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3:10 pm, July 11th, 2025 - 27 comments
Categories: broadcasting, gaza, genocide, israel, journalism, Palestine, Peace, the praiseworthy and the pitiful, us politics, Zionism -
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UN Special rapporteur on Gaza Francesca Albanese’s latest report highlights the corporate role in enabling genocide in Gaza. Utterly predictably, she has been sanctioned by the United States.
Francesca Albanese is a standout beacon of moral and legal clarity in the Orwellian horror of Gaza. I was fortunate to hear her when when was here in 2023, addressing a packed audience in St Andrews on the Terrace in Wellington. She was articulate and intelligent, clarity of principle mixed with urgency of passion, always with a dedication to the facts. Not that our media saw it that way; I wrote here about how Albanese demolished everyone of Ingrid Hipkiss’ Israeli talking points on RadioNZ’s Morning Comment.
Albanese’s latest report takes responsibility for Israel’s evil beyond political interest and exposes the responsibility of the corporate’s stake. From the summary statement:
This report investigates the corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. While political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide.
The complicity exposed by this report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives. International law recognizes varying degrees of responsibility – each requiring scrutiny and accountability, particularly in this case, where a people’s self-determination and very existence are at stake. This is a necessary step to end the genocide and dismantle the global system that has allowed it.
One group that understands this is Palestine Action. Their recently released documentary To Kill a War Machine targeting the Israeli company Elbit Systems is a must-watch. Their courage and bravery is to be admired as they are now feeling the full force of the British state with its Orwellian branding of them as terrorists.
When sanctioning Francesca Albanese, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio accuses her of conducting “warfare” against the United States, promising to take whatever actions it seems necessary. In the current context of assassinations such threats are not to be taken lightly. Rubio said:
Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt @IntlCrimCourt action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.
Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated. We will always stand by our partners in their right to self- defense.
The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.
In the current context such threats are not to be taken lightly. Characteristically though, Albanese’s response to the threats was to say “I think I have hit a nerve.”
Her report details the many corporations who have profited from the destruction of Gaza and its people.
With $NZ9billion of new money up to be spent on Judith Collins’ enthusiasm for “lethality” in drone warfare and in space, it would be interesting to know how many connections there are in New Zealand with Israeli companies.
Anyone who reads history discovers the role of the armaments industry in geopolitics. Early 20th century novelists made a lot of money exposing that. Taylor Caldwell comes to mind. Google moral authority in geopolitics to discern the power vacuum.
In the court of public opinion there's two sides to every story, so we get a coin with Trump on the head side and the UN advocate on the other. Media then do a mini-shakespeare on the issue like morality plays in the medieval era, reduced to the two sides for simplicity's sake. Talking heads balanced by editorial mandate. Think how the game would change if the Pope came out in support of her rationale!
When the global narrative is directed from above, folks are likely to shift their stance. Xi may also trump Trump via moral authority. The electronic gizmo continues with this:
Machine idealism, yay! Trump would laugh. "Who can see consistency? Too subtle for my crowd – they reckon hypocrisy works real good." They call it democracy.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=moral+authority+in+geopolitics
Wasn't the Palestine Action group made unlawful in the UK? To protest under their flag means arrest. And some have been so arrested.
They've been branded in the law as terrorists even though their attacks were against machinery
For my part, I enjoyed Hillel Neuer of UN Watch's response to her report. See from 1:15 to 2:45 in this video:
See also UN Watch's written analysis: https://unwatch.org/legal-analysis-of-francesca-albaneses-june-2025-report-to-human-rights-council/
Meanwhile, and following up from your prior denials, it turns out that yes the IDF has been using live ammunition, grenades and tanks for crowd control of civilians seeking aid. This has by now been reported in Haaretz firsthand by IDF soldiers. Presumably you are actually against this abomination and your prior denials that it was happening have resolved into condemnation of this, when you found out it was both happening and in line with IDF orders.
Can you link to these "prior denials?" From memory, I just pointed out that the only evidence at that point of IDF soldiers shooting at people near aid distribution centres came from Hamas, which has a strong interest in the failure of those aid distribution centres and had warned people cooperating with Israel that they'd face consequences.
As you say, there's now non-Hamas-based evidence that IDF soldiers have shot at people seeking aid, and yes I am against that, not just because people seeking aid shouldn't be shot at but because it's important that Israel gets this right. Instead, it's created a serious failure.
I'll leave it to you to review your prior comments. As you just repeated, they were denials that the IDF had shot at (and killed on multiple, multiple occasions) people queue up for aid with you attributing this elsewhere.
Hopefully your capable of understanding that attributing the massacres to another group is also a denial that the IDF were committing them. As it happens there was another group committing them, the GHF or at least multiple contractors of the GHF were also involved in shooting civilians. The fact that the orders and supply come from higher up in the Israeli state makes it clear this war crime is official policy (and not a mistake).
