announced the six measures, which it said were geared to holding Israel to account for its crimes in Palestine and would operate within the states’ domestic legal and legislative frameworks.

    Nearly two dozen other nations in attendance at the summit are now pondering whether to sign up to the measures before a September deadline set by the Hague Group.

    New Zealand and Australia stayed away from the summit.

    The measures include preventing the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, military fuel and dual-use items to Israel and preventing the transit, docking or servicing of vessels if there is a risk of vessels carrying such items. No vessel under the flag of the countries would be allowed to carry this equipment.

    The countries would also “commence an urgent review of all public contracts, in order to prevent public institutions and public funds, where applicable, from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territory which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory, to ensure that our nationals, and companies and entities under our jurisdiction, as well as our authorities, do not act in any way that would entail recognition or provide aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.

    The countries will prosecute “the most serious crimes under international law through robust, impartial and independent investigations and prosecutions at national or international levels, in compliance with our obligation to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes”.

    They agreed to support universal jurisdiction mandates, “as and where applicable in our legal constitutional frameworks and judiciaries, to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes in the Occupied Palestine Territory”.

    This will mean IDF soldiers and others accused of war crimes in Palestine would face arrest and could go through domestic judicial processes in these countries, or referrals to the ICC.

    The statement said the measures constituted a collective commitment to defend the foundational principles of international law.

    It also called on the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to commission an immediate investigation of the health and nutritional needs of the population of Gaza, devise a plan to meet those needs on a continuing and sustained basis, and report on these matters before the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September.

    Following repeated total blockades of Gaza since October 7, 2023, Gazans have been dying of starvation as they continue to be bombed and repeatedly displaced and their means of life destroyed.

    The official death toll stands at nearly 59,000, mostly women and children, although some estimates put that number at over 200,000.

    The joint statement recognised Israel as a threat to regional peace and the system of international law and called on all United Nations member states to enforce their obligations under the UN charter.

    It condemned “unilateral attacks and threats against United Nations mandate holders, as well as key institutions of the human rights architecture and international justice” and committed to build “on the legacy of global solidarity movements that have dismantled apartheid and other oppressive systems, setting a model for future co-ordinated responses to international law violations”.

    Countries face wrath of US
     Ministers, high-ranking officials and envoys from 30 nations attended the two-day event, from July 15-16, called to come up with the measures. It is now hoped some of those attendees will sign up to the statement by September.

    For countries like Ireland, which sent a delegation, signing up would have profound implications. The Irish government has been heavily criticised by its own citizens for continuing to allow Shannon Airport as a transit point for military equipment from the United States to be sent to Israel.

    It would also face the prospect of severe reprisals by the US, as would others thinking of adding their names to the collective statement. The US is now expected to consult with nations that attended and warn them of the consequences of signing up.

    The summit had been billed by the UN Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, as “the most significant political development of the last 20 months”.

    Albanese had told attendees that “for too long, international law has been treated as optional — applied selectively to those perceived as weak, ignored by those acting as the powerful”.

    “This double standard has eroded the very foundations of the legal order. That era must end,” she said.

    Co-chaired by Colombia and South Africa, the Hague group was established by nine nations in late January at The Hague in the Netherlands to hold Israel to account for its crimes and push for Palestinian self-determination.

    Colombia last year ended diplomatic relations with Israel, while South Africa in late December 2023 filed an application at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide, which was joined by nearly two dozen countries.

    The ICJ has determined a plausible genocide is taking place and issued orders for Israel to protect Palestinians and take measures to stop genocide taking place, a call ignored by the Zionist state.

    Representatives from the countries arrived in Bogota this week in defiance of the United States, which last week sanctioned Albanese for attempts to have US and Israeli political officials and business leaders prosecuted by the ICC over Gaza.

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it an illegitimate “campaign of political and economic warfare”.

    It followed the sanctioning of four ICC judges after arrest warrants were issued in November last year for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

    Ahead of the Bogota meeting, the US State Department accused The Hague Group of multilateral attempts to “weaponise international law as a tool to advance radical anti-Western agendas” and warned the US would “aggressively defend” its interests.

    Signs of division in the West
     Most of those attending came from nations in the Global South, but not all.

    Founding Hague Group members Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa attended the Summit. Joining them were Algeria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Djibouti, Indonesia, Iraq, Republic of Ireland, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

    However, in a sign of increasing division in the West, NATO members Spain, Portugal, Norway, Slovenia and Turkey also attended.

    Inside the summit, former US State Department official Annelle Sheline, who resigned in March over Gaza, defended the right of those attending “to uphold their obligations under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.

    “This is not the weaponisation of international law. This is the application of international law,” she told delegates.

    The US and Israel deny accusations that genocide is taking place in Gaza, while Western media have collectively refused to adjudicate the claims or frame stories around Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the strip, despite ample evidence by the UN and genocide experts.

    Since 7 October 2023, US allies have offered diplomatic cover for Israel by repeating it had “a right to defend itself” and was engaged in a legitimate defensive “war against Hamas”.

    Israel now plans to corral starving Gazans into a concentration camp in the south of the strip, with many analysts expecting the IDF to exterminate anyone found outside its boundaries, while preparing to push those inside across the border into Egypt.

    Asia Pacific and EU allies shun Bogota summit
     Addressing attendees at the summit yesterday, Albanese criticised the EU for its neo-colonialism and support for Israel, criticisms that can be extended to US allies in the Asia Pacific region.

    Independent journalist Abby Martin reported Albanese as saying: “Europe and its institutions are guided more by colonial mindset than principle, acting as vessels to US Empire even as it drags us from war to war, misery to misery.

    “The Hague Group is a new moral centre in world politics. Millions are hoping for leadership that can birth a new global order, rooted in justice, humanity and collective liberation. It’s not just about Palestine. This is about all of us.”

    The Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was asked why Foreign Minister Penny Wong did not take up an invite to attend the Hague Group meeting. In a statement to Mick Hall in Context, a spokesperson said she had been unable to attend, but did not explain why.

    She said Australia was a “resolute defender of international law” and added: “Australia has consistently been part of international calls that all parties must abide by international humanitarian law. Not enough has been done to protect civilians and aid workers.

    “We have called on Israel to respond substantively to the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

    “We have also called on Israel to comply with the binding orders of the ICJ, including to enable the unhindered provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale.”

    When asked why New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters had failed to take up the invitation or send any of his officials, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) spokesperson simply refused to comment.

    She said MFAT media advisors would only engage with “recognised news media outlets”.

    Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, as well as a number of his ministers, have been referred to the ICC by domestic legal teams, accused of complicity in the genocide.

    Evidence against Albanese was accepted into the ICC’s wider investigation of crimes in Gaza in October last year, while Luxon’s referral earlier this month is being assessed by the Chief Prosecutor’s Office.

    Delegates told humanity at stake
     Delegates heard several impassioned addresses from speakers on what was at stake during the two-day event in Bogota.

    Palestinian-American trauma surgeon, Dr Thaer Ahmad, told the gathering that Palestinians seeking food were being met with bullets, describing aid distribution facilities set up by the US contractor-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) as “slaughterhouses”. More than 800 starving Gazans have been killed at the GHF aid points so far.

    “People know they could die but cannot sit idly by and watch their families starve,” he said.

    “The bullets fired by GHF mercenaries are just one part of the weaponisation of aid, where Palestinians are ghettoised into areas where somebody in military fatigues decides if you are worthy of food or not.”

    Palestinian diplomat Riyad Mansour had urged the summit attendees to take decisive action to not only save the Palestinian people, but redeem humanity.

    “Instead of outrage at the crimes we know are taking place, we find those who defend, normalise, and even celebrate them,” he said.

    “The core values we believed humanity agreed were universal are shattered, blown to pieces like the tens of thousands of starved, murdered and injured civilians in Palestine.

    “The mind and heart cannot fathom or process the immense pain and horror that has taken hold of the lives of an entire people. We must not fail — not just for Palestine’s sake — but for humanity’s sake.”

    At the beginning of the summit, Colombian Deputy Foreign Minister Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir told summit delegates the Palestinian genocide threatened the entire international system.

    Colombian President Gustavo Petro wrote in The Guardian last week: “We can either stand firm in defence of the legal principles that seek to prevent war and conflict, or watch helplessly as the international system collapses under the weight of unchecked power politics.”

    Meanwhile, EU foreign ministers, as well as Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, met in Brussels at the same time as the Bogota summit, to discuss Middle East co-operation, but also possible options for action against Israel.

    At the EU–Southern Neighbourhood Ministerial Meeting, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas put forward potential actions after Israel was found to have breached the EU economic cooperation deal with the bloc on human rights grounds. As expected, no sanctions, restricted trade or suspension of the co-operation deal were agreed.

