In July 1985, Australia’s Pacific territory of Norfolk Island (pop. 2188) became the centre of a real life international spy thriller.
Four French agents sailed there on board the Ouvéa, a yacht from Kanaky New Caledonia, after bombing the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.
The Rainbow Warrior was the flagship for a protest flotilla due to travel to Moruroa atoll to challenge French nuclear tests.
Australian police took them into custody on behalf of their New Zealand counterparts but then, bafflingly, allowed them to sail away, never to face justice.
On the 40th anniversary of the bombing (10 July 2025), award-winning journalist Richard Baker goes on an adventure from Paris to the Pacific to get the real story – and ultimately uncover the role that Australia played in the global headline-making affair.
The programme includes an interview with Pacific journalist David Robie, author of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior. David’s article about this episode is published at Declassified Australia here.
In July 1985, Australia’s Pacific territory of Norfolk Island (pop. 2188) became the centre of a real life international spy thriller.
Four French agents sailed there on board the Ouvéa, a yacht from Kanaky New Caledonia, after bombing the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.
The Rainbow Warrior was the flagship for a protest flotilla due to travel to Moruroa atoll to challenge French nuclear tests.
Australian police took them into custody on behalf of their New Zealand counterparts but then, bafflingly, allowed them to sail away, never to face justice.
On the 40th anniversary of the bombing (10 July 2025), award-winning journalist Richard Baker goes on an adventure from Paris to the Pacific to get the real story – and ultimately uncover the role that Australia played in the global headline-making affair.
The programme includes an interview with Pacific journalist David Robie, author of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior. David’s article about this episode is published at Declassified Australia here.
When advocates and defenders of a nuclear-free Pacific condemned the AUKUS military pact two years ago and warned New Zealand that the agreement would make the world “more dangerous”, a key speaker was Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua.
He was among leading participants at a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement teachers’ wānanga, which launched a petition against the pact with one of the “elders” among the activists, Hilda Halkyard-Harawira (Te Moana Nui a Kiwa), symbolically adding the first signature.
Speaking about the petition declaration in a ceremony on the steps of the Auckland Museum marking the 10 July 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior, Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua explained that the AUKUS agreement was a military pact between Australia-UK-US that was centred on Canberra’s acquisition of nuclear propelled submarines.
Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua and the NFIP petition has been featured in a new video report by Nik Naidu as part of a “Legends of NFIP” series by Talanoa TV of the Whanau Community Centre and Hub.
In the new weekly political podcast, The Bradbury Group, last night presenter Martyn Bradbury talked with visiting Palestinian journalist Dr Yousef Aljamal.
They assess the current situation in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and what New Zealand should be doing.
As Bradbury, publisher of The Daily Blog, notes, “Fourth Estate public broadcasting is dying — The Bradbury Group will fight back.”
Gaza crisis and Iran tensions. Video: The Bradbury Group/Radio Waatea
Also in last night’s programme was featured a View From A Far Podcast Special Middle East Report with former intelligence analyst Dr Paul Buchanan and international affairs commentator Selwyn Manning on what will happen next in Iran.
Martyn Bradbury talks to Dr Paul Buchanan (left) and Selwyn Manning on the Iran crisis and the future. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Political Panel: Māori Party president John Tamihere, NZ Herald columnist Simon Wilson NZCTU economist Craig Renney
Topics: – The Legacy of Tarsh Kemp – New coward punch and first responder assault laws — virtue signalling or meaningful policy? – Cost of living crisis and the failing economy
The NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji (NGOCHR) has called on Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka as the new chair of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) to “uphold justice, stability and security” for Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua.
In a statement today after last week’s MSG leaders’ summit in Suva, the coalition also warned over Indonesia’s “chequebook diplomacy” as an obstacle for the self-determination aspirations of Melanesian peoples not yet independent.
Indonesia is a controversial associate member of the MSG in what is widely seen in the region as a “complication” for the regional Melanesian body.
The statement said that with Rabuka’s “extensive experience as a seasoned statesman in the Pacific, we hope that this second chapter will chart a different course, one rooted in genuine commitment to uphold justice, stability and security for all our Melanesian brothers and sisters in Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua”.
The coalition said the summit’s theme, “A peaceful and prosperous Melanesia”, served as a reminder that even after several decades of regional bilaterals, “our Melanesian leaders have made little to no progress in fulfilling its purpose in the region — to support the independence and sovereignty of all Melanesians”.
“Fiji, as incoming chair, inherits the unfinished work of the MSG. As rightly stated by the late great Father Walter Lini, ‘We will not be free until all of Melanesia is free”, the statement said.
“The challenges for Fiji’s chair to meet the goals of the MSG are complex and made more complicated by the inclusion of Indonesia as an associate member in 2015.
‘Indonesia active repression’ “Indonesia plays an active role in the ongoing repression of West Papuans in their desire for independence. Their associate member status provides a particular obstacle for Fiji as chair in furthering the self-determination goals of the MSG.”
Complicating matters further was the asymmetry in the relationship between Indonesia and the rest of the MSG members, the statement said.
“As a donor government and emerging economic power, Indonesia’s ‘chequebook and cultural diplomacy’ continues to wield significant influence across the region.
“Its status as an associate member of the MSG raises serious concerns about whether it is appropriate, as this pathway risks further marginalising the voices of our West Papuan sisters and brothers.”
This defeated the “whole purpose of the MSG: ‘Excelling together towards a progressive and prosperous Melanesia’.”
The coalition acknowledged Rabuka’s longstanding commitment to the people of Kanaky New Caledonia. A relationship and shared journey that had been forged since 1989.
‘Stark reminder’ The pro-independence riots of May 2024 served as a “stark reminder that much work remains to be done to realise the full aspirations of the Kanak people”.
As the Pacific awaited a “hopeful and favourable outcome” from the Troika Plus mission to Kanaky New Caledonia, the coalition said that it trusted Rabuka to “carry forward the voices, struggles, dreams and enduring aspirations of the people of Kanaky New Caledonia”.
The statement called on Rabuka as the new chair of MSG to:
Ensure the core founding values, and mission of the MSG are upheld;
Re-evaluate Indonesia’s appropriateness as an associate member of the MSG; and
Elevate discussions on West Papua and Kanaky New Caledonia at the MSG level and through discussions at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders.
The Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights (NGOCHR) represents the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (chair), Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, Citizens’ Constitutional Forum, femLINKpacific, Social Empowerment and Education Program, and Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality Fiji. Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is an observer.
Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark has warned the country needs to maintain its nuclear-free policy as a “fundamental tenet” of its independent foreign policy in the face of gathering global storm clouds.
Writing in a new book being published next week, she says “nuclear war is an existential threat to humanity. Far from receding, the threat of use of nuclear weapons is ever present.
Writing before the US surprise attack with B-2 stealth bombers and “bunker-buster” bombs on three Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22, Clark says “the Middle East is a tinder box with the failure of the Iran nuclear deal and with Israel widely believed to possess nuclear weapons”.
The Doomsday Clock references the Ukraine war theatre where “use of nuclear weapons has been floated by Russia”.
Also, the arms control architecture for Europe is unravelling, leaving the continent much less secure. India and Pakistan both have nuclear arsenals, she says.
“North Korea continues to develop its nuclear weapons capacity.”
‘Serious ramifications’ Clark, who was also United Nations Development Programme administrator from 2009 to 2017, a member of The Elders group of global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, and is an advocate for multilateralism and nuclear disarmament, says an outright military conflict between China and the United States “would be one between two nuclear powers with serious ramifications for East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and far beyond.”
She advises New Zealand to be wary of Australia’s decision to enter a nuclear submarine purchase programme with the United States.
“There has been much speculation about a potential Pillar Two of the AUKUS agreement which would see others in the region become partners in the development of advanced weaponry,” Clark says.
“This is occurring in the context of rising tensions between the United States and China.
“Many of us share the view that New Zealand should be a voice for de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific and the development of more lethal weaponry.”
Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior . . . publication July 2025. Image: Little Island Press
In the face of the “current global turbulence, New Zealand needs to reemphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament.
Clark says that the years 1985 – the Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 — and 1986 were critical years in the lead up to New Zealand’s nuclear-free legislation in 1987.
“New Zealanders were clear – we did not want to be defended by nuclear weapons. We wanted our country to be a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering.”
Chronicles humanitarian voyage The book Eyes of Fire chronicles the humanitarian voyage by the Greenpeace flagship to the Marshall Islands to relocate 320 Rongelap Islanders who were suffering serious community health consequences from the US nuclear tests in the 1950s.
The author, Dr David Robie, founder of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology, was the only journalist on board the Rainbow Warrior in the weeks leading up to the bombing.
His book recounts the voyage and nuclear colonialism, and the transition to climate justice as the major challenge facing the Pacific, although the “Indo-Pacific” rivalries between the US, France and China mean that geopolitical tensions are recalling the Cold War era in the Pacific.
Dr Robie is also critical of Indonesian colonialism in the Melanesian region of the Pacific, arguing that a just-outcome for Jakarta-ruled West Papua and also the French territories of Kanaky New Caledonia and “French” Polynesia are vital for peace and stability in the region.
On June 22, American warplanes crossed into Iranian airspace and dropped 14 massive bombs.
The attack was not in response to a provocation; it came on the heels of illegal Israeli aggression that took the lives of more than 600 Iranians.
This was a return to something familiar and well-practised: an empire bombing innocents across the orientalist abstraction called “the Middle East”.
That night, US President Donald Trump, flanked by his vice-president and two state secretaries, told the world: “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace”.
There is something chilling about how bombs are baptised with the language of diplomacy and how destruction is dressed in the garments of stability. To call that peace is not merely a misnomer; it is a criminal distortion.
But what is peace in this world, if not submission to the West? And what is diplomacy, if not the insistence that the attacked plead with their attackers?
In the 12 days that Israel’s illegal assault on Iran lasted, images of Iranian children pulled from the wreckage remained absent from the front pages of Western media. In their place were lengthy features about Israelis hiding in fortified bunkers.
Victimhood serving narrative Western media, fluent in the language of erasure, broadcasts only the victimhood that serves the war narrative.
And that is not just in its coverage of Iran. For 20 months now, the people of Gaza have been starved and incinerated. By the official count, more than 55,000 lives have been taken; realistic estimates put the number at hundreds of thousands.
Every hospital in Gaza has been bombed. Most schools have been attacked and destroyed.
Leading human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have already declared that Israel is committing genocide, and yet, most Western media would not utter that word and would add elaborate caveats when someone does dare say it live on TV.
Presenters and editors would do anything but recognise Israel’s unending violence in an active voice.
Despite detailed evidence of war crimes, the Israeli military has faced no media censure, no criticism or scrutiny. Its generals hold war meetings near civilian buildings, and yet, there are no media cries of Israelis being used as “human shields”.
Israeli army and government officials are regularly caught lying or making genocidal statements, and yet, their words are still reported as “the truth”.
Bias over Palestinian deaths A recent study found that on the BBC, Israeli deaths received 33 times more coverage per fatality than Palestinian deaths, despite Palestinians dying at a rate of 34 to 1 compared with Israelis. Such bias is no exception, it is the rule for Western media.