Do you also therefore condemn the building of concentration camps which Israel is next looking to implement?
What I deny is that it's helpful to just repeat propaganda and unsubstantiated claims as fact. Which you continue to do on this thread.
Bearing in mind that the IDF are meant to be in control of the area, doesn't identify any others as doing the deed, and doesn't allow any independent verification, and has destroyed all medical forensic capabilities in the area – then how exactly do you expect to get substantiated evidence?
Plus of course the IDF has been caught outright lying on numerous occasions and had to backtrack. For instance when they shot up ambulances, executed witnesses, and buried their bodies? Lied about lights, identification, and only about faced when video evidence and a witness surfaced.
Just about every time that verifiable evidence has surfaced in this war, the IDF has been proven to be lying. Would you like me start linking to links from NYT and the Washington Post? Or the hotbed of wokeness at the ISW? Or just about every publication of record.
Face it – anything that the IDF has to say has to be described as a unsubstantiated claim and outright poorly thought through propaganda.
The IDF are a army in name only, certainly one without control of their soldiers, and with few ethics worth mentioning.
Their soldiers appear to have little to no discipline, piss-poor fire control, and all of the instincts of mink let loose in a hen house. They have been targeting isolated children, grandmothers, women with babies, and even their own escaped hostages despite whatever orders that command structure are saying have been promulgated. Something that I suspect hasn't happened anyway – otherwise we'd see court-martials – which the IDF has not done any of for obvious crimes Gaza that I am aware of.
I won't even bother discussing the IDF view about collatoral deaths and injuries. Suffice it to say that taking the IDF at by its statements at face value they routinely kill or injure dozens of uninvolved civilians while trying to take out single resistance members with 'precision; weapons – and routinely miss their targets.
Which leads me to your comment.
You do mean the IDF and yourself – right?
Basically I think that your obvious bigotry against Islam is affecting your judgement, because all that I see you doing is repeating IDF propaganda, and unsubstantiated claims as being fact.
You appear to have descended into being a unthinking parrot. Pointless to read and too stupid to understand what you are reading.
And yet you read it and posted a lengthy reply giving me (again) your hostile opinions of a military you've no acquaintance with.
I have a lot of "bigotry" toward murderous totalitarian ideologies, yes – including any that are religion-based.
Now you’re really crawling. That was an informed decision about the IDF and you, just as you presumably think that your opinion is also informed. That you are informed is what I disagree with. I just think that you are a one-eyed idiot who can’t think because you are simply bigoted on this topic and have never bothered to look at the evidence.
Certainly you have never offered ANY in support of your assertions.
Sure, I haven’t had direct experience of the IDF. I do read military and historical analysis, and outside reporting from the last 40 years. Read widely across reports of their procedures, structure, and performance. Plus look at their occupation procedures in the West Bank from reports of people who have lived or travelled there.
There is no reason why I can’t have a informed opinion about the IDF as a ex-soldier or even as a civilian. Militaries work within frameworks of laws, legal precedence, and best practice. What I am judging the IDF against is their own professed statements like this one.
https://toolkit.theicenter.org/content/idf-code-ethics
(read an interesting analysis here)
And compared everything that I know with the standards of our military, and other military that I have observed or read about. The IDF adherence to the rules of war and even to their own proclaimed ethics, which in my view, ranks somewhere closer to worst of the Russian federation levels than anything professional or ethical.
Also by that criteria, you have no experience of Hamas, Gaza, West Bank, the Arab armies of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, etc. As far as I can tell your views are formed by time working in Kuwait, some kind of religious background, and I have no idea if you have ever been in any military.
So by your own logic, you cannot therefore make any presumptions about them. Yet seem to be able to make presumptions about them. Where do you arrive at those opinions from? Since you never tell us, or provide any links – your bigotry is a reasonable assumption.
I have an opinion that you opinions arise directly from being some kind of illiterate bigot who only bases their opinions on selectively reading propaganda and judging if it matches your own biases. Yet in other areas, you do provide evidence and even coherent argument.
What is clear is that your “bigotry” somehow manages to exclude the obvious “murderous totalitarian ideologies, yes – including any that are religion-based.”.
The current versions of Zionism that are dominant in Israel are an ideology that is legally totalitarian in the occupied territories, murderous in the extreme in the way that they attack ‘uninvolved civilians’, seems to be intent on ethnic cleansing or extermination of a population, and yes – is religion based in a tribal basis.
Incidentally I don’t use religion as a guide because after reading a lot of history on the dominant religion of my youth – Christianity, I carried on to read my way through many of the others. I concluded that most of the ethics religions profess are usually adhered to in name only. But sadly, religions appear to be a very poor basis for ethical frameworks. Islam’s history, in my view, as being quite a lot better overall than Christianity. Not as good at the Buddhists.
Perhaps if you thought more, you wouldn’t be such a blind fool, and would be able to argue more coherently. But basically on this topic, you just seem to simple unthinking bigot – in my opinion.