    The EU has been one of Israel’s most strident backers in its campaign against Gaza, with EU members Germany and France in particular supplying weapons, as well as political support.

    The UK government has continued to supply arms and operate spy planes over Gaza over the past 21 months, launched from bases in Cyprus, while its military has issued D-Notices to censor media reports that its special forces have been operating inside the occupied territories.

    Mick Hall is an independent Irish-New Zealand journalist, formerly of RNZ and AAP, based in New Zealand since 2009. He writes primarily on politics, corporate power and international affairs. This article is republished from his substack Mick Hall in Context with permission.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Phil Goff: Israel doesn’t care how many innocent people it’s killing in Gaza

    COMMENTARY: By Phil Goff

    “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.”

    This statement was made not by a foreign or liberal critic of Israel but by the former Prime Minister and former senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party, Ehud Olmet.

    Nightly, we witness live-streamed evidence of the truth of his statement — lethargic and gaunt children dying of malnutrition, a bereaved doctor and mother of 10 children, nine of them killed by an Israeli strike (and her husband, another doctor, died later), 15 emergency ambulance workers gunned down by the IDF as they tried to help others injured by bombs, despite their identity being clear.

    Statistics reflect the scale of the horror imposed on Palestinians who are overwhelmingly civilians — 54,000 killed, 121,000 maimed and injured. Over 17,000 of these are children.

    This can no longer be excused as regrettable collateral damage from targeted attacks on Hamas.

    Israel simply doesn’t care about the impact of its military attacks on civilians and how many innocent people and children it is killing.

    Its willingness to block all humanitarian aid- food, water, medical supplies, from Gaza demonstrates further its willingness to make mass punishment and starvation a means to achieve its ends. Both are war crimes.

    Influenced by the right wing extremists in the Coalition cabinet, like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s goal is no longer self defence or justifiable retaliation against Hamas terrorists.

    Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36. Image: AJ screenshot APR

    Making life unbearable
    The Israeli government policy is focused on making life unbearable for Palestinians and seeking to remove them from their homeland. In this, they are openly encouraged by President Trump who has publicly and repeatedly endorsed deporting the Palestinian population so that the Gaza could be made into a “Middle East Riviera”.

    This is not the once progressive pioneer Israel, led by people who had faced the Nazi Holocaust and were fighting for the right to a place where they could determine their own future and be safe.

    Sadly, a country of people who were themselves long victims of oppression is now guilty of oppressing and committing genocide against others.

    New Zealand recently joined 23 other countries calling out Israel and demanding a full supply of foreign aid be allowed into Gaza.

    Foreign Minister Winston Peters called Israel’s actions “ intolerable”. He said that we had “had enough and were running out of patience and hearing excuses”.

    While speaking out might make us feel better, words are not enough. Israel’s attacks on the civilian population in Gaza are being increased, aid distribution which has restarted is grossly insufficient to stop hunger and human suffering and Palestinians are being herded into confined areas described as humanitarian zones but which are still subject to bombardment.

    People living in tents in schools and hospitals are being slaughtered.

    World must force Israel to stop
    Like Putin, Israel will not end its killing and oppression unless the world forces it to. The US has the power but will not do this.

    The sanctions Trump has imposed are not on Israel’s leaders but on judges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) who dared to find Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of war crimes.

    New Zealand’s foreign policy has traditionally involved working with like-minded countries, often small nations like us. Two of these, Ireland and Sweden, are seeking to impose sanctions on Israel.

    Both are members of the European Union which makes up a third of Israel’s global trade. If the EU decides to act, sanctions imposed by it would have a big impact on Israel.

    These sanctions should be both on trade and against individuals.

    New Zealand has imposed sanctions on a small number of extremist Jewish settlers on the West Bank where there is evidence of them using violence against Palestinian villagers.

    These sanctions should be extended to Israel’s political leadership and New Zealand could take a lead in doing this. We should not be influenced by concern that by taking a stand we might offend US president Donald Trump.

    Show our preparedness to uphold values
    In the way that we have been proud of in the past, we should as a small but fiercely independent country show our preparedness to uphold our own values and act against gross abuse of human rights and flagrant disregard for international law.

    We should be working with others through the United Nations General Assembly to maximise political pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing killing of innocent civilians.

    Moral outrage at what Israel is doing has to be backed by taking action with others to force the Israeli government to end the killing, destruction, mass punishment and deliberate starvation of Palestinians including their children.

    An American doctor working at a Gaza hospital reported that in the last five weeks he had worked on dozens of badly injured children but not a single combatant.

    He noted that as well as being maimed and disfigured by bombing, many of the children were also suffering from malnutrition. Children were dying from wounds that they could recover from but there were not the supplies needed to treat them.

    Protest is not enough. We need to act.

    Phil Goff is Aotearoa New Zealand’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs. This article was first published by the Stuff website and is republished with the permission of the author.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Jeremy Rose: Mister Netanyahu have you no sense of decency?

    Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. –

    COMMENTARY: By Jeremy Rose

    The word antisemitism has become so debased that depending on who is using it I might well take it as a sign that the accused is worth listening to.

    When the World Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest, he responded by saying the court was being antisemitic. One of the court’s legal advisers was Theodor Meron, a former Israeli ambassador and legal adviser who spent a chunk of his childhood in a Nazi concentration camp.

    Last month, Netanyahu declared the leaders of France, the UK and Canada of fuelling antisemitism.

    Their “crime”? Threatening “concrete action” against Israel if it continues its “egregious” blockade of aid entering Gaza.

    Egregious not genocidal. And the concrete action referred to wasn’t sanctions or a full arms embargo but stalling free trade talks.

    The bitter irony is that with none of those countries having yet imposed a complete ban on arms exports to Israel they are all in a sense fuelling a genocide.

    The Army-McCarthy hearings
    We’re coming up to the 71st anniversary of the Army-McCarthy hearings where an army lawyer, Joseph Welch, rebuked Senator Joseph McCarthy with the famous line: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

    We’ll be waiting a long time for the wanted war criminal Netanyahu to show any decency, but could we be approaching a tipping point where the establishment finally calls off a witch hunt after realising no one is safe from false accusations.

    The McCarthyite red scare, which began in the late 1940s, saw more than 2000 federal workers sacked, thousands of academics, teachers, and union members pressured or forced to resign due to anti-communist policies, and up to 500 Hollywood directors and actors blacklisted for being leftwing or refusing to name names.

    Welch’s rebuke was triggered by none of that. It was McCarthy turning his metaphorical guns onto the military implying he would expose high ranking army personnel that saw the army lawyer return fire.

    The conflating of criticism of Israel with antisemitism has been spectacularly successful in making any criticism of Israel a potentially career ending move. Three Ivy League presidents have been pushed out of their jobs for failing to crack down hard enough on students protesting the brutality of Israel’s ongoing genocide.

    UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose popularity had seen the party become the biggest political movement in Europe, was toppled in 2016 after bogus accusations of antisemitism.

    In the purge of the Labour Party that followed Jews were five times more likely to be investigated for antisemitism than goys.

    It’s the same story in Germany where Jews feature prominently among those cancelled for alleged antisemitism. Renowned professor of Jewish studies Peter Schäfe was forced to resign as the director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum after it retweeted a post critical of Germany’s anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolutions.

    Greece’s former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis — not a Jew — has been banned from Germany or even appearing via Zoom for this response, on 8 October 2023, to being asked if he condemned Hamas:

    “I condemn every single atrocity, whomever is the perpetrator or the victim. What I do not condemn is armed resistance to an apartheid system designed as part of a slow-burning, but inexorable, ethnic cleansing programme.
    As a European, it is important to refrain from condemning either the Israelis or the Palestinians when it is us, Europeans, who have caused this never-ending tragedy: after practising rabid anti-Semitism for centuries, leading up to the uniquely vile Holocaust, we have been complicit for decades with the slow genocide of Palestinians, as if two wrongs make one right.”

    That nuanced response, with its acknowledgement of the dreadful legacy of real antisemitism, has not only seen him banned from speaking — in person or virtually — but dropped by his German publisher.

    Antisemitism is often referred to as the oldest hatred — with good reason — but the word itself is relatively recent.

    A ‘scientific’ word for an old hatred
    Nineteenth century German journalist, Wilhelm Marr, popularised the term in a pamphlet the title of which translates as: The way to victory of Germanism over Judaism.

    What distinguished antisemitism from the commonly used Judenhass — or Jewish hate — was the idea that it was a Jew’s race not their religion that was deserving of hate.

    Antisemitism was a prejudice proud to speak its name. It was respectable in a way that religious intolerance wasn’t. Prominent professors and politicians happily declared themselves antisemites and adherents of “scientific racism”.

    It was an old idea dressed up in new clothing. Fifteenth century Spain passed Limpieza de Sangre (cleanliness of blood) statutes to allow discrimination against Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity.