Like Palestine, Iran is described in carefully chosen language. Iran is never framed as a nation, only as a regime. Iran is not a government, but a threat — not a people, but a problem.
The word “Islamic” is affixed to it like a slur in every report. This is instrumental in quietly signalling that Muslim resistance to Western domination must be extinguished.
Iran does not possess nuclear weapons; Israel and the United States do. And yet only Iran is cast as an existential threat to world order.
Because the problem is not what Iran holds, but what it refuses to surrender. It has survived coups, sanctions, assassinations, and sabotage. It has outlived every attempt to starve, coerce, or isolate it into submission.
It is a state that, despite the violence hurled at it, has not yet been broken.
And so the myth of the threat of weapons of mass destruction becomes indispensable. It is the same myth that was used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. For three decades, American headlines have whispered that Iran is just “weeks away” from the bomb, three decades of deadlines that never arrive, of predictions that never materialise.
Fear over false ‘nuclear threat’ But fear, even when unfounded, is useful. If you can keep people afraid, you can keep them quiet. Say “nuclear threat” often enough, and no one will think to ask about the children killed in the name of “keeping the world safe”.
This is the modus operandi of Western media: a media architecture not built to illuminate truth, but to manufacture permission for violence, to dress state aggression in technical language and animated graphics, to anaesthetise the public with euphemisms.
Time Magazine does not write about the crushed bones of innocents under the rubble in Tehran or Rafah, it writes about “The New Middle East” with a cover strikingly similar to the one it used to propagandise regime change in Iraq 22 years ago.
But this is not 2003. After decades of war, and livestreamed genocide, most Americans no longer buy into the old slogans and distortions. When Israel attacked Iran, a poll showed that only 16 percent of US respondents supported the US joining the war.
After Trump ordered the air strikes, another poll confirmed this resistance to manufactured consent: only 36 percent of respondents supported the move, and only 32 percent supported continuing the bombardment
The failure to manufacture consent for war with Iran reveals a profound shift in the American consciousness. Americans remember the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that left hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis dead and an entire region in flames. They remember the lies about weapons of mass destruction and democracy and the result: the thousands of American soldiers dead and the tens of thousands maimed.
They remember the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan after 20 years of war and the never-ending bloody entanglement in Iraq.
Low social justice spending At home, Americans are told there is no money for housing, healthcare, or education, but there is always money for bombs, for foreign occupations, for further militarisation. More than 700,000 Americans are homeless, more than 40 million live under the official poverty line and more than 27 million have no health insurance.
And yet, the US government maintains by far the highest defence budget in the world.
Americans know the precarity they face at home, but they are also increasingly aware of the impact US imperial adventurism has abroad. For 20 months now, they have watched a US-sponsored genocide broadcast live.
They have seen countless times on their phones bloodied Palestinian children pulled from rubble while mainstream media insists, this is Israeli “self-defence”.
The old alchemy of dehumanising victims to excuse their murder has lost its power. The digital age has shattered the monopoly on narrative that once made distant wars feel abstract and necessary. Americans are now increasingly refusing to be moved by the familiar war drumbeat.
The growing fractures in public consent have not gone unnoticed in Washington. Trump, ever the opportunist, understands that the American public has no appetite for another war.
‘Don’t drop bombs’ And so, on June 24, he took to social media to announce, “the ceasefire is in effect”, telling Israel to “DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” after the Israeli army continued to attack Iran.
Trump, like so many in the US and Israeli political elites, wants to call himself a peacemaker while waging war. To leaders like him, peace has come to mean something altogether different: the unimpeded freedom to commit genocide and other atrocities while the world watches on.
But they have failed to manufacture our consent. We know what peace is, and it does not come dressed in war. It is not dropped from the sky.
Peace can only be achieved where there is freedom. And no matter how many times they strike, the people remain, from Palestine to Iran — unbroken, unbought, and unwilling to kneel to terror.
Ahmad Ibsaisis a first-generation Palestinian American and law student who writes the newsletter State of Siege.
Advocacy groups in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) disrupted the US Department of Defense’s public meeting this week, which tackled proposed military training plans on Tinian, voicing strong opposition to further militarisation in the Marianas.
Members of the Marianas for Palestine, Prutehi Guahan and Commonwealth670 burst into the public hearing at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Garapan, chanting, “No build-up! No war!” and “Free, free, Palestine!”
As the chanting echoed throughout the venue on Wednesday, the DOD continued the proceedings to gather public input on its CNMI Joint Military Training proposal.
The US plan includes live-fire ranges, a base camp, communications infrastructure, and a biosecurity facility. Officials said feedback from Tinian, Saipan and Rota communities would help shape the final environmental impact statement.
Salam Castro Younis, of Chamorro-Palestinian descent, linked the military expansion to global conflicts in Gaza and Iran.
“More militarisation isn’t the answer,” Younis said. “We don’t need to lose more land. Diplomacy and peace are the way forward – not more bombs.”
Saipan-born Chamorro activist Anufat Pangelinan echoed Younis’s sentiment, citing research connecting climate change and environmental degradation to global militarisation.
‘No part of a war’ “We don’t want to be part of a war we don’t support,” he said. “The Marianas shouldn’t be a tip of the spear – we should be a bridge for peace.”
The groups argue that CJMT could make Tinian a target, increasing regional hostility.
“We want to sustain ourselves without the looming threat of war,” Pangelinan added.
In response to public concerns from the 2015 draft EIS, the DOD scaled back its plans, reducing live-fire ranges from 14 to 2 and eliminating artillery, rocket and mortar exercises.
Mark Hashimoto, executive director of the US Marine Corps Forces Pacific, emphasised the importance of community input.
“The proposal includes live-fire ranges, a base camp, communications infrastructure and a biosecurity facility,” he said.
Hashimoto noted that military lease lands on Tinian could support quarterly exercises involving up to 1000 personnel.
Economic impact concerns Tinian residents expressed concerns about economic impacts, job opportunities, noise, environmental effects and further strain on local infrastructure.
The DOD is expected to issue a Record of Decision by spring 2026, balancing public feedback with national security and environmental considerations.
In a joint statement earlier this week, the activist groups said the people of Guam and the CNMI were “burdened by processes not meant to serve their home’s interests”.
The groups were referring to public input requirements for military plans involving the use of Guam and CNMI lands and waters for war training and testing.
“As colonies of the United States, the Mariana Islands continue to be forced into conflicts not of our people’s making,” the statement read.
“ After decades of displacement and political disenfranchisement, our communities are now in subservient positions that force an obligation to extend our lands, airspace, and waters for use in America’s never-ending cycle of war.”
They also lamented the “intense environmental degradation” and “growing housing and food insecurity” resulting from military expansion.
“Like other Pacific Islanders, we are also overrepresented disproportionately in the military and in combat,” they said.
“Meanwhile, prices on imported food, fuel, and essential goods will continue to rise with inflation and war.”
The leaders of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea have signed a deal that may bring the autonomous region’s quest for independence closer.
Called “Melanesian Agreement”, the deal was developed earlier this month in 10 days of discussion at the New Zealand army base at Burnham, near Christchurch.
Both governments have agreed that the national Parliament in PNG has a key role in the decision over the push for independence.
They recognise that the Bougainville desire for independence is legitimate, as expressed in a 2019 independence referendum result, and that this is a unique situation in PNG.
That is the agreement’s attempt to overcome pressure from other parts of PNG that are also talking about autonomy.
The parties say they are committed to maintaining a close, peaceful and enduring relationship between PNG and Bougainville.
Both sides said that to bring referendum results to the national Parliament both governments would develop a sessional order, which was a the temporary adjustment of Parliament’s rules.
Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee They said that a Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee on Bougainville, which would provide information to MPs and the general public about the Bougainville conflict and resolution, is a vital body.
The parties said they would explore the joint creation of a Melanesian framework with agreed timelines, for a pathway forwards, that may form part of the Joint Consultations Report presented to the 11th National Parliament.
Once the Bipartisan Committee completes its work, the results of the referendum and the Joint Consultation Report would be taken to the Parliament.
The parties said they would accept the decision of the national Parliament, in the first instance, regarding the referendum results, and then commit to further consultations if needed, and this would be in an agreed timeline.
In the meantime, institutional strengthening and institutional building within Bougainville would continue.
To ensure progress is made and political commitment is sustained, the monitoring of this Melanesian Agreement could include an international component, a Parliamentary component, and the Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee, all with UN support.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The leaders of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea have signed a deal that may bring the autonomous region’s quest for independence closer.
Called “Melanesian Agreement”, the deal was developed earlier this month in 10 days of discussion at the New Zealand army base at Burnham, near Christchurch.
Both governments have agreed that the national Parliament in PNG has a key role in the decision over the push for independence.
They recognise that the Bougainville desire for independence is legitimate, as expressed in a 2019 independence referendum result, and that this is a unique situation in PNG.
That is the agreement’s attempt to overcome pressure from other parts of PNG that are also talking about autonomy.
The parties say they are committed to maintaining a close, peaceful and enduring relationship between PNG and Bougainville.
Both sides said that to bring referendum results to the national Parliament both governments would develop a sessional order, which was a the temporary adjustment of Parliament’s rules.
Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee They said that a Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee on Bougainville, which would provide information to MPs and the general public about the Bougainville conflict and resolution, is a vital body.
The parties said they would explore the joint creation of a Melanesian framework with agreed timelines, for a pathway forwards, that may form part of the Joint Consultations Report presented to the 11th National Parliament.
Once the Bipartisan Committee completes its work, the results of the referendum and the Joint Consultation Report would be taken to the Parliament.
The parties said they would accept the decision of the national Parliament, in the first instance, regarding the referendum results, and then commit to further consultations if needed, and this would be in an agreed timeline.
In the meantime, institutional strengthening and institutional building within Bougainville would continue.
To ensure progress is made and political commitment is sustained, the monitoring of this Melanesian Agreement could include an international component, a Parliamentary component, and the Bipartisan Parliamentary Committee, all with UN support.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Setting aside any thoughts I may have about theocratic rulers (whether they be in Tel Aviv or Tehran), I am personally glad that Iran was able to hold out against the US-Israeli attacks this month.
The ceasefire, however, will only be a pause in the long-running campaign to destabilise, weaken and isolate Iran. Regime change or pariah status are both acceptable outcomes for the US-Israeli dyad.
The good news for my region is that Iran’s resilience pushes back what could be a looming calamity: the US pivot to Asia and a heightened risk of a war on China.
There are three major pillars to the Eurasian order that is going through a slow, painful and violent birth. Iran is the weakest. If Iran falls, war in our region — intended or unintended – becomes vastly more likely.
Mainstream New Zealanders and Australians suffer from an understandable complacency: war is what happens to other, mainly darker people or Slavs.
“Tomorrow”, people in this part of the world naively think, “will always be like yesterday”.
That could change, particularly for the Australians, in the kind of unfamiliar flash-boom Israelis experienced this month following their attack on Iran. And here’s why.
US chooses war to re-shape Middle East Back in 2001, as many will recall, retired General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe, was visiting buddies in the Pentagon. He learnt something he wasn’t supposed to: the Bush administration had made plans in the febrile post 9/11 environment to attack seven Muslim countries.
