Media Lens

The post-WW2 ‘international rules-based order’ that supposedly underpins global affairs in the interests of peace, democracy and prosperity has always been largely a charade. But Israel’s continuing Gaza genocide, carried out with seeming impunity and with the complicity and even active participation of the US and its allies, has exposed the charade like never before.

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Israeli soldiers celebrate in front of a home they destroyed in Gaza (via Maha Hussaini).

Twenty years ago, at the 2005 World Summit, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the doctrine of the ‘responsibility to protect’ or ‘R2P’. The key concerns were to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Whenever populations are at risk of such crimes, the international community is supposed to take collective action ‘in a timely and decisive manner’ to prevent mass atrocities from taking place. (...)

If the doctrine of ‘R2P’ was authentic, then there would have been massive international action to prevent Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as Israeli terror acts committed in the occupied West Bank, including the routine killing of Palestinian children. (...)

The killing of 15 medics and emergency workers last month by Israeli soldiers, and the attempted Israeli cover-up, with bodies and vehicles buried in a shallow mass grave, provoked not a single public condemnation of Israel from Western leaders, as far as we are aware. (...)

Historian and political commentator Assal Rad observed via X that Western media have no compunction giving headline coverage whenever ‘Russia lies’. But, in the case of Israel, the headlines use the weasel phrase: ‘Israel changes account’. (...)

Last November, perhaps seeking a viral ‘gotcha’ moment, a journalist challenged Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, with the clichéd question, ‘Does Israel have a right to exist?’

Albanese’s cogent response is worth contemplating:

‘Israel does exist. Israel is a recognised member of the United Nations. Besides this, there is not such a thing in international law like a right of a state to exist. Does Italy have a right to exist? Italy exists. Now, if tomorrow, Italy and France want to merge and become Ita-France, fine, this is not up to us. What is enshrined in international law is the right of a people to exist. So, the state is there. The state of Israel is there. It’s protected as a member of the United Nations. Does this justify the erasure of another people? Hell, no. Not 75 years ago. Not 57 years ago. Surely not today. Where is the protection of the Palestinian people from erasure, from annexation, from illegal occupation and apartheid? This is what we need to discuss.’

A powerful reply indeed. Where is the much-vaunted ‘R2P’ when it comes to Palestine?

Last Friday, Mirjana Spoljaric, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that Gaza has become ‘hell on earth’. Israel was ‘threatening the viability of Palestinians continuing to live in Gaza at all’. What is happening in Gaza is, she said, an ‘extreme hollowing out’ of international law.

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Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #nato #libya #iraq #media #news #journalism #journalist #bbc #genocide #International Court of Justice #icj

Counterpunch

(...) After being betrayed by the United Nations more than sixty years ago, Melanesian West Papua, occupied by Indonesia ever since, is a particularly poignant case in point. In its increasingly militarised torture mode of governance, the Indonesian regime—now headed by Prabowo Subianto, notorious for his war crimes in East Timor—is the world’s biggest palm oil exporter, to the tune of 47 million tonnes of crude palm oil in 2023, and 54% of global exports. The industry accounts for 4.5% of Indonesian GDP and directly or indirectly employs 16.2 million people. The total area of Indonesian palm oil cultivation is about 25 million hectares (out of 29 million hectares globally, which amounts to approximately 6.7% of the size of the European Union), and plantations covering many million more hectares are planned. In 2023, industrial oil palm plantations in Indonesia expanded by 116,000 hectares, a 54% increase compared with 2022. The largest oil palm project so far is Tanah Merah, in Boven Digoel Regency. Seven companies control the area of 280,000 hectares of which more than 140,000 hectares of land traditionally occupied by the Awyu people will be taken for oil palm production.

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Remains of peat forests in Indonesia that were destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations. Photo: Aidenvironment, 2006. CC BY-SA 2.0.