    The Judeo-Christian civilisational conflict with Islam, often referred to by right-wing supporters of Israel, is a relatively new construct. When the Jews were expelled from Spain, the Ottomans sent ships to take them to new homes in Istanbul, Thessaloniki and Izmer.

    Times change and while it was once possible — even common — to be a respectable antisemite and scientific racist but frowned upon to discriminate based on religious belief, now the reverse is true.

    So-called new atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins declare all religions bad but Islam worse.

    “Listening to the lovely bells of Winchester, one of our great mediaeval cathedrals. So much nicer than the aggressive sounding “Allahu Akhbar.” Or is that just my cultural upbringing?” Dawkins once tweeted.

    The cultures of Europe have indeed cultivated racist ideas for centuries. And just as half a millennia ago conversion offered you no protection from the racism of the Spanish court, embracing Buddhism didn’t protect Columbia University student Moshen Mahdawi from being snatched from a naturalisation interview by balaclava-clad ICE agents.

    His crime? Being Palestinian and telling his story.

    It’s a topsy-turvy world where life-long anti-fascists like Jeremy Corbyn and Yanis Varoufakis are sanctioned on bogus claims of antisemitism while the likes of Elon Musk and Hungarian PM Victor Orban — both peddlers of old-style antisemitic conspiracies — are welcomed to Israel as friends and allies in a contrived battle of civilisations.

    One thing that differentiates antisemitism from the Judeophobia, which has been a European disease since the early days of Christianity, is that it places Jews among the victims of the continent’s white supremacist legacy.

    It’s perhaps no coincidence the Christopher Columbus set sail for the Americas in the same year, 1492, that Spain expelled its Jews and Muslims.

    The settler colonisation of the Americas has been estimated by historian David Stannard to have resulted in the death of 100 million indigenous people — many from introduced diseases but tens of millions also died in genocides only recently making their way into history books.

    Last month, when Netanyahu declared Israel’s attacks on Gaza “a war against human beasts” he was echoing the words of settler colonialists from Alaska to Aotearoa and the dehumanising language of the Nazis against the Jews.

    So, back to that question about whether we’ve reached a tipping point where unfair accusations of antisemitism will be seen in a similar light to McCarthy’s red scare.

    With Netanyahu accusing the leader of the Democrats party, Yair Golan, an IDF reserve major-general, of promoting a blood libel for speaking out against the starving of babies in Gaza, it’s hard not to draw parallels with the Army-McCarthy hearings.

    It’s worth quoting the words that saw Israel’s PM accuse Golan of a blood libel — a reference to the lie that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish children in the baking of matzos, and a trigger for centuries of pogroms.

    “A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set goals for itself like the expulsion of a population.”

    The idea that an IDF general speaking out against the killing of babies is propagating racist hatred of Jews is surely a leap too far even for many fervent Zionists.

    Another sign that the tide might be turning is Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, saying the US administration’s weaponisation of the IHRA definition is making academics and students (including Jews) less safe.

    The self-described Zionist said the definition was being distorted and used to silence anti-Israel critics.

    The IHRA working definition has been widely adopted internationally — including by institutions in New Zealand and Australia.

    Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both criticised the definition claiming it has seen those documenting Israel’s human rights abuses being falsely accused of antisemitism.

    It’s a tragedy that weaponised accusations of antisemitism aimed at protecting Israel from criticism are obscuring a rise in Judeophobic conspiracy theories and attacks on Jewish community centres and synagogues around the world.

    And even more tragically that those accusations are blunting criticisms of Israel that could help bring the ongoing genocide in Gaza to an end.

    Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist. He has a Substack: Towards democracy

    This article was first published on Café Pacific.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Phil Goff: Israel doesn’t care how many innocent people, children it’s killing

    COMMENTARY: By Phil Goff

    “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.”

    This statement was made not by a foreign or liberal critic of Israel but by the former Prime Minister and former senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party, Ehud Olmet.

    Nightly, we witness live-streamed evidence of the truth of his statement — lethargic and gaunt children dying of malnutrition, a bereaved doctor and mother of 10 children, nine of them killed by an Israeli strike (and her husband, another doctor, died later), 15 emergency ambulance workers gunned down by the IDF as they tried to help others injured by bombs, despite their identity being clear.

    Statistics reflect the scale of the horror imposed on Palestinians who are overwhelmingly civilians — 54,000 killed, 121,000 maimed and injured. Over 17,000 of these are children.

    This can no longer be excused as regrettable collateral damage from targeted attacks on Hamas.

    Israel simply doesn’t care about the impact of its military attacks on civilians and how many innocent people and children it is killing.

    Its willingness to block all humanitarian aid- food, water, medical supplies, from Gaza demonstrates further its willingness to make mass punishment and starvation a means to achieve its ends. Both are war crimes.

    Influenced by the right wing extremists in the Coalition cabinet, like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s goal is no longer self defence or justifiable retaliation against Hamas terrorists.

    Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36. Image: AJ screenshot APR

    Making life unbearable
    The Israeli government policy is focused on making life unbearable for Palestinians and seeking to remove them from their homeland. In this, they are openly encouraged by President Trump who has publicly and repeatedly endorsed deporting the Palestinian population so that the Gaza could be made into a “Middle East Riviera”.

    This is not the once progressive pioneer Israel, led by people who had faced the Nazi Holocaust and were fighting for the right to a place where they could determine their own future and be safe.

    Sadly, a country of people who were themselves long victims of oppression is now guilty of oppressing and committing genocide against others.

    New Zealand recently joined 23 other countries calling out Israel and demanding a full supply of foreign aid be allowed into Gaza.

    Foreign Minister Winston Peters called Israel’s actions “ intolerable”. He said that we had “had enough and were running out of patience and hearing excuses”.

    While speaking out might make us feel better, words are not enough. Israel’s attacks on the civilian population in Gaza are being increased, aid distribution which has restarted is grossly insufficient to stop hunger and human suffering and Palestinians are being herded into confined areas described as humanitarian zones but which are still subject to bombardment.

    People living in tents in schools and hospitals are being slaughtered.

    World must force Israel to stop
    Like Putin, Israel will not end its killing and oppression unless the world forces it to. The US has the power but will not do this.

    The sanctions Trump has imposed are not on Israel’s leaders but on judges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) who dared to find Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of war crimes.

    New Zealand’s foreign policy has traditionally involved working with like-minded countries, often small nations like us. Two of these, Ireland and Sweden, are seeking to impose sanctions on Israel.

    Both are members of the European Union which makes up a third of Israel’s global trade. If the EU decides to act, sanctions imposed by it would have a big impact on Israel.

    These sanctions should be both on trade and against individuals.

    New Zealand has imposed sanctions on a small number of extremist Jewish settlers on the West Bank where there is evidence of them using violence against Palestinian villagers.

    These sanctions should be extended to Israel’s political leadership and New Zealand could take a lead in doing this. We should not be influenced by concern that by taking a stand we might offend US president Donald Trump.

    Show our preparedness to uphold values
    In the way that we have been proud of in the past, we should as a small but fiercely independent country show our preparedness to uphold our own values and act against gross abuse of human rights and flagrant disregard for international law.

    We should be working with others through the United Nations General Assembly to maximise political pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing killing of innocent civilians.

    Moral outrage at what Israel is doing has to be backed by taking action with others to force the Israeli government to end the killing, destruction, mass punishment and deliberate starvation of Palestinians including their children.

    An American doctor working at a Gaza hospital reported that in the last five weeks he had worked on dozens of badly injured children but not a single combatant.

    He noted that as well as being maimed and disfigured by bombing, many of the children were also suffering from malnutrition. Children were dying from wounds that they could recover from but there were not the supplies needed to treat them.

    Protest is not enough. We need to act.

    Phil Goff is Aotearoa New Zealand’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs. This article was first published by the Stuff website and is republished with the permission of the author.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Radical legal step towards ending impunity for Israel over killing Gaza journalists

    Pacific Media Watch

    Journalists have been targeted, detained and tortured by the Israeli military in Gaza — and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has now taken a new approach towards bringing justice these crimes.

    The Paris-based global media freedom NGO has submitted multiple formal requests to the International Criminal Court (ICC) asking that Palestinian journalists who are victims of Israeli war crimes in Gaza be allowed to participate as such in international judicial proceedings.

    If granted this status, these journalists would be able to present the ICC with the direct and personal harm they have suffered at the hands of Israeli forces, reports RSF.

    RSF has filed four complaints with the ICC concerning war crimes committed against journalists in Gaza and recently joined director Sepideh Farsi at the Cannes Film Festival to pay tribute to Fatma Hassoun, a photojournalist killed by the Israeli army after it was revealed she was featured in the documentary film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.