In the firing line were: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, Gaddafi’s Libya, Somalia, Sudan and the biggest prize of all — the Islamic Republic of Iran.
One would have to say that the project, pursued by successive presidents, both Democrat and Republican, has been a great success — if you discount the fact that a couple of million human beings, most of them civilians, many of them women and children, nearly all of them innocents, were slaughtered, starved to death or otherwise disposed of.
With the exception of Iran, those countries have endured chaos and civil strife for long painful years. A triumph of American bomb-based statecraft.
Now — with Muammar Gaddafi raped and murdered (“We came, we saw, he died”, Hillary Clinton chuckled on camera the same day), Saddam Hussein hanged, Hezbollah decapitated, Assad in Moscow, the genocide in full swing in Palestine — the US and Israel were finally able to turn their guns — or, rather, bombs — on the great prize: Iran.
Iran’s missiles have checked US-Israel for time being Things did not go to plan. Former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman pointed out this week that for the first time Israel got a taste of the medicine it likes to dispense to its neighbours.
Iran’s missiles successfully turned the much-vaunted Iron Dome into an Iron Sieve and, perhaps momentarily, has achieved deterrence. If Iran falls, the US will be able to do what Barack Obama and Joe Biden only salivated over — a serious pivot to Asia.
Could great power rivalry turn Asia-Pacific into powderkeg? For us in Asia-Pacific a major US pivot to Asia will mean soaring defence budgets to support militarisation, aggressive containment of China, provocative naval deployments, more sanctions, muscling smaller states, increased numbers of bases, new missile systems, info wars, threats and the ratcheting up rhetoric — all of which will bring us ever-closer to the powderkeg.
Sounds utterly mad? Sounds devoid of rationality? Lacking commonsense? Welcome to our world — bellum Americanum — as we gormlessly march flame in hand towards the tinderbox. War is not written in the stars, we can change tack and rediscover diplomacy, restraint, and peaceful coexistence. Or is that too much to ask?
Back in the days of George W Bush, radical American thinkers like Robert Kagan, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld created the Project for a New American Century and developed the policy, adopted by succeeding presidents, that promotes “the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of US military forces”.
It reconfirmed the neoconservative American dogma that no power should be allowed to rise in any region to become a regional hegemon; anything and everything necessary should be done to ensure continued American primacy, including the resort to war.
What has changed since those days are two crucial, epoch-making events: the re-emergence of Russia as a great power, albeit the weakest of the three, and the emergence of China as a genuine peer competitor to the USA. Professor John Mearsheimer’s insights are well worth studying on this topic.
The three pillars of multipolarity A new world order really is being born. As geopolitical thinkers like Professor Glenn Diesen point out, it will, if it is not killed in the cradle, replace the US unipolar world order that has existed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Many countries are involved in its birthing, including major players like India and Brazil and all the countries that are part of BRICS. Three countries, however, are central to the project: Iran, Russia and, most importantly, China. All three are in the crosshairs of the Western empire.
If Iran, Russia and China survive as independent entities, they will partially fulfill Halford MacKinder’s early 20th century heartland theory that whoever dominates Eurasia will rule the world. I don’t think MacKinder, however, foresaw cooperative multipolarity on the Eurasian landmass — which is one of the goals of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) – as an option.
That, increasingly, appears to be the most likely trajectory with multiple powerful states that will not accept domination, be that from China or the US. That alone should give us cause for hope.
Drunk on power since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has launched war after war and brought us to the current abandonment of economic sanity (the sanctions-and-tariff global pandemic) and diplomatic normalcy (kill any peace negotiators you see) — and an anything-goes foreign policy (including massive crimes against humanity).
We have also reached — thanks in large part to these same policies — what a former US national security advisor warned must be avoided at all costs. Back in the 1990s, Zbigniew Brzezinski said, “The most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran.”
Belligerent and devoid of sound strategy, the Biden and Trump administrations have achieved just that.
Can Asia-Pacific avoid being dragged into an American war on China? Turning to our region, New Zealand and Australia’s governments cleave to yesterday: a white-dominated world led by the USA. We have shown ourselves indifferent to massacres, ethnic cleansing and wars of aggression launched by our team.
To avoid war — or a permanent fear of looming war — in our own backyards, we need to encourage sanity and diplomacy; we need to stay close to the US but step away from the military alliances they are forming, such as AUKUS which is aimed squarely at China.
Above all, our defence and foreign affairs elites need to grow new neural pathways and start to think with vision and not place ourselves on the losing side of history. Independent foreign policy settings based around peace, defence not aggression, diplomacy not militarisation, would take us in the right direction.
Personally I look forward to the day the US and its increasingly belligerent vassals are pushed back into the ranks of ordinary humanity. I fear the US far more than I do China.
Despite the reflexive adherence to the US that our leaders are stuck on, we should not, if we value our lives and our cultures, allow ourselves to be part of this mad, doomed project.
The US empire is heading into a blood-drenched sunset; their project will fail and the 500-year empire of the White West will end — starting and finishing with genocide.
Every day I atheistically pray that leaders or a movement will emerge to guide our antipodean countries out of the clutches of a violent and increasingly incoherent USA.
America is not our friend. China is not our enemy. Tomorrow gives birth to a world that we should look forward to and do the little we can to help shape.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
Israeli soldiers have said that they were ordered to open fire at unarmed Palestinian civilians desperately seeking aid at designated distribution sites in Gaza, a report in the Ha’aretz newspaper has revealed.
The report came as 70 Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip — mostly at aid sites belonging to the widely condemned Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) — in the last 24 hours.
Soldiers said that instead of using crowd control measures, they shot at crowds of civilians to prevent them from approaching certain areas.
One soldier, who was not named in the report, described the distribution site as a “killing field,” adding that “where I was, between one and five people were killed every day”.
The soldier said that they targeted the crowds as if they were “an attacking force,” instead of using other non-lethal weapons to organise and disperse crowds.
“We communicate with them through fire,” he continued, noting that heavy machine guns, grenade launchers and mortars were used on people, including the elderly, women and children.
The increased attacks, particularly those targeting aid-seekers, come as Gaza’s government Media Office said at least 549 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces while trying to get their hands on emergency aid in the last four weeks.
‘Evil of moral army’ Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara described what was happening in Gaza was more than the genocode.
“It is the evil of the most moral army in the world,” he said.
Israeli forces continued their attacks across the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing at least three Palestinians in an attack on Khan Younis, in the south, while also heavily bombing residential buildings east of Jabalia in the north.
Medical sources also said a Palestinian fisherman was killed, and others wounded, by Israeli naval gunfire off the al-Shati refugee camp, while he was working.
Gaza’s Ministry of Interior responded to the attacks with a statement, accusing Israel of “seeking to spread chaos and destabilise the Gaza Strip”.
Malnutrition soars Gazans have continued to desperately seek aid provided by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, despite the hundreds of people killed at its sites, as malnutrition soars in the territory.
Two infants have died this week due to malnutrition and the ongoing blockade on Gaza.
“It’s a killing field” claims a headline in Ha’aretz newspaper. Image: Ha’aretz screenshot APR
For weeks now, health officials in the enclave have raised the alarm over the critical shortage of baby formula, but aid continued to be obstructed.
The two infants were buried on Thursday evening, after they were pronounced dead at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Medical staff said the cause of death was a lack of basic nutrition and access to essential medical care.
One of the infants, identified as Nidal, was only five months old, while the other, Kinda, was only 10 days old.
Mohammed al-Hams, Kinda’s father, told local media that children are dying due to severe malnutrition, sarcastically labelling them “the achievements of Netanyahu and his war”.
“Not a second goes by without a funeral prayer being held in the Gaza Strip,” he continued.
Malnutrition ‘catastrophic’ On Wednesday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said the humanitarian situation in Gaza had reached “catastrophic” levels, noting that there had been a sharp increase in malnutrition among children, particularly in infants.
According to Palestinian official figures, at least 242 people have died in Gaza due to food and medicine shortages, with the majority of them being elderly and children.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,700 Palestinians since October 2023. The war has levelled entire neighbourhoods, and has been called a genocide by leading rights groups, including Amnesty International.
In Auckland last night, visiting Palestinian journalist, author, academic and community advocate Dr Yousef Aljamal spoke about “The unheard voices of Palestinian child prisoners”.
Dr Aljamal, who edited If I Must Die, a compilation of poetry and prose by Refaat Alareer, the poet who was assassinated by the Israelis in 6 December 2023, also described the humanitarian crisis as a “catastrophe” and called for urgent sanctions and political pressure on Israel by governments, including New Zealand.
Soldiers admit Israeli army is targeting aid seekers Video: Al Jazeera
The former head of Human Rights Watch — and son of a Holocaust survivor — says Israel’s military campaign in Gaza will likely meet the legal definition of genocide, citing large-scale killings, the targeting of civilians, and the words of senior Israeli officials.
Speaking on 30′ with Guyon Espiner, Ken Roth agreed Hamas committed “blatant war crimes” in its attack on Israel on October 7 last year, which included the abduction and murder of civilians.
But he said it was a “basic rule” that war crimes by one side do not justify war crimes by the other.
There was indisputable evidence Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza and might also be pursuing tactics that fit the international legal standard for genocide, Roth said.
30′ with Guyon Espiner Kenneth Roth Video: RNZ
“The acts are there — mass killing, destruction of life-sustaining conditions. And there are statements from senior officials that point clearly to intent,” Roth said.
He cited comments immediately after the October 7 attack by Hamas from Israel’s former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who referred to Gazans as “human animals”.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also said “an entire nation” was responsible for the attack and the notion of “unaware, uninvolved civilians is not true,” referring to the Palestinean people. Herzog subsequently said his words were taken out of context during a case at the International Court of Justice.
The accusation of genocide is hotly contested. Israel says it is fighting a war of self-defence against Hamas after it killed 1200 people, mostly civilians. It claims it adheres to international law and does its best to protect civilians.
It blames Hamas for embedding itself in civilian areas.
But Roth believes a ruling may ultimately come from the International Court of Justice, especially if a forthcoming judgment on Myanmar sets a precedent.
“It’s very similar to what Myanmar did with the Rohingya,” he said. “Kill about 30,000 to send 730,000 fleeing. It’s not just about mass death. It’s about creating conditions where life becomes impossible.”
‘Apartheid’ alleged in Israel’s West Bank Roth has been described as the ‘Godfather of Human Rights’, and is credited with vastly expanding the influence of the Human Rights Watch group during a 29-year tenure in charge of the organisation.
In the full interview with Guyon Espiner, Roth defended the group’s 2021 report that accused Israel of enforcing a system of apartheid in the occupied West Bank.
“This was not a historical analogy,” he said, implying it was a mistake to compare it with South Africa’s former apartheid regime.
“It was a legal analysis. We used the UN Convention against Apartheid and the Rome Statute, and laid out over 200 pages of evidence.”
Kenneth Roth appears via remote link in studio for an interview on season 3 of 30′ with Guyon Espiner. Image: RNZ
He said the Israeli government was unable to offer a factual rebuttal.
“They called us biased, antisemitic — the usual. But they didn’t contest the facts.”
The ‘cheapening’ of antisemitism charges Roth, who is Jewish and the son of a Holocaust refugee, said it was disturbing to be accused of antisemitism for criticising a government.