And if I valued your opinion, I might care. I also was in the territorials a long time ago and have read widely on military history, and I've formed a different opinion from you of the IDF's capability. I just don't write lengthy posts full of assertions about it and accusing others of being bigots and fools, is all.
Nope, you write short comments with assertions with absolutely no reasoning. Usually accusing others of not knowing enough to distinguish what is likely to be repeated propaganda and and unsubstantiated claims.
Both of which are repeating propaganda and unsubstantiated claims from the IDF.
Basically you appear to be a parrot swanking the IDF.
"What I deny is that it's helpful to just repeat propaganda and unsubstantiated claims as fact."
Since you are the commenter who has been doing this (as demonstrated by the example we are discussing), can only recommend not behaving like a hypocrite. It was 100% clear what the IDF were doing around these distribution sites by the time, even without IDF people leaking their instructions.
Like I said, feel free to quote this alleged repeating of propaganda and unsubstantiated claims.
As you are surely aware the IDF releases propaganda, in this case the propaganda claim being that the IDF would not engage in shooting at and killing civilians queueing up for aid, which is what you repeated. This turned out to be unsubstantiated, in fact they were complying with their instructions.
So yes, you are precisely guilty of what you have charged.
You keep announcing me guilty of something while providing no evidence. I went looking myself and found I replied to someone on 18 June to say "We have no idea who killed those people," on the basis that claims aren't evidence. Which was true at the time. If you have some other post in mind, quote it. If I said what you're claiming and have since forgotten having said it, I'll apologise.
You have repeatedly said that the numerous stories of civilians going for aid and being shot were 'Hamas Propaganda'. This was untrue (and also a regular fixture of IDF propaganda and cover up, both in general and in these cases), the numerous reports of civilians going for aid and being massacred and shot were true and were done in line with IDF instruction. So yes, you are guilty of lying about these reports which were more than credible at the time.
You seem to be claiming that this wasn't lying because you have so little grasp of the facts that even BBC, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and numerous sources on the ground say something, who knows, maybe they are all just lying in support of Hamas. If that's your belief then lying to yourself doesn't absolve from lying to everybody else, it just makes you delusional.
The numerous stories of civilians going for aid and being shot are Hamas propaganda. That doesn't necessarily mean there's no truth in them, just that you shouldn't just leap to the conclusion that the numbers are accurate and that all were killed by Israelis.
What a surprise, the liar who promised an apology for a demonstration of their lies doesn't actually want to apologize for their lies.
Of course, you attempt to argue this by re-defining "Hamas propaganda" as, news which reflects badly on the IDF (or Israel), whether true or not, but allowed to be true. This is of course a re-definition and not how you used the term prior. This is fully demonstrated by the fact you have today condemned the IDF murder of civilians at aid centers, having discovered it was in fact true this was happening, but previously you did not condemn it based on the source being "Hamas Propaganda" and therefore probably untrue or unreliably sourced.
At this point you would be better off retracting this new definition as otherwise you are actually making the allegation that "Hamas Propaganda" is significantly reliable. But otherwise, we can I'm sure look forward to many comments to the effect of, "Hey, that's Hamas Propaganda and I condemn the IDF for committing those alleged war crimes. At that point calling something "Hamas Propaganda" seems rather superfluous, it literally conveys no information about the fact of the matter one way or the other, you may as well just go straight to I condemn the IDF bit.
https://cpj.org/2025/06/israel-cracks-down-on-palestinian-journalists-during-conflict-with-iran/
Israel prohibits international journalists in the Gaza strip – the Israeli government will have their reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Gaza_Strip_aid_distribution_killings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Gaza_Strip_aid_distribution_killings#See_also
The multiple reports of Gazans killed while waiting for aid are so apalling that it's only natural to assume they must be propaganda. After all, what's the alternative – that the IDF (they were just obeying orders) are as brutal as Hamas, if not moreso in this long-running asymmetric conflict.
You do know that these reports might be accurate, right?
What in those comments do you believe is untrue?
If you know for a fact these 'stories' are "Hamas propaganda", then present the evidence. Maybe both sides are using propaganda – maybe you and I are, depending on one's definition of propaganda.
One thing I know for sure is that I wouldn't trust your impartiality on the topic of misinformation in the Gaza war.
Could beanther example of "Hamas propaganda", but there do seem to have been a lot of 'technical errors'.
The evidence that the stories are Hamas propaganda is that Hamas is in charge of any official information that's released and is in control of which Gazans get to talk to journalists. You seem to have assumed that's the same thing as saying "Every single aspect of every one of these stories is untrue," which it isn't. Propaganda usually isn't entirely lies.
Sorry Psycho, I have tried but can't make sense of your comment.
Is this BBC 'story' "Hamas propaganda"? How much is truth, and how much is lies? Carry on.
Fighting continuing repressive invaders of your country is not "terrorism"!