    After filing the four complaints with the ICC concerning war crimes committed against journalists in Gaza since October 2023, RSF is resolutely continuing its efforts to bring the issue before international justice.

    The NGO has submitted several victim participation forms to the ICC so that Gazan journalists can participate in the legal process as recognised victims, not just as witnesses.

    Being officially recognised as victims is a first step toward justice, truth, and reparations — and it is an essential step toward protecting press freedom and journalistic integrity in conflict zones.

    Nearly 200 journalists killed
    Since October 2023, Israeli armed forces have killed nearly 200 journalists in Gaza — the Gaza Media Office says more than 215 journalists have been killed — at least 44 of whom were targeted because of their work, according to RSF data.

    Not only are foreign journalists barred from entering the blockaded Palestinian territory, but local reporters have watched their homes and newsrooms be destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and have been constantly displaced amid a devastating humanitarian crisis.

    “The right of victims to participate in the ICC investigation is a crucial mechanism that will finally allow for the recognition of the immense harm suffered by Palestinian journalists working in Gaza, who are the target of an unprecedented and systematic crackdown,” said Clémence Witt, a lawyer at the Paris and Barcelona Bars, and Jeanne Sulzer, a lawyer at the Paris Bar and member of the ICC’s list of counsel.

    Jonathan Dagher, head of the RSF Middle East desk, said: “It is time for justice for Gaza’s journalists to be served. The Israeli army’s ongoing crimes against them must end.

    “RSF will tirelessly continue demanding justice and reparations. This new process in the ICC investigation is an integral part of this combat, and allowing journalists to participate as victims is essential to moving forward.

    “They should be able to testify to the extreme violence targeting Gaza’s press. This is a new step toward holding the Israeli military and its leaders accountable for the crimes committed with impunity on Palestinian territory.”

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with RSF.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Tarakinikini appointed as Fiji’s ambassador-designate to Israel

    By Anish Chand in Suva

    Filipo Tarakinikini has been appointed as Fiji’s Ambassador-designate to Israel.

    This has been stated on two official X, formerly Twitter, handle posts overnight.

    “#Fiji is determined to deepen its relations with #Israel as Fiji’s Ambassador-designate to Israel, HE Ambassador @AFTarakinikini prepares to present his credentials on 28 April, 2025,” stated the Fiji at UN twitter account.

    Tarakinikini is also Fiji’s current Ambassador to the United Nations.

    In a separate post, Deputy Director-General Eynat Shlein of Israel’s international development cooperation agency said she was “honoured” to meet Tarakinikini.

    “We discussed the vast cooperation opportunities, promoting & enhancing sustainable development, emphasizing investment in capacity building & human capital,” she said on X.

    Fiji is only the seventh country in the world to open an embassy in Israel.

    Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

    Centre of controversy
    Pacific Media Watch     reports that Lieutenant-Colonel Tarakinikini was at the centre of controversy in Fiji in 2005 when he was declared a “deserter” by the Fiji military.

    However, from 1979 to 2002, he served in the Fiji Military Forces, including eight years in United Nations peacekeeping missions, among them, south Lebanon and the Multinational Force in Sinai, Egypt.

    Beginning in 2003, he was the UN Department for Security and Safety’s (UNDSS) Chief Security Adviser in Jerusalem, as well as in Kathmandu, Nepal, from 2006 to 2008.

    From 2008 to 2018, he served in numerous United Nations integrated assessment missions, programme working groups, restructuring and redeployments and technical assessment missions.

    ‘Weapons of war’
    Yesterday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) began week-long hearings at The Hague into global accusations of Israel using starvation and humanitarian aid as “weapons of war” and failing to meet its obligations to the Palestinian people in Gaza as the occupying power in its genocidal war on the besieged enclave.

    Forty countries are expected to give evidence.

    The ICJ has been tasked by the UN with providing an advisory opinion “on a priority basis and with the utmost urgency”.

    Although the ICJ judges’ opinion is not binding, it provides clarity on legal questions.

    In January 2024, the ICJ ruled that Israel must take “all measures” to prevent a genocide in Gaza.

    Then in June, it said in an advisory opinion that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza was illegal.

    Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted on arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The graver Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, the quieter the BBC grows

    ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

    The BBC’s news verification service, Verify, digitally reconstructed a residential tower block in Mandalay earlier this week to show how it had collapsed in a huge earthquake on March 28 in Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia largely cut off from the outside world.

    The broadcaster painstakingly pieced together damage to other parts of the city using a combination of phone videos, satellite imagery and Nasa heat detection images.

    Verify dedicated much time and effort to this task for a simple reason: to expose as patently false the claims made by the ruling military junta that only 2000 people were killed by Myanmar’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake.

    The West sees the country’s generals as an official enemy, and the BBC wanted to show that the junta’s account of events could not be trusted. Myanmar’s rulers have an interest in undercounting the dead to protect the regime’s image.

    The BBC’s determined effort to strip away these lies contrasted strongly with its coverage — or rather, lack of it — of another important story this week.

    Israel has been caught in another horrifying war crime. Late last month, it executed 15 Palestinian first responders and then secretly buried them in a mass grave, along with their crushed vehicles.

    Israel is an official western ally, one that the United States, Britain and the rest of Europe have been arming and assisting in a spate of crimes against humanity being investigated by the world’s highest court. Fourteen months ago, the International Court of Justice ruled it was “plausible” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, is a fugitive from its sister court, the International Criminal Court. Judges there want to try him for crimes against humanity, including starving the 2.3 million people of Gaza by withholding food, water and aid.

    Israel is known to have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them women and children, in its 18-month carpet bombing of the enclave. But there are likely to be far more deaths that have gone unreported.

    This is because Israel has destroyed all of Gaza’s health and administrative bodies that could do the counting, and because it has created unmarked “kill zones” across much of the enclave, making it all but impossible for first responders to reach swathes of territory to locate the dead.

    The latest crime scene in Gaza is shockingly illustrative of how Israel murders civilians, targets medics and covers up its crimes — and of how Western media collude in downplaying such atrocities, helping Israel to ensure that the extent of the death toll in Gaza will never be properly known.

    Struck ‘one by one’
     Last Sunday, United Nations officials were finally allowed by Israel to reach the site in southern Gaza where the Palestinian emergency crews had gone missing a week earlier, on March 23. The bodies of 15 Palestinians were unearthed in a mass grave; another is still missing.

    All were wearing their uniforms, and some had their hands or legs zip-tied, according to eyewitnesses. Some had been shot in the head or chest. Their vehicles had been crushed before they were buried.

    Two of the emergency workers were killed by Israeli fire while trying to aid people injured in an earlier air strike on Rafah. The other 13 were part of a convoy sent to retrieve the bodies of their colleagues, with the UN saying Israel had struck their ambulances “one by one”.

    Even the usual excuses, as preposterous as they are, simply won’t wash in the case of Israel’s latest atrocity — which is why it initially tried to black out the story

    More details emerged during the week, with the doctor who examined five of the bodies reporting that all but one — which had been too badly mutilated by feral animals to assess — were shot from close range with multiple bullets. Ahmad Dhaher, a forensic consultant working at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, said: “The bullets were aimed at one person’s head, another at their heart, and a third person had been shot with six or seven bullets in the torso.”

    Bashar Murad, the Red Crescent’s director of health programmes, observed that one of the paramedics in the convoy was in contact with the ambulance station when Israeli forces started shooting: “During the call, we heard the sound of Israeli soldiers arriving at the location, speaking in Hebrew.

    “The conversation was about gathering the [Palestinian] team, with statements like: ‘Gather them at the wall and bring some restraints to tie them.’ This indicated that a large number of the medical staff were still alive.”

    Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in Palestine, reported that, on the journey to recover the bodies, he and his team witnessed Israeli soldiers firing on civilians fleeing the area. He saw a Palestinian woman shot in the back of the head and a young man who tried to retrieve her body shot, too.

    Concealing slaughter
     The difficulty for Israel with the discovery of the mass grave was that it could not easily fall back on any of the usual mendacious rationalisations for war crimes that it has fed the Western media over the past year and a half, and which those outlets have been only too happy to regurgitate.

    Since Israel unilaterally broke a US-backed ceasefire agreement with Hamas last month, its carpet bombing of the enclave has killed more than 1000 Palestinians, taking the official death toll to more than 50,000. But Israel and its apologists, including Western governments and media, always have a ready excuse at hand to mask the slaughter.

    Israel disputes the casualty figures, saying they are inflated by Gaza’s Health Ministry, even though its figures in previous wars have always been highly reliable. It says most of those killed were Hamas “terrorists”, and most of the slain women and children were used by Hamas as “human shields”.