In West Papua this destructive extractivism also entails violent social change for the country’s Indigenous peoples. It’s impossible to know how many people have been displaced in the name of “food security” (security for KitKat production) as the Indonesian government is understandably averse to providing statistics of the genocide it has been committing in West Papua for more than sixty years. The Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights calculates that there are between 60,000 and 100,000 internally displaced people. Mining, palm plantations, and logging by Indonesian and international companies are protected by the state transmigration programme which creates militarised buffer zones protecting the areas designated for Indonesian government “development” programmes. It’s calculated that Indonesian transmigrants outnumber West Papuans by about ten percent, and approximately 25% of the Indigenous population, or more than 500,000 people have been killed. Needless to say, the demographics represent atrocious human rights violations, including destruction of West Papuan languages and culture. (...)

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> See also: Mass displacements in West Papua show Prabowo’s true face

Tags: #english #West Papua #West Papoea #New Guinea #indonesia #Nieuw Guinea #colonialism #papua #papoea #deforestation #palm oil #indigenous people #human rights #prabowo #transmigration

The Guardian

After 15 Palestinian medics and civil defence workers were killed by Israeli forces late last month, Israel began a familiar pattern of denial. (...)

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A mural of slain of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead during an Israeli military raid in Jenin in 2022. Photograph: Adel Hana/AP.

Often, at first, the IDF denies involvement. Sometimes – in the context of Gaza – it suggests one of Hamas’s own rockets fell short, causing the casualties.

Otherwise, it might allege that those killed were either combatants themselves, or collateral damage from the targeting of combatants.

And the case of the Gaza medics is only the latest incident when Israel has altered its account of a high profile killing. (...)

According to analysis conducted by Israeli human rights organisation, Yesh Din, published last year, the mechanism set up by the IDF’s general staff to investigate potential war crimes is designed to avoid responsibility while giving the impression that a process is taking place. (...)

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> See also: Israel resumes genocide in Gaza. Yet the Western media is suppressing the truth.

Tags: #english #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #WestBank #genocide #hamas #icc #war crimes #civilian deaths #medics

The Guardian

The country’s so-called political centre has licensed a new era of authoritarianism – to the AfD’s delight.

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Police officers in front of a protest in solidarity with Palestinians, Berlin, 4 November 2023. Photograph: Clemens Bilan/EPA.

A crackdown on political dissent is well under way in Germany. Over the past two years, institutions and authorities have cancelled events, exhibitions and awards over statements about Palestine or Israel. There are many examples: the Frankfurt book fair indefinitely postponing an award ceremony for Adania Shibli; the Heinrich Böll Foundation withdrawing the Hannah Arendt prize from Masha Gessen; the University of Cologne rescinding a professorship for Nancy Fraser; the No Other Land directors Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham being defamed by German ministers. And, most recently, the philosopher Omri Boehm being disinvited from speaking at this month’s anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald.

In nearly all of these cases, accusations of antisemitism loom large – even though Jews are often among those being targeted. More often than not, it is liberals driving or tacitly accepting these cancellations, while conservatives and the far right lean back and cheer them on. While vigilance against rising antisemitism is no doubt warranted – especially in Germany – that concern is increasingly weaponised as a political tool to silence the left.

Germany has recently taken a chilling new step, signalling its willingness to use political views as grounds to curb migration. Authorities are now moving to deport foreign nationals for participating in pro-Palestine actions. (...)

With a new conservative government in power, the crackdown on Palestinians and migrants – already well under way with the so-called traffic-light coalition – is set to escalate even further. Germany is at a crossroads: it can choose to uphold the principles it claims to stand for, or continue down a path of authoritarianism. For now, the direction seems unmistakably clear.