“There is a real rise in antisemitism around the world. But when the term is used to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel, it cheapens the concept, and that ultimately harms Jews everywhere.”
Roth said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had long opposed a two-state solution and was now pursuing a status quo that amounted to permanent subjugation of Palestinians, a situation human rights groups say is illegal.
“The only acceptable outcome is two states, living side by side. Anything else is apartheid, or worse,” Roth said.
While the international legal process around charges of genocide may take years, Roth is convinced the current actions in Gaza will not be forgotten.
“This is not just about war,” he said. “It’s about the deliberate use of starvation, displacement and mass killing to achieve political goals. And the law is very clear — that’s a crime.”
Roth’s criticism of Israel saw him initially denied a fellowship at Harvard University in 2023. The decision was widely seen as politically motivated, and was later reversed after public and academic backlash.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Australian-Lebanese journalist and commentator Antoinette Lattouf’s unfair dismissal case win against the public broadcaster ABC in the Federal Court on Wednesday is a victory for all those who seek to tell the truth.
It is a breath of fresh air, after almost two years of lies and uncritical reporting about Israel’s genocide from the ABC and commercial media companies.
Lattouf was unfairly sacked in December 2023 for posting on her social media a Human Rights Watch report that detailed Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
Justice Darryl Rangiah found that Lattouf had been sacked for her political opinions, given no opportunity to respond to misconduct allegations and that the ABC breached its Enterprise Agreement and section 772 of the Fair Work Act.
The Federal Court also found that ABC executives — then-chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor, editor-in-chief David Anderson and board chair Ita Buttrose — had sacked Lattouf in response to a pro-Israel lobby pressure campaign.
The coordinated email campaign from Zionist groups accused Lattouf of being “antisemitic” for condemning Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
The judge awarded Lattouf A$70,000 in damages, based on findings that her sacking caused “great distress”, and more than $1 million in legal fees.
‘No Lebanese’ claim Lattouf had alleged that her race or ethnicity had played a part in her sacking, which the ABC had initially responded to by claiming there was no such thing as a “Lebanese, Arab or Middle Eastern Race”, before backtracking.
The court found that this did not play a part in the decision to sack Lattouf.
The ABC’s own reporting of the ruling said “the ABC has damaged its reputation, and public perceptions around its ideals, integrity and independence”.
Outside the court, Lattouf said: “It is now June 2025 and Palestinian children are still being starved. We see their images every day, emaciated, skeletal, scavenging through the rubble for scraps.
“This unspeakable suffering is not accidental, it is engineered. Deliberately starving and killing children is a war crime.
“Today, the court has found that punishing someone for sharing facts about these war crimes is also illegal. I was punished for my political opinion.”
Palestine solidarity groups and democratic rights supporters have celebrated Lattouf’s victory.
An ‘eternal shame’ Palestine Action Group Sydney said: “It is to the eternal shame of our national broadcaster that it sacked a journalist because she opposed the genocide in Gaza.
“There should be a full inquiry into the systematic pro-Israel bias at the ABC, which for 21 months has acted as a propaganda wing of the Israeli military.”
Racial justice organisation Democracy in Colour said the ruling “exposes the systematic silencing taking place in Australian media institutions in regards to Palestine”.
Democracy in Colour chairperson Jamal Hakim said Lattouf was punished for “speaking truth to power”.
“When the ABC capitulated to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby . . . they didn’t just betray Antoinette — they betrayed their own editorial standards and the Australian public who deserve to know the truth about Israel’s human rights abuses.”
Noura Mansour, national director for Democracy in Colour, said the ABC had been “consistently shutting down valid criticism of the state of Israel” and suppressing the voices of people of colour and Palestinians. She said the national broadcaster had “worked to manufacture consent for the Israeli-US backed genocide”.
Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance chief executive Erin Madeley said: “Instead of defending its journalists, ABC management chose to appease powerful voices . . . they failed in their duty to push back against outside interference, racism and bullying.”
Win for ‘journalistic integrity’ Australian Greens leader Larissa Waters said the ruling was a win for “journalistic integrity and freedom of speech” and that “no one should be punished for speaking out about Gaza”.
Green Left editor Pip Hinman said the ruling was an “important victory for those who stand on the side of truth and justice”.
“It is more important than ever in an increasingly polarised world that journalists speak up and report the truth without fear of reprisal from the rich and powerful.
“Traditional and new media have the reach to shape public opinion. They have had a clear pro-Israel bias, despite international human rights agencies providing horrific data on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people around Australia continue to call for an end to the genocide in Gaza in protests every week. But the ABC and corporate media have largely ignored this movement of people from all walks of life. Disturbingly, the corporate media has gone along with some political leaders who claim this anti-war movement is antisemitic.
“As thousands continue to march every week for an end to the genocide in Gaza, the ABC and corporate media organisations have continued to push the lie that the Palestine solidarity movement, and indeed any criticism of Israel, is antisemitic.
“Green Left also hails those courageous mostly young journalists in Gaza, some 200 of whom have been killed by Israel since October 2023.
“Their livestreaming of Israel’s genocide cut through corporate media and political leaders’ lies and today makes it even harder for them to whitewash Israel’s crimes and Western complicity.
“Green Left congratulates Lattouf on her victory. We are proud to stand with the movement for justice and peace in Palestine, which played a part in her victory against the ABC management’s bias.”
Australian-Lebanese journalist and commentator Antoinette Lattouf’s unfair dismissal case win against the public broadcaster ABC in the Federal Court on Wednesday is a victory for all those who seek to tell the truth.
It is a breath of fresh air, after almost two years of lies and uncritical reporting about Israel’s genocide from the ABC and commercial media companies.
Lattouf was unfairly sacked in December 2023 for posting on her social media a Human Rights Watch report that detailed Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
Justice Darryl Rangiah found that Lattouf had been sacked for her political opinions, given no opportunity to respond to misconduct allegations and that the ABC breached its Enterprise Agreement and section 772 of the Fair Work Act.
The Federal Court also found that ABC executives — then-chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor, editor-in-chief David Anderson and board chair Ita Buttrose — had sacked Lattouf in response to a pro-Israel lobby pressure campaign.
The coordinated email campaign from Zionist groups accused Lattouf of being “antisemitic” for condemning Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
The judge awarded Lattouf A$70,000 in damages, based on findings that her sacking caused “great distress”, and more than $1 million in legal fees.
‘No Lebanese’ claim Lattouf had alleged that her race or ethnicity had played a part in her sacking, which the ABC had initially responded to by claiming there was no such thing as a “Lebanese, Arab or Middle Eastern Race”, before backtracking.
The court found that this did not play a part in the decision to sack Lattouf.
The ABC’s own reporting of the ruling said “the ABC has damaged its reputation, and public perceptions around its ideals, integrity and independence”.
Outside the court, Lattouf said: “It is now June 2025 and Palestinian children are still being starved. We see their images every day, emaciated, skeletal, scavenging through the rubble for scraps.
“This unspeakable suffering is not accidental, it is engineered. Deliberately starving and killing children is a war crime.
“Today, the court has found that punishing someone for sharing facts about these war crimes is also illegal. I was punished for my political opinion.”
Palestine solidarity groups and democratic rights supporters have celebrated Lattouf’s victory.
An ‘eternal shame’ Palestine Action Group Sydney said: “It is to the eternal shame of our national broadcaster that it sacked a journalist because she opposed the genocide in Gaza.
“There should be a full inquiry into the systematic pro-Israel bias at the ABC, which for 21 months has acted as a propaganda wing of the Israeli military.”
Racial justice organisation Democracy in Colour said the ruling “exposes the systematic silencing taking place in Australian media institutions in regards to Palestine”.
Democracy in Colour chairperson Jamal Hakim said Lattouf was punished for “speaking truth to power”.
“When the ABC capitulated to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby . . . they didn’t just betray Antoinette — they betrayed their own editorial standards and the Australian public who deserve to know the truth about Israel’s human rights abuses.”
Noura Mansour, national director for Democracy in Colour, said the ABC had been “consistently shutting down valid criticism of the state of Israel” and suppressing the voices of people of colour and Palestinians. She said the national broadcaster had “worked to manufacture consent for the Israeli-US backed genocide”.
Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance chief executive Erin Madeley said: “Instead of defending its journalists, ABC management chose to appease powerful voices . . . they failed in their duty to push back against outside interference, racism and bullying.”
Win for ‘journalistic integrity’ Australian Greens leader Larissa Waters said the ruling was a win for “journalistic integrity and freedom of speech” and that “no one should be punished for speaking out about Gaza”.
Green Left editor Pip Hinman said the ruling was an “important victory for those who stand on the side of truth and justice”.
“It is more important than ever in an increasingly polarised world that journalists speak up and report the truth without fear of reprisal from the rich and powerful.
“Traditional and new media have the reach to shape public opinion. They have had a clear pro-Israel bias, despite international human rights agencies providing horrific data on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people around Australia continue to call for an end to the genocide in Gaza in protests every week. But the ABC and corporate media have largely ignored this movement of people from all walks of life. Disturbingly, the corporate media has gone along with some political leaders who claim this anti-war movement is antisemitic.
“As thousands continue to march every week for an end to the genocide in Gaza, the ABC and corporate media organisations have continued to push the lie that the Palestine solidarity movement, and indeed any criticism of Israel, is antisemitic.
“Green Left also hails those courageous mostly young journalists in Gaza, some 200 of whom have been killed by Israel since October 2023.
“Their livestreaming of Israel’s genocide cut through corporate media and political leaders’ lies and today makes it even harder for them to whitewash Israel’s crimes and Western complicity.
“Green Left congratulates Lattouf on her victory. We are proud to stand with the movement for justice and peace in Palestine, which played a part in her victory against the ABC management’s bias.”
A West Papuan independence movement leader has warned the Melanesian Spearhead Group after its 23rd leaders summit in Suva, Fiji, to not give in to a “neocolonial trade in betrayal and abandonment” over West Papua.
While endorsing and acknowledging the “unconditional support” of Melanesian people to the West Papuan cause for decolonisation, OPM chair and commander Jeffrey P Bomanak spoke against “surrendering” to Indonesia which was carrying out a policy of “bank cheque diplomacy” in a bid to destroy solidarity.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka took over the chairmanship of the MSG this week from his Vanuatu counterpart Jotham Napat and vowed to build on the hard work and success that had been laid before it.
He said he would not take the responsibility of chairmanship lightly, especially as they were confronted with an increasingly fragmented global landscape that demanded more from them.
PNG Prime Minister James Marape called on MSG member states to put West Papua and Kanaky New Caledonia back on the agenda for full MSG membership.
Marape said that while high-level dialogue with Indonesia over West Papua and France about New Caledonia must continue, it was culturally “un-Melanesian” not to give them a seat at the table.
West Papua currently holds observer status in the MSG, which includes Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji — and Indonesia as an associate member.
PNG ‘subtle shift’ PNG recognises the West Papuan region as five provinces of Indonesia, making Marape’s remarks in Suva a “subtle shift that may unsettle Jakarta”, reports Gorethy Kenneth in the PNG Post-Courier.
West Papuans have waged a long-standing Melanesian struggle for independence from Indonesia since 1969.