    Israel has also destroyed Gaza’s hospitals, shot up large numbers of ambulances, killed hundreds of medical personnel and disappeared others into torture chambers, while denying the entry of medical supplies.

    Israel implies that all of the 36 hospitals in Gaza it has targeted are Hamas-run “command and control centres”; that many of the doctors and nurses working in them are really covert Hamas operatives; and that Gaza’s ambulances are being used to transport Hamas fighters.

    Even if these claims were vaguely plausible, the Western media seems unwilling to ask the most obvious of questions: why would Hamas continue to use Gaza’s hospitals and ambulances when Israel made clear from the outset of its 18-month genocidal killing rampage that it was going to treat them as targets?

    Even if Hamas fighters did not care about protecting the health sector, which their parents, siblings, children, and relatives desperately need to survive Israel’s carpet bombing, why would they make themselves so easy to locate?

    Hamas has plenty of other places to hide in Gaza. Most of the enclave’s buildings are wrecked concrete structures, ideal for waging guerrilla warfare.

    Israeli cover-up
     Even the usual excuses, as preposterous as they are, simply won’t wash in the case of Israel’s latest atrocity — which is why it initially tried to black out the story.

    Given that it has banned all Western journalists from entering Gaza, killed unprecedented numbers of local journalists, and formally outlawed the UN refugee agency Unrwa, it might have hoped its crime would go undiscovered.

    But as news of the atrocity started to appear on social media last week, and the mass grave was unearthed on Sunday, Israel was forced to concoct a cover story.

    It claimed the convoy of five ambulances, a fire engine, and a UN vehicle were “advancing suspiciously” towards Israeli soldiers. It also insinuated, without a shred of evidence, that the vehicles had been harbouring Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters.

    Once again, we were supposed to accept not only an improbable Israeli claim but an entirely nonsensical one. Why would Hamas fighters choose to become sitting ducks by hiding in the diminishing number of emergency vehicles still operating in Gaza?

    Why would they approach an Israeli military position out in the open, where they were easy prey, rather than fighting their enemy from the shadows, like other guerrilla armies — using Gaza’s extensive concrete ruins and their underground tunnels as cover?

    If the ambulance crews were killed in the middle of a firefight, why were some victims exhumed with their hands tied? How is it possible that they were all killed in a gun battle when the soldiers could be heard calling for the survivors to be zip-tied?

    And if Israel was really the wronged party, why did it seek to hide the bodies and the crushed vehicles under sand?

    ‘Deeply disturbed’
     All available evidence indicates that Israel killed all or most of the emergency crews in cold blood — a grave war crime.

    But as the story broke on Monday, the BBC’s News at Ten gave over its schedule to a bin strike by workers in Birmingham; fears about the influence of social media prompted by a Netflix drama, Adolescence; bad weather on a Greek island; the return to Earth of stranded Nasa astronauts; and Britain’s fourth political party claiming it would do well in next month’s local elections.

    All of that pushed out any mention of Israel’s latest war crime in Gaza.

    Presumably under pressure from its ordinary journalists — who are known to be in near-revolt over the state broadcaster’s persistent failure to cover Israeli atrocities in Gaza — the next day’s half-hour evening news belatedly dedicated 30 seconds to the item, near the end of the running order.

    This was the perfect opportunity for BBC Verify to do a real investigation, piecing together an atrocity Israel was so keen to conceal

    The perfunctory report immediately undercut the UN’s statement that it was “deeply disturbed” by the deaths, with the newsreader announcing that Israel claimed nine “terrorists” were “among those killed”.

    Where was the BBC Verify team in this instance? Too busy scouring Google maps of Myanmar, it would seem.

    If ever there was a region where its forensic, open-source skills could be usefully deployed, it is Gaza. After all, Israel keeps out foreign journalists, and it has killed Palestinian journalists in greater numbers than all of the West’s major wars of the past 150 years combined.

    This was the perfect opportunity for BBC Verify to do a real investigation, piecing together an atrocity Israel was so keen to conceal. It was a chance for the BBC to do actual journalism about Gaza.

    Why was it necessary for the BBC to contest the narrative of an earthquake in a repressive Southeast Asian country whose rulers are opposed by the West but not contest the narrative of a major atrocity committed by a Western ally?

    Missing in action
     This is not the first time that BBC Verify has been missing in action at a crucial moment in Gaza.

    Back in January 2024, Israeli soldiers shot up a car containing a six-year-old girl, Hind Rajab, and her relatives as they tried to flee an Israeli attack on Gaza City. All were killed, but before Hind died, she could be heard desperately pleading with emergency services for help.

    Two paramedics who tried to rescue her were also killed. It took two weeks for other emergency crews to reach the bodies.

    It was certainly possible for BBC Verify to have done a forensic study of the incident — because another group did precisely that. Forensic Architecture, a research team based at the University of London, used available images of the scene to reconstruct the events.

    It found that the Israeli military had fired 335 bullets into the small car carrying Hind and her family. In an audio recording before she was killed, Hind’s cousin could be heard telling emergency services that an Israeli tank was near them.

    The sound of the gunfire, most likely from the tank’s machine gun, indicates it was some 13 metres away — close enough for the crew to have seen the children inside.

    Not only did BBC Verify ignore the story, but the BBC also failed to report it until the bodies were recovered. As has happened so often before, the BBC dared not do any reporting until Israel was forced to confirm the incident because of physical evidence.

    We know from a BBC journalist-turned-whistleblower, Karishma Patel, that she pushed editors to run the story as the recordings of Hind pleading for help first surfaced, but she was overruled.

    When the BBC very belatedly covered Hind’s horrific killing online, in typical fashion, it did so in a way that minimised any pushback from Israel. Its headline, “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help”, managed to remove Israel from the story.

    Evidence buried
     A clear pattern thus emerges. The BBC also tried to bury the massacre of the 15 Palestinian first responders — keeping it off its website’s main page — just as Israel had tried to bury the evidence of its crime in Gaza’s sand.

    The story’s first headline was: “Red Cross outraged over killing of eight medics in Gaza”. Once again, Israel was removed from the crime scene.

    Only later, amid massive backlash on social media and as the story refused to go away, did the BBC change the headline to attribute the killings to “Israeli forces”.

    But subsequent stories have been keen to highlight the self-serving Israeli claim that its soldiers were entitled to execute the paramedics because the presence of emergency vehicles at the scene of much death and destruction was “suspicious”.

    In one report, a BBC journalist managed to shoe-horn this same, patently ridiculous “defence” twice into her two-minute segment. She reduced the discovery of an Israeli massacre to mere “allegations”, while a clear war crime was soft-soaped as only an “apparent” one.

    Notably, the BBC has on one solitary occasion managed to go beyond other media in reporting an attack on an ambulance crew. The footage incontrovertibly showed a US-supplied Apache helicopter firing on the crew and a young family they were trying to evacuate.

    There was no possibility the ambulance contained “terrorists” because the documentary team were filming inside the vehicle with paramedics they had been following for months. The video was included near the end of a documentary on the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, seen largely through the eyes of children.

    But the BBC quickly pulled that film, titled Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, after the Israel lobby manufactured a controversy over one of its child narrators being the son of Gaza’s deputy Agriculture Minister, who served in the Hamas-run civilian government.

    Wholesale destruction
     The unmentionable truth, which has been evident since the earliest days of the 18-month genocide, is that Israel is intentionally dismantling and destroying Gaza’s health sector, piece by piece.

    According to the UN, Israel’s war has killed at least 1060 healthcare workers and 399 aid workers — those deaths it has been possible to identify — and wrecked Gaza’s health facilities. Israel has rounded up hundreds of medical staff and disappeared many of them into what Israeli human rights groups call torture chambers.

    One doctor, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, has been held by Israel since he was abducted in late December. During brief contacts with lawyers, Dr Safiya revealed that he is being tortured.

    Other doctors have been killed in Israeli detention from their abuse, including one who was allegedly raped to death.

    Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and execution of medical personnel is part of the same message: there is nowhere safe, no sanctuary, the laws of war no longer apply

    Why is Israel carrying out this wholesale destruction of Gaza’s health sector? There are two reasons. Firstly, Netanyahu recently reiterated his intent to carry out the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

    He presents this as “voluntary migration”, supposedly in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate the enclave’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians to other countries.

    There can be nothing voluntary about Palestinians leaving Gaza when Israel has refused to allow any food or aid into the enclave for the past month, and is indiscriminately bombing Gaza. Israel’s ultimate intention has always been to terrify the population into flight.

    Israel’s ambassador to Austria, David Roet, was secretly recorded last month stating that “there are no uninvolved in Gaza”— a constant theme from Israeli officials. He also suggested that there should be a “death sentence” for anyone Israel accuses of holding a gun, including children.

    Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has threatened the “total devastation” of Gaza’s civilian population should they fail to “remove Hamas” from the enclave, something they are in no position to do.