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Tags: #english #germany #far right #afd #protest #freedom of expression #democracy #gaza #palestine #palestinians #israel #antisemitism #migration #immigrants

Why the press is ramping up its acts of anticipatory obedience to the Trump regime

Salon

During the 2024 election, the American mainstream news media continued to practice its obsolete norms of “fairness,” “balance,” “objectivity,” and “neutrality.” Coverage remained steadfastly focused on “bothsidesism,” an obsession with the polls and the “horserace,” and inside the Beltway gossip rather than critical coverage of Trump’s campaign and his MAGA authoritarian populist movement. As an institution, the news media did not treat Donald Trump’s chances of victory over the Democrats in the 2024 election with the seriousness and alarm it merited. The result was to normalize and minimize the existential harm that Trump’s return to power would cause the nation. (…)

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U.S. President Donald Trump takes a question from a reporter during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 21, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Tags: #english #us #united states #media #news #journalism #journalist #trump #elections #bothsidesism #maga #democracy #populism #authoritarianism

Media Lens

The BBC’s withdrawal of the powerful documentary, ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’, epitomises how much the UK’s national broadcaster is beholden to the Israel lobby.

The corporation’s longstanding systematic protection of Israel, considered an ‘apartheid regime’ by major human rights organisations, has been particularly glaring since the country launched its genocidal attacks on Gaza in October 2023. We have all seen the repetition and amplification of the Israeli narrative above the Palestinian perspective, omission of ‘Israel’ from headlines about its latest war crimes committed in Gaza, and even the dismissive treatment by senior BBC management of serious concerns about bias raised by their own journalists. (...)

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Note. At the time of writing, ‘Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone’, can be viewed here on Rumble.

Tags: #english #media #news #journalism #journalist #censorship #propaganda #bbc #gaza #palestine #palestinians #occupied territories #documentary #israel lobby #genocide #war crimes #human rights

Electronic Frontier Foundation

If you’re fed up with Meta right now, you’re not alone. Google searches for deleting Facebook and Instagram spiked last week after Meta announced its latest policy changes. These changes, seemingly designed to appease the incoming Trump administration, included loosening Meta’s hate speech policy to allow for the targeting of LGBTQ+ people and immigrants.

If these changes—or Meta’s long history of anti-competitive, censorial, and invasive practices—make you want to cut ties with the company, it’s sadly not as simple as deleting your Facebook account or spending less time on Instagram. Meta tracks your activity across millions of websites and apps, regardless of whether you use its platforms, and it profits from that data through targeted ads. If you want to limit Meta’s ability to collect and profit from your personal data, here’s what you need to know. (...)

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Tags: #english #privacy #data #personal data #data mining #surveillance capitalism #meta #facebook #whatsapp #hate speech #discrimnation #racisme #censorship

The Guardian

Guantánamo Bay? Imperialism? Alliances with billionaires? Those shocked at the president’s early moves have forgotten what came before.

The dust briefly settled, only for it to be kicked up once again. Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders – causing chaos on everything from foreign aid to world trade – is rapidly rocking and reshaping domestic and foreign policy. And the temptation is, yet again, to think of Donald Trump as an exogenous shock to US democracy. But look closer, and you will see not a rogue president taking a hammer to a hitherto stable political order, but a history of the erosion of norms that paved the way for him. (...)

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Presidents Trump and Biden

This is not to suggest that there is no difference between Trump and his predecessors, or that anyone is under any illusion that the US was a perfect democracy before his arrival on the scene. I do not mean to minimise the president’s violations and their material impact, most of all his lack of adherence to a peaceful transition of power – a super norm, if you will. But the American dream of prosperity at home and supremacy abroad has long masked a much more cynical and transactional order – one that Trump is both exposing and entrenching.

The danger comes from assuming that Trumpism comes out of nowhere. In fact, it comes from many sources, but one of them is his predecessors’ creation of a political system in which serial breaches are seen as acceptable because they are done by the right people. Well, to millions of people, Trump is the right person.

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Tags: #english #us #united states #politics #democracy #state of law #guantanamo #immigrants #billionaires #imperialism #iraq war #war on terror