The MSG resolved to send separate letters of concern to the French and Indonesian presidents.
The OPM letter warning the MSG. Image: Screenshot APR
In a statement, Bomanak thanked the Melanesians of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) of Kanaky New Caledonia for “unconditionally support[ing] your West Papuan brothers and sisters, subjected to dispossession, enslavement, genocide, ethnocide, infanticide, and ethnic cleansing, [as] the noblest of acts.”
“We will never forget these Melanesian brothers and sisters who remain faithfully loyal to our cultural identity no matter how many decades is our war of liberation and no matter how many bags of gold and silver Indonesia offers for the betrayal of ancestral kinship.
“When the late [Vanuatu Prime Minister] Father Walter Lini declared, ‘Melanesia is not free unless West Papua is free,”’ he was setting the benchmark for leadership and loyalty across the entire group of Melanesian nations.
“Father Lini was not talking about a timeframe of five months, or five years, or five decades.
“Father Lini was talking about an illegal invasion and military occupation of West Papua by a barbaric nation wanting West Papua’s gold and forests and willing to exterminate all of us for this wealth.
‘Noble declaration’ “That this noble declaration of kinship and loyalty now has a commercial value that can be bought and sold like a commodity by those without Father Lini’s courage and leadership, and betrayed for cheap materialism, is an act of historic infamy that will be recorded by Melanesian historians and taught in all our nations’ universities long after West Papua is liberated.”
OPM leader Jeffrey Bomanak . . . his letter warns against surrendering to Indonesian control. Image: OPM
Bomanak was condemning the decision of the MSG to regard the “West Papua problem” as an internal issue for Indonesia.
“The illegal occupation of West Papua and the genocide of West Papuans is not an internal issue to be solved by the barbaric occupier.
“Indonesia’s position as an associate member of MSG is a form of colonial corruption of the Melanesian people.
“We will continue to fight without MSG because the struggle for independence and sovereignty is our fundamental right of the Papuan people’s granted by God.
“Every member of MSG can recommend to the United Nations that West Papua deserves the same right of liberation and nation-state sovereignty that was achieved without compromise by Timor-Leste — the other nation illegally invaded by Indonesia and also subjected to genocide.”
Bomanak said the MSG’s remarks stood in stark contrast to Father Lini’s solidarity with West Papua and were “tantamount to sharing in the destruction of West Papua”.
‘Blood money’ It was also collaborating in the “extermination of West Papuans for economic benefit, for Batik Largesse. Blood money!”
The Papua ‘problem’ was not a human rights problem but a problem of the Papuan people’s political right for independence and sovereignty based on international law and the right to self-determination.
It was an international problem that had not been resolved.
“In fact, to say it is simply a ‘problem’ ignores the fate of the genocide of 500,000 victims.”
Bomanak said MSG leaders should make clear recommendations to the Indonesian government to resolve the “Papua problem” at the international level based on UN procedures and involving the demilitarisation of West Papua with all Indonesian defence and security forces “leaving the land they invaded and unlawfully occupied.”
Indonesia’s position as an associate member in the MSG was a systematic new colonialisation by Indonesia in the home of the Melanesian people.
Indonesia well understood the weaknesses of each Melanesian leader and “carries out bank cheque diplomacy accordingly to destroy the solidarity so profoundly declared by the late Father Walter Lini.”
“No surrender!”
MSG leaders in Suva . . . Jeremy Manele (Solomon Islands, from left), James Marape (PNG), Sitiveni Rabuka (Fiji), Jotham Napat (Vanuatu), and Roch Wamytan (FLNKS spokesperson). Image: PNG Post-Courier
BEARING WITNESS:By Cole Martin in occupied Bethlehem
Kia ora koutou,
I’m a Kiwi journo in occupied Bethlehem, here’s a brief summary of today’s events across the Palestinian and Israeli territories from on the ground.
At least 79 killed and 391 injured by Israeli forces in Gaza over the last 24 hours, including 33 killed and 267 injured while seeking aid at the US-Israel “humanitarian” centres.
*
Three killed and 7 injured by settler pogrom on the town of Kafr Malik, northeast of Ramallah; setting fire to houses and cars, and protected by soldiers. Israeli forces shot and killed 15-year-old Rayan Houshia west of Jenin as they retreated from resistance fighters, after using a civilian home as military barracks; also invading several towns across the West Bank, firing teargas into al-Fawar refugee camp south of Hebron, sound-bombs near the Jenin Grand Mosque in the north, and arresting several Palestinians.
Al Quds/Jerusalem’s old city faced low visitor numbers even after restrictions were lifted by the Israeli occupation. Jerusalem Governate reported 623 homes and facilities demolished by Israel since October 2023.
*
Palestinian political prisoner Amar Yasser Al-Amour was released after 2.5 years without charge or trial in Israeli prisons. Thousands remain detained illegally in this way. Another freed prisoner Fares Bassam Hanani mourned his mother who passed away while he was imprisoned. Mohammad al-Ghushi, also freed, was taken to hospital to have his kidney removed due to torture and medical neglect he faced in Israeli prisons.
*
The unexpected ceasefire between Israel, America, and Iran appears to be holding for now. Iranian officials say the US “torpedoed diplomacy” and have passed a bill to halt cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA.
Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
French President Emmanuel Macron has sent a formal invitation to “all New Caledonia stakeholders” for talks in Paris on the French Pacific territory’s political and economic future to be held on July 2.
The confirmation came on Thursday in the form of a letter sent individually to an undisclosed list of recipients and June 24.
The talks follow a series of roundtables fostered earlier this year by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls.
But the latest talks, held in New Caledonia under a so-called “conclave” format, stalled on May 8.
This was mainly because several main components of the pro-France (anti-independence) parties said the draft agreement proposed by Valls was tantamount to a form of independence, which they reject.
The project implied that New Caledonia’s future political status vis-à-vis France could be an associated independence “within France” with a transfer of key powers (justice, defence, law and order, foreign affairs, currency ), a dual New Caledonia-France citizenship and an international standing.
Instead, the pro-France Rassemblement-LR and Loyalistes suggested another project of “internal federalism” which would give more powers (including on tax matters) to each of the three provinces, a notion often criticised as a de facto partition of New Caledonia.
Local elections issue In May 2024, on the sensitive issue of eligibility at local elections, deadly riots broke out in New Caledonia, resulting in 14 deaths and more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.8 billion) in damage.
In his letter, Macron writes that although Valls “managed to restore dialogue…this did not allow reaching an agreement on (New Caledonia’s) institutional future”.
“This is why I decided to host, under my presidency, a summit dedicated to New Caledonia and associating the whole of the territory’s stakeholders”.
Macron also wrote that “beyond institutional topics, I wish that our exchanges can also touch on (New Caledonia’s) economic and societal issues”.
Macron made earlier announcements, including on 10 June 2025, on the margins of the recent UNOC Oceans Summit in Nice (France), when he dedicated a significant part of his speech to Pacific leaders attending a “Pacific-France” summit to the situation in New Caledonia.
“Our exchanges will last as long as it takes so that the heavy topics . . . can be dealt with with all the seriousness they deserve”.
Macron also points out that after New Caledonia’s “crisis” broke out on 13 May 2024, “the tension was too high to allow for a dialogue between all the components of New Caledonia’s society”.
Letter sent by French President Emmanuel Macron to New Caledonia’s stakeholders for Paris talks on 2 July 2025. Image: RNZ Pacific
A new deal? The main political objective of the talks remains to find a comprehensive agreement between all local political stakeholders, in order to arrive at a new agreement that would define the French Pacific territory’s political future and status.
This would then allow to replace the 27-year-old Nouméa Accord, signed in 1998.
That pact put a heavy focus on the notions of “living together” and “common destiny” for New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanaks and all of the other components of its ethnically and culturally diverse society.
It also envisaged an economic “rebalancing” between the Northern and Islands provinces and the more affluent Southern province, where the capital Nouméa is located.
The Nouméa Accord also contained provisions to hold three referendums on self-determination.
The three polls took place in 2018, 2020 and 2021, all of those resulting in a majority of people rejecting independence.
But the last referendum, in December 2021, was largely boycotted by the pro-independence movement.
‘Examine the situation’ According to the Nouméa Accord, after the referendums, political stakeholders were to “examine the situation thus created”, Macron recalled.
But despite several attempts, including under previous governments, to promote political talks, the situation has remained deadlocked and increasingly polarised between the pro-independence and the pro-France camps.
A few days after the May 2024 riots, Macron made a trip to New Caledonia, calling for the situation to be appeased so that talks could resume.
In his June 10 speech to Pacific leaders, Macron also mentioned a “new project” and in relation to the past referendums process, pledged “not to make the same mistakes again”.
He said he believed the referendum, as an instrument, was not necessarily adapted to Melanesian and Kanak cultures.
In practice, the Paris “summit” would also involve French minister for Overseas Manuel Valls.
The list of invited participants would include all parties, pro-independence and pro-France, represented at New Caledonia’s Congress (the local parliament).
But it would also include a number of economic stakeholders, as well as a delegation of Mayors of New Caledonia, as well as representatives of the civil society and NGOs.
Talks could also come in several formats, with the political side being treated separately.
The pro-independence platform FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) has to decide at the weekend whether it will take part in the Paris talks.
FLNKS leader Christian Téin . . . still facing charges over last year’s riots, but released from prison in France providing he does not return to New Caledonia and checks in with investigating judges. Image: Opinion International
Will Christian Téin take part? During a whirlwind visit to New Caledonia in June 2024, Macron met Christian Téin, the leader of a pro-independence CCAT (Field Action Coordination Cell), created by Union Calédonienne (UC).
Téin was arrested and jailed in mainland France.
In August 2024, while in custody in the Mulhouse prison (northeastern France), he was elected in absentia as president of a UC-dominated FLNKS.
Even though he still faces charges for allegedly being one of the masterminds of the May 2024 riots, Téin was released from jail on June 12 on condition that he does not travel to New Caledonia and reports regularly to French judges.
On the pro-France side, Téin’s release triggered mixed angry reactions.
Other pro-France hard-line components said the Kanak leader’s participation in the Paris talks was simply “unthinkable”.
Pro-independence Tjibaou said Téin’s release was “a sign of appeasement”, but that his participation was probably subject to “conditions”.
“But I’m not the one who makes the invitations,” he told public broadcaster NC la 1ère on 15 June 2025.
FLNKS spokesman Dominique Fochi said in a release Téin’s participation in the talks was earlier declared a prerequisite.
“Now our FLNKS president has been released. He’s the FLNKS boss and we are awaiting his instructions,” Fochi said.
At former roundtables earlier this year, the FLNKS delegation was headed by Union Calédonienne (UC, the main and dominating component of the FLNKS) president Emmanuel Tjibaou.
‘Concluding the decolonisation process’, says Valls In a press conference on Tuesday in Paris, Valls elaborated some more on the upcoming Paris talks.
“Obviously there will be a sequence of political negotiations which I will lead with all of New Caledonia’s players, that is all groups represented at the Congress. But there will also be an economic and social sequence with economic, social and societal players who will be invited”, Valls said.
During question time at the French National Assembly in Paris on 3 June 2025, Valls said he remained confident that it was “still possible” to reach an agreement and to “reconcile” the “contradictory aspirations” of the pro-independence and pro-France camps.
During the same sitting, pro-France New Caledonia MP Nicolas Metzdorf decried what he termed “France’s lack of ambition” and his camp’s feeling of being “let down”.
The other MP for New Caledonia’s, pro-independence Emmanuel Tjibaou, also took the floor to call on France to “close the colonial chapter” and that France has to “take its part in the conclusion of the emancipation process” of New Caledonia.
“With the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, and the political forces, we will make offers, while concluding the decolonisation process, the self-determination process, while respecting New Caledonians’ words and at the same time not forgetting history, and the past that have led to the disaster of the 1980s and the catastrophe of May 2024,” he said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A Fiji-based advocacy group has condemned the participation of Indonesia in the Melanesian Spearhead Group which is meeting in Suva this week, saying it is a “profound disgrace” that the Indonesian Embassy continues to “operate freely” within the the MSG Secretariat.
“This presence blatantly undermines the core principles of justice and solidarity we claim to uphold as Melanesians,” said We Bleed Black and Red in a social media post.
The group said that as the new MSG chair, the Fiji government could not speak cannot credibly about equity, peace, regional unity, or the Melanesian family “while the very agent of prolonged Melanesian oppression sits at the decision-making table”.
The statement said that for more than six decades, the people of West Papua had endured “systemic atrocities from mass killings to environmental devastation — acts that clearly constitute ecocide and gross human rights violations”.
“Indonesia’s track record is not only morally indefensible but also a flagrant breach of numerous international agreements and conventions,” the group said.
“It is time for all Melanesian nations to confront the reality behind the diplomatic facades and development aid.
“No amount of financial incentives or diplomatic charm can erase the undeniable suffering of the West Papuan people.
“We must rise above political appeasement and fulfill our moral and regional duty as one Melanesian family.
“The Pacific cannot claim moral leadership while turning a blind eye and deaf ear to colonial violence on our own shores. Justice delayed is justice denied.”
‘Peaceful, prosperous Melanesia’ Meanwhile, The Fiji Times reports that the 23rd MSG Leaders’ Summit got underway on Monday in Suva, drawing heads of state from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and representatives from New Caledonia’s FLNKS.
Hosted under the theme “A Peaceful and Prosperous Melanesia,” the summit ended yesterday.
This year’s meeting also marked Fiji’s first time chairing the regional bloc since 1997.
Fiji officially assumed the MSG chairmanship from Vanuatu following a traditional handover ceremony attended by senior officials, observers, and dignitaries at Draiba.
Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape arrived in Suva on Sunday and reaffirmed Papua New Guinea’s commitment to MSG cooperation during today’s plenary session.
He will also take part in high-level talanoa discussions with the Pacific Islands Forum’s Eminent Persons Group, aimed at deepening institutional reform and regional solidarity.
Observers from the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) and Indonesia were also present, reflecting ongoing efforts to expand the bloc’s influence on issues like self-determination, regional trade, security, and climate resilience in the Pacific.
The conflict between Israel and Iran over the past 12 days has redefined the regional chessboard. Here is a look at their key takeaways:
Israel: Pulled in the US: Israel successfully drew the United States into a direct military confrontation with Iran, setting a significant precedent for future direct (not just indirect) intervention.
Boosted political capital: This move generated substantial political leverage, allowing Israel to frame US intervention as a major strategic success.
Iran: Forged a new deterrence: Iran has firmly established a new equation of deterrence, emerging as a powerful regional force capable of directly challenging Israel, the US, and their Western allies.
Demonstrated independence: Crucially, Iran achieved this without relying on its traditional regional allies, showcasing its self-reliance and strategic depth.
Defeated regime change efforts: This confrontation effectively thwarted any perceived Israeli strategy aimed at regime change, solidifying the current Iranian government’s position.
Achieved national unity: In the face of external pressure, Iran saw a notable surge in domestic unity, bridging the gap between reformers and conservatives in a new social and political contract.
Asserted direct regional role: Iran has definitively cemented its status as a direct and undeniable player in the ongoing regional struggle against Israeli hegemony.
Sent a global message: It delivered a strong message to non-Western global powers like China and Russia, proving itself a reliable regional force capable of challenging and reshaping the existing balance of power.
Exposed regional dynamics: The events sharply exposed Arab and Muslim countries that openly or tacitly support the US-Israeli regional project of dominance, highlighting underlying regional alignments.
Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London). He has a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and was a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. This commentary is republished from his Facebook page.
In the final strike before the ceasefire, Iranian missiles caused extensive destruction, killing and injuring several Israelis in the city of Beersheba. pic.twitter.com/b25fHPw2yD
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) June 24, 2025
BEARING WITNESS:By Cole Martin in occupied Bethlehem
Kia ora koutou,
I’m a Kiwi journo in occupied Bethlehem, here’s a brief summary of today’s events across the Palestinian and Israeli territories from on the ground.
The US struck three of Iran’s nuclear facilities overnight, entering the illegal aggression on Iran with heavy airstrikes despite no evidence that nuclear weapons are being developed. Israel continued its strikes attacking dozens of locations across Iran throughout the day. Three were killed in an Israeli drone attack on an ambulance in central Iran. At least 400 have been killed and 2000 injured, according to the latest Health Ministry figures.
*
Heavy Iranian retaliation strikes on Israeli territories saw about 27 injured.
*
At least 47 killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza today, 18 while seeking aid. Two killed and 15 wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house west of Gaza city. The murder of firefighter Muhammad Ghurab brings the total Gaza civil defence casualties to 121, representing 14.3 percent of its employees.
Today I met a 10-year-old kid called Hassan on the streets of Bethlehem. He was looking for work. His dad had recently stopped working, unemployed like many in Bethlehem; around 80 percent of jobs here depend on tourism. He lives in al-Khader village, an hour’s walk away, but without opportunities there he had walked all this way in an attempt to help support his family.
Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank has suffocated the economy here for decades. Now, as the genocidal war on Gaza continues and Israeli aggression expands to Iran, drawing in the USA and threatening regional collapse, a 10-year-old boy takes to the streets of Bethlehem to find work.
*
Israel’s illegal siege across the West Bank continues. Large numbers of Israeli soldiers conducted extensive raids on Bethlehem’s Dheisheh camp including demolitions, arrests, and interrogations last night. Mass demolitions continue across Nour Shams camp in the north, and further arrests, demolitions, and incursions took place across the West Bank. Bethlehem’s gasoline shortages continue due to Israel’s ongoing siege.
*
Twenty five killed in a terror attack targeting Mar Elias Church in Damascus, Syria.
Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
Two international organisations are leading a call for the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) to elevate the membership status of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) at their upcoming summit in Honiara in September.
The collective, led by International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP) and International Lawyers for West Papua (ILWP), has again highlighted the urgent need for greater international oversight and diplomatic engagement in the West Papua region.
This influential group includes PNG’s National Capital District governor Powes Parkop, UK’s former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and New Zealand’s former Green Party MP Catherine Delahunty.
The ULMWP currently holds observer status within the MSG, a regional body comprising Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) of New Caledonia.
A statement by the organisations said upgrading the ULMWP’s membership is “within the remit of the MSG” and requires a consensus among member states.
They appeal to the Agreement Establishing the MSG, which undertakes to “promote, coordinate and strengthen…exchange of Melanesian cultures, traditions and values, sovereign equality . . . to further MSG members’ shared goals of economic growth, sustainable development, good governance, peace, and security,” considering that all these ambitions would be advanced by upgrading ULMWP membership.
However, Indonesia’s associate membership in the MSG, granted in 2015, has become a significant point of contention, particularly for West Papuan self-determination advocates.
Strategic move by Jakarta This inclusion is widely seen as a strategic manoeuvre by Jakarta to counter growing regional support for West Papuan independence.
The ULMWP and its supporters consistently question why Indonesia, as the administering power over West Papua, should hold any status within a forum intended to champion Melanesian interests, arguing that Indonesia’s presence effectively stifles critical discussions about West Papua’s self-determination, creating a diplomatic barrier to genuine dialogue and accountability within the very body meant to serve Melanesian peoples.
Given Papua New Guinea’s historical record within the MSG, its likely response at the upcoming summit in Honiara will be characterised by a delicate balancing act.
While Papua New Guinea has expressed concerns regarding human rights in West Papua and supported calls for a UN Human Rights mission, it has consistently maintained respect for Indonesia’s sovereignty over the region.
Past statements from PNG leaders, including Prime Minister James Marape, have emphasised Indonesia’s responsibility for addressing internal issues in West Papua and have noted that the ULMWP has not met the MSG’s criteria for full membership.
Further complicating the situation, the IPWP and ILWP report that West Papua remains largely cut off from international scrutiny.
Strict journalist ban A strict ban on journalists entering the region means accounts of severe and ongoing human rights abuses often go unreported.
The joint statement highlights a critical lack of transparency, noting that “very little international oversight” exists.
A key point of contention is Indonesia’s failure to honour its commitments; despite the 2023 MSG leaders’ summit urging the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct a human rights mission to West Papua before the 2024 summit, Indonesia has yet to facilitate this visit.
The IPWP/ILWP statement says the continued refusal is a violation of its obligations as a UN member state.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
BEARING WITNESS:By Cole Martin in occupied Bethlehem
Kia ora koutou,
I’m a Kiwi journo in occupied Bethlehem, here’s a brief summary of today’s events across the Palestinian and Israeli territories from on the ground.
Israeli forces killed over 200 Palestinians in Gaza over the last 48 hours, injuring over 1037. Countless more remain under the rubble and in unreachable zones. 450 killed seeking aid, 39 missing, and around 3500 injured at the joint US-Israeli humanitarian foundation “death traps”.
Forty one killed by Israeli forces since dawn today, including three children in an attack east of Gaza City. Gaza’s Al-Quds brigades destroyed a military bulldozer in southern Gaza.
*
Settlers, protected by soldiers, violently attacked Palestinian residents near the southern village of Susiya last night, including children. The West Bank siege continues with Israeli occupation forces severely restricting movement between Palestinian towns and cities. Continued military/settler assaults across the occupied territories.
*
Iranian strikes targeted Ben Gurion airport and several military sites in the Israeli territories. Israeli regime discuss a 3.6 billion shekel defence budget increase.
*
400 killed and 3000 injured by Israel’s attacks on Iran, in the nine days since Israel’s aggression began. Iranian authorities have arrested dozens more linked to Israeli intelligence, and cut internet for the last three days to prevent internal drone attacks from agents within their territories.
Israeli strikes have targeted a wide range of sites; missile depots, nuclear facilities, residential areas, and reportedly six ambulances today.
Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has called on New Zealanders to condemn the US bombing of Iran.
PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal said in a statement that he hoped the New Zealand government would be critical of the US for its war escalation.
“Israel has once again hoodwinked the United States into fighting Israel’s wars,” he said.
“Israel’s Prime Minister has [been declaring] Iran to be on the point of producing nuclear weapons since the 1990s.
“It’s all part of his big plan for expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine to create a Greater Israel, and regime change for the entire region.”
Israel knew that Arab and European countries would “fall in behind these plans” and in many cases actually help implement them.