    Not surprisingly, faced with the prospect of an intensification of the genocide and the imminent annihilation of themselves and their loved ones, ordinary people in Gaza have started organising protests against Hamas — marches readily reported by the BBC and others.

    Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and execution of medical personnel is part of the same message: there is nowhere safe, no sanctuary, the laws of war no longer apply, and no one will come to your aid in your hour of need.

    You are alone against our snipers, drones, tanks and Apache helicopters.

    Too much to bear
     The second reason for Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health sector is that we in the West, or at least our governments and media, have consented to Israel’s savagery — and actively participated in it — every step of the way. Had there been any meaningful pushback at any stage, Israel would have been forced to take another course.

    When David Lammy, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, let slip in Parliament last month the advice he has been receiving from his officials since he took up the job last summer — that Israel is clearly violating international law by starving the population — he was immediately rebuked by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office.

    Let us not forget that Starmer, when he was opposition leader, approved Israel’s genocidal blocking of food, water and electricity to Gaza, saying Israel “had that right”.

    In response to Lammy’s comments, Starmer’s spokesperson restated the government’s view that Israel is only “at risk” of breaching international law — a position that allows the UK to continue arming Israel and providing it with intelligence from British spy flights over Gaza from a Royal Air Force base in Cyprus.

    Our politicians have consented to everything Israel has done, and not just in Gaza over the past 18 months. This genocide has been decades in the making.

    Three-quarters of a century ago, the West authorised the ethnic cleansing of most of Palestine to create a self-declared Jewish state there. The West consented, too, to the violent occupation of the last sections of Palestine in 1967, and to Israel’s gradual colonisation of those newly seized territories by armed Jewish extremists.

    The West nodded through waves of house demolitions carried out against Palestinian communities by Israel to “Judaise” the land. It backed the Israeli army creating extensive “firing zones” on Palestinian farmland to starve traditional agricultural communities of any means of subsistence.

    The West ignored Israeli settlers and soldiers destroying Palestinian olive groves, beating up shepherds, torching homes, and murdering families. Even being an Oscar winner offers no immunity from the rampant settler violence.

    The West agreed to Israel creating an apartheid road system and a network of checkpoints that kept Palestinians confined to ever-shrinking ghettoes, and building walls around Palestinian areas to permanently isolate them from the rest of the world.

    It allowed Israel to stop Palestinians from reaching one of their holiest sites, Al-Aqsa Mosque, on land that was supposed to be central to their future state.

    The West kept quiet as Israel besieged the two million people of Gaza for 17 years, putting them on a tightly rationed diet so their children would grow ever-more malnourished. It did nothing — except supply more weapons — when the people of Gaza launched a series of non-violent protests at their prison walls around the enclave, and were greeted with Israeli sniper fire that left thousands dead or crippled.

    The West only found a collective voice of protest on 7 October 2023, when Hamas managed to find a way to break out of Gaza’s choking isolation to wreak havoc in Israel for 24 hours. It has been raising its voice in horror at the events of that single day ever since, drowning out 18 months of screams from the children being starved and exterminated in Gaza.

    The murder of 15 Palestinian medics and aid workers is a tiny drop in an ocean of Israeli criminality — a barbarism rewarded by Western capitals decade after decade.

    This genocide was made in the West. Israel is our progeny, our ugly reflection in the mirror — which is why Western leaders and establishment media are so desperate to make us look the other way. That reflection is too much for anyone with a soul to bear.

    Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and media critic, and author of many books about Palestine. He is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the Middle East Eye and the author’s blog with permission.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Filipino activists praise arrest of ex-president Duterte as first step to end impunity

    Asia Pacific Report

    Dozens of Filipinos and supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand came together in a Black Friday vigil and Rally for Justice in the heart of two cities tonight — Auckland and Christchurch.

    They celebrated the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier this month to face trial for alleged crimes against humanity over a wave of extrajudicial killings during his six-year presidency in a so-called “war on drugs”.

    Estimates of the killings have ranged between 6250 (official police figure) and up to 30,000 (human rights groups) — including 32 in a single day — during his 2016-2022 term and critics have described the bloodbath as a war against the poor.

    But speakers warned tonight this was only the first step to end the culture of impunity in the Philippines.

    Current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son of the late dictator, and his adminstration were also condemned by the protesters.

    Introducing the rally with the theme “Convict Duterte! End Impunity!” in Freyberg Square in the heart of downtown Auckland, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan’s Eugene Velasco said: “We demand justice for the thousands killed in the bloody and fraudulent war on drugs under the US-Duterte regime.”

    She said they sought to:

    • expose the human rights violations against the Filipino people;
    • call for Duterte’s accountability; and
    • to hold Marcos responsible for continuing this reign of terror against the masses.

    Flown to The Hague
    The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Duterte on March 11. He was immediately arrested on an aircraft at Manila International Airport and flown by charter aircraft to The Hague where he is now detained awaiting trial.

    “We welcome this development because his arrest is the result of tireless resistance — not only from human rights defenders but, most importantly, from the families of those who fell victim to Duterte’s extrajudicial killings,” Velasco said.

    Filipina activist Eugene Velasco . . . families of victims fought for justice “even in the face of relentless threats and violence from the police and military”. Image: APR

    “These families fought for justice despite the complete lack of support from the Marcos administration.”

    Velasco said their their courage and resilience had pushed this case forward — “even in the face of relentless threats and violence from the police and military”.

    “‘Shoot them dead!’—this was Duterte’s direct order to the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). His death squads carried out these brutal killings with impunity,” Velasco said.

    Mock corpses in the Philippines rally in Freyberg Square tonight. Image: APR

    But Duterte was not the only one who must be held accountable, she added.

    “We demand the immediate arrest and prosecution of all those who orchestrated and enabled the state-sponsored executions, led by figures like Senator Bato Dela Rosa and Lieutenant-Colonel Jovie Espenido, that led to over 30,000 deaths, the militarisation of 47,587 schools, churches, and public institutions — especially in rural areas — the abductions and killings of human rights defenders, and the continued existence of National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict or NTF-ELCAC.”

    A masked young speaker tells of many victims of extrajudicial killings at tonight’s Duterte rally in Freyberg Square. Image: APR

    Fake news, red-tagging
    Velasco accused this agency of having “used the Filipino people’s taxes to fuel human rights abuses” through the spread of fake news and red-tagging against activists, peasants, trade unionists, and people’s lawyers.

    “The fight does not end here,” she said.

    “The Filipino people, together with all justice and peace-loving people of Aotearoa New Zealand, will not stop until justice is fully served — not just for the victims, but for all who continue to suffer under the Duterte-Marcos regime, which remains under the grip of US imperialist interests.

    “As Filipinos overseas, we must unite in demanding justice, stand in solidarity with the victims of extrajudicial killings, and continue the struggle for accountability.”

    Several speakers gave harrowing testimony about the fate of named victims as their photographs and histories were remembered.

    Speakers from local political groups, including Green Party MP Francisco Hernandez, and retired prominent trade unionist and activist Robert Reid, also participated.

    Reid referenced the ICC arrest issued last November against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Gaza genocide, saying he hoped that he too would end up in The Hague.

    Mock corpses surrounded by candles displayed signs — which had been a hallmark of the drug war killings — declaring “Jail Duterte”, “Justice for all victims of human rights” and “Convict Sara Duterte now!” Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte is currently Vice-President and is facing impeachment proceedings.

    The “convict Duterte” rally and vigil in Freyberg Square tonight. Image: APR

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Former Filipino president Duterte’s arrest by the ICC – 20 journalists killed during his presidency

    Pacific Media Watch

    Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has recalled that 20 journalists were killed during the six-year Philippines presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, a regime marked by fierce repression of the press.

    Former president Duterte was arrested earlier this week as part of an International Criminal Court investigation into crimes against humanity linked to his merciless war on drugs. He is now in The Hague awaiting trial.

    The watchdog has called on the administration of current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to take strong measures to fully restore the country’s press freedom and combat impunity for the crimes against media committed by Duterte’s regime.

    “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch,” Rodrigo Duterte said in his inauguration speech on 30 June 2016, which set the tone for the rest of his mandate — unrestrained violence against journalists and total disregard for press freedom, said RSF in a statement.

    During the Duterte regime’s rule, RSF recorded 20 cases of journalists killed while working.

    Among them was Jesus Yutrago Malabanan, shot dead after covering Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war for Reuters.

    Online harassment surged, particularly targeting women journalists.

    Maria Ressa troll target
    The most prominent victim was Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the news site Rappler, who faced an orchestrated hate campaign led by troll armies allied with the government in response to her commitment to exposing the then-president’s bloody war.

    Media outlets critical of President Duterte’s authoritarian excesses were systematically muzzled: the country’s leading television network, ABS-CBN, was forced to shut down; Rappler and Maria Ressa faced repeated lawsuits; and a businessman close to the president took over the country’s leading newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, raising concerns over its editorial independence.

    “The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte is good news for the Filipino journalism community, who were the direct targets of his campaign of terror,” said RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani.

    RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani . . . “the Filipino journalism community were the direct targets of [former president Rodrigo Duterte]’s campaign of terror.” Image: RSF

    “President Marcos and his administration must immediately investigate Duterte’s past crimes and take strong measures to fully restore the country’s press freedom.”

    The repression carried out during Duterte’s tenure continues to impact on Filipino journalism: investigative journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio has been languishing in prison since her arrest in 2020, still awaiting a verdict in her trial for “financing terrorism” and “illegal possession of firearms” — trumped-up charges that could see her sentenced to 40 years in prison.

    With 147 journalists murdered since the restoration of democracy in 1986, the Philippines remains one of the deadliest countries for media workers.

    The republic ranked 134th out of 180 in the 2024 RSF World Press Freedom Index.

    Source report from Reporters Without Borders. Pacific Media Watch collaborates with RSF.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Former Filipino Duterte’s arrest by the ICC – 20 journalists killed during his presidency

    Pacific Media Watch

    Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has recalled that 20 journalists were killed during the six-year Philippines presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, a regime marked by fierce repression of the press.

    Former president Duterte was arrested earlier this week as part of an International Criminal Court investigation into crimes against humanity linked to his merciless war on drugs. He is now in The Hague awaiting trial.

    The watchdog has called on the administration of current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to take strong measures to fully restore the country’s press freedom and combat impunity for the crimes against media committed by Duterte’s regime.

    “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch,” Rodrigo Duterte said in his inauguration speech on 30 June 2016, which set the tone for the rest of his mandate — unrestrained violence against journalists and total disregard for press freedom, said RSF in a statement.

    During the Duterte regime’s rule, RSF recorded 20 cases of journalists killed while working.

    Among them was Jesus Yutrago Malabanan, shot dead after covering Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war for Reuters.

    Online harassment surged, particularly targeting women journalists.

    Maria Ressa troll target
    The most prominent victim was Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the news site Rappler, who faced an orchestrated hate campaign led by troll armies allied with the government in response to her commitment to exposing the then-president’s bloody war.

    Media outlets critical of President Duterte’s authoritarian excesses were systematically muzzled: the country’s leading television network, ABS-CBN, was forced to shut down; Rappler and Maria Ressa faced repeated lawsuits; and a businessman close to the president took over the country’s leading newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, raising concerns over its editorial independence.

    “The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte is good news for the Filipino journalism community, who were the direct targets of his campaign of terror,” said RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani.

    RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani . . . “the Filipino journalism community were the direct targets of [former president Rodrigo Duterte]’s campaign of terror.” Image: RSF

    “President Marcos and his administration must immediately investigate Duterte’s past crimes and take strong measures to fully restore the country’s press freedom.”

    The repression carried out during Duterte’s tenure continues to impact on Filipino journalism: investigative journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio has been languishing in prison since her arrest in 2020, still awaiting a verdict in her trial for “financing terrorism” and “illegal possession of firearms” — trumped-up charges that could see her sentenced to 40 years in prison.

    With 147 journalists murdered since the restoration of democracy in 1986, the Philippines remains one of the deadliest countries for media workers.

    The republic ranked 134th out of 180 in the 2024 RSF World Press Freedom Index.

    Source report from Reporters Without Borders. Pacific Media Watch collaborates with RSF.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Palestine asks ICJ for advisory opinion on illegal occupier Israel’s obligations

    More than 180 remained in detention without a clear indication of when or if they would be released, the physicians’ report said.

    “Detainees endure physical, psychological and sexual abuse as well as starvation and medical neglect amounting to torture,” the report said, denouncing a “deeply ingrained policy”.

    Healthcare workers were beaten, threatened, and forced to sign documents in Hebrew during their detention, according to the report based on 20 testimonies collected in prison.

    “Medical personnel were primarily questioned about the Israeli hostages, tunnels, hospital structures and Hamas’s activity,” it said.

    “They were rarely asked questions linking them to any criminal activity, nor were they presented with substantive charges.”

    New Zealand protesters calling for the continuation of the Gaza ceasefire and for peace and justice in Palestine in a march along the Auckland waterfront today. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    Where does Trump stand on the Gaza ceasefire?
     With phase one of the ceasefire due to end today and negotiations barely started on phase two, serious fears are being raised over  the viability of the ceasefire.

    President Donald Trump took credit for the truce that his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff helped push across the finish line after a year of negotiations led by the Biden administration, Egypt and Qatar, reports Al Jazeera.

    Advocate Maher Nazzal at today’s New Zealand rally for Gaza in Auckland . . . he was elected co-leader of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa last weekend. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    However, Trump has since sent mixed signals about the deal.

    Earlier last month, he set a firm deadline for Hamas to release all the captives, warning “all hell is going to break out” if it didn’t.

    But he said it was ultimately up to Israel, and the deadline came and went.

    Trump sowed further confusion by proposing that Gaza’s population of about 2.3 million be relocated to other countries and for the US to take over the territory and develop it.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the idea, but it was universally rejected by Palestinians and Arab countries, including close US allies. Human rights groups said it could violate international law.

    Trump stood by the plan in a Fox News interview over the weekend but said he was “not forcing it”.


    ‘Finally’ an effort to hold the US accountable, says Al-Haq director
    Palestinian human rights activist Shawan Jabarin has welcomed a plea by the US-based rights group DAWN for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Joe Biden and senior US officials for aiding Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

    In a video posted by DAWN, Jabarin, director of the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, said the effort was long overdue.

    “For decades we have called on the international community to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law, but time and again, the US has used its power and influence to block that accountability, to shield Israel from consequences and to ensure that it can continue its crimes with impunity,” Jabarin said.

    “Now, finally, we see an effort to hold not just Israeli officials accountable but also those who have made these crimes possible: US officials who have armed, financed, and politically defended Israeli atrocities.”

    A father piggybacks his sleepy child during the New Zealand solidarity protest for Palestine in Auckland’s Viaduct today. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Barred European Union politician brands Israel as ‘a rogue state’

    Israel has now banned another European Union parliamentarian from entering the country, reports Al Jazeera.

    The government gave no reasons why Lynn Boylan, who chairs the European Parliament EU-Palestine delegation, was denied entry.

    “This utter contempt from Israel is the result of the international community failing to hold them to account,” Boylan, an Irish MP in Brussels, said in a statement.

    “Israel is a rogue state, and this disgraceful move shows the level of utter disregard that they have for international law.

    “Europe must now hold Israel to account.”

    Boylan said she had planned to meet with Palestinian Authority officials, representatives of civil society organisations, and people living under Israeli occupation.

    She is a member of the Sinn Fein party in Ireland, which has been among the most vocal countries in criticising the Israeli government over its treatment of Palestinians.

    France’s Hassan also refused
    Earlier, EU lawmaker Rima Hassan was also refused entry at Ben-Gurion airport and ordered to return to Europe.

    “Hassan, who is expected to land from Brussels in the coming hour, consistently works to promote boycotts against Israel in addition to numerous public statements both on social media and in media interviews,” said Israeli Interior Minister Moshe Arbel’s office.

    Hassan is a French national of Palestinian origin known for her support of the Palestinian cause and for speaking out against Israel’s war on Gaza.

    Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, outlined a range of worries about the situation in war-battered Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

    “We have constantly called on all parties, including Israel, to respect international humanitarian law,” she said, adding that Europe “cannot hide our concern when it comes to the West Bank”.

    ICC raps Merz over warrants
    Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has declared that states cannot unilaterally “determine soundness” of its rulings

    Earlier, it was reported that Germany’s election winner Friedrich Merz was saying he planned to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit the country — despite an ICC war crimes warrant issued for his arrest, which Merz claimed did not apply.

    The ICC responded by saying states had a legal obligation to enforce its decisions, and any concerns they may have should be addressed with the court in a timely and efficient manner.

    “It is not for states to unilaterally determine the soundness of the court’s legal decisions,” said the ICC in a statement.

    Israel rejects the jurisdiction of the court and denies war crimes were committed during its devastating war on Gaza.

    Germans feel a special responsibility towards Israel because of the legacy of the Holocaust, and Merz has made clear he is a strong ally. But Germany also has a strong tradition of support for international justice for war crimes.

    Amnesty slams ‘shameful silence’
     Amnesty International and 162 other civil society organisations and trade unions have signed a joint letter calling on the EU to ban trade and business with Israel’s settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

    “Despite EU consensus about the settlements’ illegality and their link to serious abuses, the EU continues to trade and allow business with them,” the letter said.