“It is a dreadful day for the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s forces will be turned back onto them in Gaza and the West Bank.”
‘Dreadful day’ for Middle East “It is just as dreadful day for the whole Middle East.
“Trump has tried to add Iran to the disasters of US foreign policy in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The US simply doesn’t care how many people will die.”
New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters “acknowledged the development in the past 24 hours”, including President Trump’s announcement of the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
He described it as “extremely worrying” military action in the Middle East, and it was critical further escalation was avoided.
“New Zealand strongly supports efforts towards diplomacy. We urge all parties to return to talks,” he said.
“Diplomacy will deliver a more enduring resolution than further military action.”
The Australian government said in a statement that Canberra had been clear that Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programme had been a “threat to international peace and security”.
It also noted that the US President had declared that “now is the time for peace”.
“The security situation in the region is highly volatile,” said the statement. “We continue to call for de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy.”
Iran calls attack ‘outrageous’ However, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the “outrageous” US attacks on Iran’s “peaceful nuclear installations” would have “everlasting consequences”.
His comments come as an Iranian missile attack on central and northern Israel wounded at least 23 people.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Dr Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, said the people of Iran feared that Israel’s goals stretched far beyond its stated goal of destroying the country’s nuclear and missile programmes.
“Many in Iran believe that Israel’s end game, really, is to turn Iran into Libya, into Iraq, what it was after the US invasion in 2003, and/or Afghanistan.
“And so the dismemberment of Iran is what Netanyahu has in mind, at least as far as Tehran is concerned,” he said.
US attack ‘more or less guarantees’ Iran will be nuclear-armed within decade
‘No evidence’ of Iran ‘threat’ Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said there had been “absolutely no evidence” that Iran posed a threat.
“Neither was it existential, nor imminent,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We have to keep in mind the reality of the situation, which is that two nuclear-equipped countries attacked a non-nuclear weapons state without having gotten attacked first.
“Israel was not attacked by Iran — it started that war; the United States was not attacked by Iran — it started this confrontation at this point.”
Dr Parsi added that the attacks on Iran would “send shockwaves” throughout the world.
The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has called on New Zealanders to condemn the US bombing of Iran.
PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal said in a statement that he hoped the New Zealand government would be critical of the US for its war escalation.
“Israel has once again hoodwinked the United States into fighting Israel’s wars,” he said.
“Israel’s Prime Minister has [been declaring] Iran to be on the point of producing nuclear weapons since the 1990s.
“It’s all part of his big plan for expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine to create a Greater Israel, and regime change for the entire region.”
Israel knew that Arab and European countries would “fall in behind these plans” and in many cases actually help implement them.
“It is a dreadful day for the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s forces will be turned back onto them in Gaza and the West Bank.”
‘Dreadful day’ for Middle East “It is just as dreadful day for the whole Middle East.
“Trump has tried to add Iran to the disasters of US foreign policy in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The US simply doesn’t care how many people will die.”
New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters “acknowledged the development in the past 24 hours”, including President Trump’s announcement of the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
He described it as “extremely worrying” military action in the Middle East, and it was critical further escalation was avoided.
“New Zealand strongly supports efforts towards diplomacy. We urge all parties to return to talks,” he said.
“Diplomacy will deliver a more enduring resolution than further military action.”
The Australian government said in a statement that Canberra had been clear that Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programme had been a “threat to international peace and security”.
It also noted that the US President had declared that “now is the time for peace”.
“The security situation in the region is highly volatile,” said the statement. “We continue to call for de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy.”
Iran calls attack ‘outrageous’ However, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the “outrageous” US attacks on Iran’s “peaceful nuclear installations” would have “everlasting consequences”.
His comments come as an Iranian missile attack on central and northern Israel wounded at least 23 people.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Dr Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, said the people of Iran feared that Israel’s goals stretched far beyond its stated goal of destroying the country’s nuclear and missile programmes.
“Many in Iran believe that Israel’s end game, really, is to turn Iran into Libya, into Iraq, what it was after the US invasion in 2003, and/or Afghanistan.
“And so the dismemberment of Iran is what Netanyahu has in mind, at least as far as Tehran is concerned,” he said.
US attack ‘more or less guarantees’ Iran will be nuclear-armed within decade
‘No evidence’ of Iran ‘threat’ Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said there had been “absolutely no evidence” that Iran posed a threat.
“Neither was it existential, nor imminent,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We have to keep in mind the reality of the situation, which is that two nuclear-equipped countries attacked a non-nuclear weapons state without having gotten attacked first.
“Israel was not attacked by Iran — it started that war; the United States was not attacked by Iran — it started this confrontation at this point.”
Dr Parsi added that the attacks on Iran would “send shockwaves” throughout the world.
BEARING WITNESS:By Cole Martin in occupied Bethlehem
Kia ora koutou,
I’m a Kiwi journo in occupied Bethlehem, here’s a brief summary of today’s events across the Palestinian and Israeli territories from on the ground.
Sixty nine people killed in Gaza, 12 while seeking aid, and 221 injured (172 seeking aid). 11 killed by Israeli airstrike on a house in central Gaza. Qassam Brigades carried out a “complex” ambush against Israeli forces in southern Gaza. Israel are preventing humanitarian organisations from accessing fuel storage sites in the enclave, hospital supplies last for just three days.
*
Iranian authorities report five hospitals damaged in targeted Israeli strikes, have arrested 16 agents allegedly linked to Israel, and offered Israeli “collaborators” a pardon if they surrender their drones by July 1.
*
Two US destroyers have arrived in the eastern Mediterranean, bringing the total to five in the region and two in the Red Sea.
*
An Israeli drone targeted a car in southern Lebanon, violating the existing ceasefire and Lebanese sovereignty yet again.
*
Israeli leaders double down on their accusations that Iran is developing nuclear bombs, despite the international watchdog, IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], saying there is no sufficient evidence. 18 injured by Iranian missile in the southern Israeli territories, 17 in Haifa. Strikes targeted Israel’s Channel 14 news stations as threatened, after Israeli forces struck Iran’s state broadcaster two days ago. 100 million shekel pledged by Israeli regime to build 1000 new bomb shelters in some areas; the regime is known for under-investment in Palestinian neighbourhoods.
*
More checkpoints and barriers installed across the West Bank. Ambulance movement continues to be disrupted by gas shortages in Bethlehem. Despite the war, Israeli occupation forces continue extensive home demolitions in Nour Shams refugee camp in the northern West Bank. Settlers crush and uproot Palestinian olive trees near Sinjil, north of Ramallah. Occupation bulldozers dug up roads south of Jenin. Palestinian residents were shot at by settlers while trying to extinguish fires west of Bethlehem.
*
Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza continues, with minimal political intervention to prevent it.
Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
A leading Middle East analyst has pushed back against US President Donald Trump’s dismissal of the conclusion of his own national intelligence chief, who said in April that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, said in an interview that Tulsi Gabbard, the US Director of National Intelligence, who issued the determination on Iran, “does not speak for herself” or her team alone.
“She speaks for all the intelligence agencies combined,” Bishara said.
“This intelligence is supposed to be sound. This is not just one person or one team saying something. It’s the entire intelligence community in the United States. He [Trump] would dismiss them? For what?
“For a lie by a rogue element called Benjamin Netanyahu, who has lied all his life, a con artist who is indicted for his crimes in Gaza? It’s just astounding.”
US senators slam Netanyahu Two US senators have also condemned Netanyahu while Israel continues to bomb and starve Gaza
Chris Van Hollen and Elizabeth Warren, two Democrats in the US Senate, have urged the world to pay attention to what Israel continues to do in Gaza amid its conflict with Iran.
“Don’t look away,” Van Hollen wrote on X. “Since the start of the Israel-Iran war 7 days ago, over 400 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, many shot while seeking food.
“It’s unconscionable that Netanyahu has not allowed international orgs to resume food delivery.”
Warren said the Israeli prime minister “may think no one will notice what he’s doing in Gaza while he bombs Iran”.
“People face starvation. 55,000 killed. Aid workers and doctors turned away at the border. Shooting at innocent people desperate for food. The world sees you, Benjamin Netanyahu,” she wrote.
Israel’s Prime Minister may think no one will notice what he’s doing in Gaza while he bombs Iran.
People face starvation. 55,000 killed. Aid workers and doctors turned away at the border. Shooting at innocent people desperate for food.
‘A trust gap’ The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, appealed for an end to the fighting between Israel and Iran, saying that Teheran had repeatedly stated that it was not seeking nuclear weapons.
“Let’s recognise there is a trust gap,” he said.
“The only way to bridge that gap is through diplomacy to establish a credible, comprehensive and verifiable solution — including full access to inspectors of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], as the United Nations technical agency in this field.
“For all of that to be possible, I appeal for an end to the fighting and the return to serious negotiations.”
UN Secretary-General António Guterres . . . “I appeal for an end to the fighting and the return to serious negotiations.” Image: UNweb screenshot APR
Meanwhile, in New Zealand hope for freedom for Palestinians remained high among a group of trauma-struck activists in Cairo.
In spite of extensive planning, the Global March To Gaza (GMTG) delegation of about 4000 international aid volunteers was thwarted in its mission to walk from Cairo to Gaza to lend support.
BEARING WITNESS:By Cole Martin in occupied Bethlehem
Kia ora koutou,
I’m a Kiwi journo in occupied Bethlehem, here’s a brief summary of today’s events across the Palestinian and Israeli territories from on the ground.
At least 16 killed by Israeli airstrike on al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza. 92 killed across Gaza in total, a significant number while seeking aid. 15 months after the shocking “flour massacre”, Israeli forces are now committing daily massacres against Gazan residents desperately seeking food due to Israel’s policy of forced starvation. These ongoing war crimes have been met with indifference, justification, and ongoing impunity from global leaders.
*
Jerusalem’s Old City markets remain closed for the seventh consecutive day after restrictions were imposed under the pretext of “wartime emergency”. Meanwhile, across the besieged West Bank the occupation forces continue demolishing homes in Tulkarm and Jenin refugee camps, where more than 40,000 residents have been displaced by Israel’s months-long “military operation”.
Israeli soldiers occupying houses south of Jenin as military barracks, embedding themselves among Palestinian civilians as they have for several days in Al Khalil/Hebron.
Around two-dozen young men detained in Asakra village south-east of Bethlehem, and several more in Laban village, south of Nablus. A young man, Moataz, 22, was executed by Israeli forces in his home village of Wolja west of Bethlehem. Movement of ambulances has been affected by gasoline shortages in Bethlehem. Forces invaded Plata camp in East Nablus for the second day in a row.
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Israel bombed the outskirts of Shabaa town, in southern Lebanon, yet another violation of ceasefire agreements.
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An Iranian missile hit Beersheba’s Soroka hospital in southern Israel last night, with no resulting casualties — Iran claiming it targeted a nearby military site. Outrage at the war crime has highlighted widespread double-standards across Israeli society and globally. Israeli forces have destroyed, bombed, or damaged 38 hospitals in Gaza over their 20-month genocidal war on the enclave, with the World Health Organisation recording around 700 attacks on Gazan healthcare facilities in that same period. Israeli residents have erected tents, transforming an underground parking lot into a bomb shelter.
*
Several more retaliatory volleys of Iranian missiles targeted the Israeli territories throughout the day, as heavy Israeli assaults continued on Iranian territories. Israel’s reported death toll has risen to 24, with Iran’s rising to 639.
Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Saige England in Ōtautahi and Ava Mulla in Cairo
Hope for freedom for Palestinians remains high among a group of trauma-struck New Zealanders in Cairo.
In spite of extensive planning, the Global March To Gaza (GMTG) delegation of about 4000 international aid volunteers was thwarted in its mission to walk from Cairo to Gaza to lend support.
The land of oranges and pyramids became the land of autocracy last week as peace aid volunteers — young, middle-aged, and elderly — were herded like cattle and cordoned behind fences.
Their passports were initially seized — and later returned. Several New Zealanders were among those dragged and beaten.
While ordinary Egyptians showed “huge support” for the GMTG, the militant Egyptian regime showed its hand in supporting Israel rather than Palestine.
A member of the delegation, Natasha*, said she and other members pursued every available diplomatic channel to ensure that the peaceful, humanitarian, march would reach Gaza.
Moved by love, they were met with hate.
Violently attacked “When I stepped toward the crowd’s edge and began instinctually with heart break to chant, ‘Free Palestine,’ I was violently attacked by five plainclothes men.
“They screamed, grabbed, shoved, and even spat on me,” she said.
Tackled, she was dragged to an unmarked van. She did not resist, posed no threat, yet the violence escalated instantly.
“I saw hatred in their eyes.”
Egyptian state security forces and embedded provocateurs were intent on dismantling and discrediting the Global March activists. Image: GMTG
Another GMTG member, a woman who tried to intervene was also “viciously assaulted”. She witnessed at least three other women and two men being attacked.
The peacemakers escaped from the unmarked van the aggressors were distracted, seemingly confused about their destination, she said.
It is now clear that from the beginning Egyptian State forces and embedded provocateurs were intent on dismantling and discrediting the GMTG.
Authorities as provocateurs The peace participants witnessed plainclothed authorities act as provacateurs, “shoving people, stepping on them, throwing objects” to create a false image for media.
New Zealand actor Will Alexander . . . “This is only a fraction of what Palestinians experience every day.” GMTG
New Zealand actor Will Alexander said the experience had inflated rather than deflated his passion for human rights, and compassion for Palestinians.
“This is only a fraction of what Palestinians experience everyday. Palestinians pushed into smaller and smaller areas are murdered for wanting to stand on their own land,” he said.
“The reason that ordinary New Zealanders like us need to put our bodies on the line is because our government has failed to uphold its obligations under the Genocide Convention.
“Israel has blatantly breached international law for decades with total impunity.”
While the New Zealanders are all safe, a small number of people in the wider movement had been forcibly ‘disappeared’,” said GMTG New Zealand member Sam Leason.
Their whereabouts was still unknown, he said.
Arab members targeted “It must be emphasised that it is primarily — and possibly strictly — Arab members of the March who are the targets of the most dramatic and violent excesses committed by the Egyptian authorities, including all forced disappearances.”
Global March to Gaza activists being attacked . . . the genocide cannot be sustained when people from around the world push against the Israeli regime and support the people on the ground with food and healthcare. Image: GMTG screenshot APR
This did, however, continuously add to the mounting sense of stress, tension, anxiety and fear, felt by the contingent, he said.
“Especially given the Egyptian authorities’ disregard to their own legal system, which leaves us blindsided and in a thick fog of uncertainty.”
Moving swiftly through the streets of Cairo in the pitch of night, from hotel to hotel and safehouse to safehouse, was a “surreal and dystopian” experience for the New Zealanders and other GMTG members.
The group says that the genocide cannot be sustained when people from around the world push against the Israeli regime and support the people on the ground with food and healthcare.
“For 20 months our hearts have raced and our eyes have filled in unison with the elderly, men, women, and children, and the babies in Palestine,” said Billie*, a participant who preferred, for safety reasons, not to reveal their surname.
“If we do not react to the carnage, suffering and complete injustice and recognise our shared need for sane governance and a liveable planet what is the point?”
Experienced despair Aqua*, another New Zealand GMTG member, had experienced despair seeing the suffering of Palestinians, but she said it was important to nurture hope, as that was the only way to stop the genocide.
“We cling to every glimmer of hope that presents itself. Like an oasis in a desert devoid of human emotion we chase any potential igniter of the flame of change.”
Activist Eva Mulla . . . inspired by the courage of the Palestinians. Image: GMTG screenshot APR
Ava Mulla, said from Cairo, that the group was inspired by the courage of the Palestinians.
“They’ve been fighting for freedom and justice for decades against the world’s strongest powers. They are courageous and steadfast.”
Mulla referred to the “We Were Seeds” saying inspired by Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos.
“We are millions of seeds. Every act of injustice fuels our growth,” she said.
Helplessness an illusion The GMTG members agreed that “impotence and helplessness was an illusion” that led to inaction but such inaction allowed “unspeakable atrocities” to take place.
“This is the holocaust of our age,” said Sam Leason.
“We need the world to leave the rhetorical and symbolic field of discourse and move promptly towards the camp of concrete action to protect the people of Palestine from a clear campaign of extermination.”
Saige England is an Aotearoa New Zealand journalist, author, and poet, member of the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
*Several protesters quoted in this article requested that their family names not be reported for security reasons. Ava Mulla was born in Germany and lives in Aotearoa with her partner, actor Will Alexander. She studied industrial engineering and is passionate about innovative housing solutions for developing countries. She is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
New Zealand and other activists with Tino Rangatiratanga and Palestine flags taking part in the Global March To Gaza. Will Alexander (far left) is in the back row and Ava Mulla (pink tee shirt) is in the front row. Image: GMTG screenshot APR
SPECIAL REPORT:By Saige England in Ōtautahi and Ava Mulla in Cairo
Hope for freedom for Palestinians remains high among a group of trauma-struck New Zealanders in Cairo.
In spite of extensive planning, the Global March To Gaza (GMTG) delegation of about 4000 international aid volunteers was thwarted in its mission to walk from Cairo to Gaza to lend support.
The land of oranges and pyramids became the land of autocracy last week as peace aid volunteers — young, middle-aged, and elderly — were herded like cattle and cordoned behind fences.
Their passports were initially seized — and later returned. Several New Zealanders were among those dragged and beaten.
While ordinary Egyptians showed “huge support” for the GMTG, the militant Egyptian regime showed its hand in supporting Israel rather than Palestine.
A member of the delegation, Natasha*, said she and other members pursued every available diplomatic channel to ensure that the peaceful, humanitarian, march would reach Gaza.
Moved by love, they were met with hate.
Violently attacked “When I stepped toward the crowd’s edge and began instinctually with heart break to chant, ‘Free Palestine,’ I was violently attacked by five plainclothes men.
“They screamed, grabbed, shoved, and even spat on me,” she said.
Tackled, she was dragged to an unmarked van. She did not resist, posed no threat, yet the violence escalated instantly.
“I saw hatred in their eyes.”
Egyptian state security forces and embedded provocateurs were intent on dismantling and discrediting the Global March activists. Image: GMTG
Another GMTG member, a woman who tried to intervene was also “viciously assaulted”. She witnessed at least three other women and two men being attacked.
The peacemakers escaped from the unmarked van the aggressors were distracted, seemingly confused about their destination, she said.
It is now clear that from the beginning Egyptian State forces and embedded provocateurs were intent on dismantling and discrediting the GMTG.
Authorities as provocateurs The peace participants witnessed plainclothed authorities act as provacateurs, “shoving people, stepping on them, throwing objects” to create a false image for media.
New Zealand actor Will Alexander . . . “This is only a fraction of what Palestinians experience every day.” GMTG
New Zealand actor Will Alexander said the experience had inflated rather than deflated his passion for human rights, and compassion for Palestinians.
“This is only a fraction of what Palestinians experience everyday. Palestinians pushed into smaller and smaller areas are murdered for wanting to stand on their own land,” he said.
“The reason that ordinary New Zealanders like us need to put our bodies on the line is because our government has failed to uphold its obligations under the Genocide Convention.
“Israel has blatantly breached international law for decades with total impunity.”
While the New Zealanders are all safe, a small number of people in the wider movement had been forcibly ‘disappeared’,” said GMTG New Zealand member Sam Leason.
Their whereabouts was still unknown, he said.
Arab members targeted “It must be emphasised that it is primarily — and possibly strictly — Arab members of the March who are the targets of the most dramatic and violent excesses committed by the Egyptian authorities, including all forced disappearances.”
Global March to Gaza activists being attacked . . . the genocide cannot be sustained when people from around the world push against the Israeli regime and support the people on the ground with food and healthcare. Image: GMTG screenshot APR
This did, however, continuously add to the mounting sense of stress, tension, anxiety and fear, felt by the contingent, he said.
“Especially given the Egyptian authorities’ disregard to their own legal system, which leaves us blindsided and in a thick fog of uncertainty.”
Moving swiftly through the streets of Cairo in the pitch of night, from hotel to hotel and safehouse to safehouse, was a “surreal and dystopian” experience for the New Zealanders and other GMTG members.
The group says that the genocide cannot be sustained when people from around the world push against the Israeli regime and support the people on the ground with food and healthcare.
“For 20 months our hearts have raced and our eyes have filled in unison with the elderly, men, women, and children, and the babies in Palestine,” said Billie*, a participant who preferred, for safety reasons, not to reveal their surname.
“If we do not react to the carnage, suffering and complete injustice and recognise our shared need for sane governance and a liveable planet what is the point?”
Experienced despair Aqua*, another New Zealand GMTG member, had experienced despair seeing the suffering of Palestinians, but she said it was important to nurture hope, as that was the only way to stop the genocide.
“We cling to every glimmer of hope that presents itself. Like an oasis in a desert devoid of human emotion we chase any potential igniter of the flame of change.”
Activist Eva Mulla . . . inspired by the courage of the Palestinians. Image: GMTG screenshot APR
Ava Mulla, said from Cairo, that the group was inspired by the courage of the Palestinians.
“They’ve been fighting for freedom and justice for decades against the world’s strongest powers. They are courageous and steadfast.”
Mulla referred to the “We Were Seeds” saying inspired by Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos.
“We are millions of seeds. Every act of injustice fuels our growth,” she said.
Helplessness an illusion The GMTG members agreed that “impotence and helplessness was an illusion” that led to inaction but such inaction allowed “unspeakable atrocities” to take place.
“This is the holocaust of our age,” said Sam Leason.
“We need the world to leave the rhetorical and symbolic field of discourse and move promptly towards the camp of concrete action to protect the people of Palestine from a clear campaign of extermination.”
Saige England is an Aotearoa New Zealand journalist, author, and poet, member of the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
*Several protesters quoted in this article requested that their family names not be reported for security reasons. Ava Mulla was born in Germany and lives in Aotearoa with her partner, actor Will Alexander. She studied industrial engineering and is passionate about innovative housing solutions for developing countries. She is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
New Zealand and other activists with Tino Rangatiratanga and Palestine flags taking part in the Global March To Gaza. Will Alexander (far left) is in the back row and Ava Mulla (pink tee shirt) is in the front row. Image: GMTG screenshot APR