    This contributes to “the serious and systemic human rights and other international law abuses underpinning the settlement enterprise”, it added.

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July issued a landmark advisory opinion affirming that states must not recognise, aid or assist the unlawful situation arising from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

    Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Trump’s ‘Riviera’ plan for Gaza heralds an age of naked fascism

    COMMENTARY: By Sawsan Madina

    I watched US President Donald Trump’s joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week in utter disbelief. Not that the idea, or indeed the practice, of ethnic cleansing of Palestine is new.

    But at that press conference the mask has fallen. Recently, fascism has been on the march everywhere, but that press conference seemed to herald an age of naked fascism.

    So the Palestinians have just been “unlucky” for decades.

    “Their lives have been made hell.” Thank God for grammar’s indirect speech. Their lives have been made hell. We do not know who made their lives hell. Nothing to see here.

    Trump says of Gaza: “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings — level it out and create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area . . . ”

    I wonder who are those lucky “people of the area” he has in mind, once those “unlucky” Palestinians have been “transferred” out of their homeland.

    Trump speaks of transforming Gaza into a magnificent “Riviera of the Middle East”. Obviously, the starved amputees of Gaza do not fit his image of the classy people he wants to see in the Riviera he wants to build, on stolen Palestinian land.

    No ethnic cleansing questions
    After the press conference, I did not hear a single question about ethnic cleansing, genocide, occupation or international law.

    Under the new fascist leaders, just like under the old ones, those words have become old-fashioned and are to be expunged from the lexicon.

    The difference has never been more striking between the meek who officially hold the title “journalist” and the brave who actually work to hold the powerful to account.

    Now, more than ever, independent journalists are a threatened species. We should treasure them, support them and protest every attempt to silence them.

    Gaza is now the prototype. We can forget international laws and international organisations. We have the bombs. You do as we wish or you will be obliterated.

    Who now dares say that the forced transfer of a population by an occupying power is a war crime under the Geneva Convention? But then again, Trump and Netanyahu are not really talking about “forced transfer”. They are talking about “voluntary transfer”.

    Once the remaining Israeli hostages have been freed, and water and food have been cut off again, those unlucky Palestinians will climb voluntarily onto the buses waiting to transport them to happiness and prosperity in Egypt and Jordan.

    Or to whatever other client state Trump manages to threaten or bribe.

    Can the International Criminal Court (ICC) command a shred of respect when Netanyahu is sharing the podium with Trump? Or indeed when Trump is at the podium?

    Dismantling the international order
    Recently, fascist leaders have been dismantling the international order by accusing its organisations and officials of being “antisemitic” or “working with terrorists”. Tomorrow they will defund and delegitimise these organisations without the need for an excuse.

    I listen to Trump speak of combatting antisemitism and deporting Hamas sympathisers and I hear, “We will combat anti-Israel views and we will deport those who protest Israel’s crimes.

    “And we will continue to conflate antisemitism and anti-Israel’s views in order to silence pro-Palestinian voices.”

    I watch Trump and Netanyahu, the former reading the thoughts of a real estate developer turned into a president’s speech and the latter grinning like a Cheshire cat — and I am gripped by fear. Not just for the Palestinians, but for all humanity.

    If we think fascism is only coming for people on a distant shore, we ought to think again.

    I watch Netanyahu repeating lies that investigative journalists have spent months debunking. Why would he care? The truth about his lies will not make it to mainstream media and the consciousness of the majority of people.

    Lies taking hold, enduring
    And the more he repeats those lies, the more they take hold and endure.

    I wonder how our political leaders will spin our allies’ new, illegal and immoral plans. For years, they have clung to the mantra of the two-state solution while Israel continued to make every effort to render this solution unfeasible.

    What will they say now? With what weasel words will they stay on the same page as our friends in the US and Israel?

    Netanyhu praises Trump for thinking outside the box. Here is an idea that Israel has spent billions on arms and propaganda to persuade people that it is dangerously outside the box.

    Instead of asking Egypt and Jordan to take the Palestinians, why not make Israel end the occupation and give Palestinians equal rights in their own homeland?

    Sawsan Madina is former head of Australia’s SBS Television. This article was first published by John Menadue’s public policy journal Pearls and Irritations and is republished with permission.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: UN rapporteur welcomes ‘best news’ — Hague Group coalition pushing for Palestinian state

    Asia Pacific Report

    UN Special Rapporteur to the Occupied Palestinian Territory Francesca Albanese has hailed the formation of The Hague Group, describing it as the “best news” from a coalition of policymakers “in a long time”.

    Formed on Friday in the city of its namesake, The Hague Group’s members — Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa — have joined together to “end Israeli occupation of the State of Palestine”.

    The groups said in a joint statement that they could not “remain passive in the face of such international crimes” committed by Israel against the Palestinians.

    They said they would work to see the “realisation of the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine”.

    Albanese said on social media: “Let’s make it real. And let’s keep growing.”

    “The Hague Group’s formation sends a clear message — no nation is above the law, and no crime will go unanswered,” said the South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola.

    South Africa filed a case before the International Court of Justice alleging genocide in 2023 and an interim ruling in January 2024 said that there was “plausible genocide” and accepted the case for substantive judgment. Since then, 14 countries have joined the proceedings in support of South Africa and Palestine.

    Malaysia has been preparing a draft resolution for United Nations to expel Israel from the global body.

    Joyful scenes erupted today as buses carrying Palestinian prisoners released under last month’s Gaza ceasefire deal arrived in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. A total of 183 prisoners were due to be freed today.

    Three captives — Keith Siegel, Ofer Kalderon and Yarden Bibas– were earlier released in two separate locations in southern and northern Gaza.

    Samoan artist Michel Mulipola with his characteristic clutch of protest flags at the “march of the martyrs” in Auckland today . . . latest addition is the flag of the Democratic Republic of Congo to acknowledge a brutal war being waged by M23 rebels. Image: David Robie/APR

    NZ ‘march of the martyrs’ protest
    In New Zealand’s largest city Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau today, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters staged a vigil and march for the more than 47,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s war on Gaza — mostly women and children.

    Hamas released three more hostages from Gaza today – a total of 14 since the ceasefire. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot APR

    More than 44,500 names of the victims of the genocidal war were spread out on the pavement of Te Komititanga Square in the heart of Auckland and one of the organisers, Dr Abdallah Gouda, said: “It is important to honour the names, they are people, families — they are not just numbers, statistics.”

    A canvas with an outline of Palestine flag was also spread out and protesters invited to dip their fingers in black, red and green paint — the colours of the Palestinian flag — and daub the ensign with their collective fingerprints.

    This was part of a global campaign to “stamp my imprint” for the return to Palestine.

    “Each mark represents solidarity and remembrance for those who have lost their lives in the struggle for justice,” said the campaign.

    “As you add your fingerprint, please take a moment to reflect on their sacrifice and the collective desire for peace and freedom.

    “This canvas will become a living tribute with each fingerprint contributing to a powerful symbol of unity and support.”

    Today’s Palestinian and decolonisation “march of the martyrs” in Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR

    The protesters followed with a “march for the martyrs” through central streets of Auckland past the consulate of the United States, main backer and arms supplier to Israel, and beside the city’s iconic harbourside.

    More than 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the ceasefire was signed and came into force on January 19.

    A young girl keeps vigil over more than 44,000 names from the 47,000 people killed in Israel’s war on Gaza at today’s pro-Palestinian demonstration in Auckland today. Image: David Robie/APR

    UNRWA chief “salutes’ aid staff defying Israeli ban
     Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that the head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has hailed staff for continuing to work despite an Israeli ban on their operations coming into force on Thursday.

    In a post on social media, Philippe Lazzarini said: “I salute the commitment of UNRWA staff”.

    “We remain committed to upholding the humanitarian principles and fulfil our mandate,” Lazzarini said.

    He noted that nearly 500,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, continued to access healthcare provided by UNRWA.

    Since the start of the ceasefire in Gaza, UNRWA has ensured that humanitarian food supplies entering the territory under bombardment have reached more than 600,000 people, he said.

    “UNRWA must be allowed to do its work until Palestinian institutions are empowered and capable within a Palestine State,” he added.

    Israel passed a law in October that came into effect this week, banning UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory — including in East Jerusalem where its headquarters is located — and prohibiting contact with Israeli authorities.

    However, Israel is occupying the Palestinian territories illegally in defiance of many UN resolutions ordering it to leave.

    UNRWA has said that it is mandated by the UN General Assembly and is committed to staying open and delivering services to Palestinians despite Israel’s prohibitions.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he was portrayed on a banner at the Palestinian “march of the martyrs” in Auckland today . . . he is “wanted” by the International Criminal Court to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Image: APR

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –