Australia announces plan to recognize Palestinian state
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters on Monday that the government will recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September.
Referring to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, Albanese urged Israel to protect civilians and ensure the provision of food and medical supplies.
He said permanent forced displacement of civilians is illegal.
He added that the international community is moving to establish a Palestinian state consistent with a two-state solution.
Also on Monday, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced that the government will carefully weigh up its position over the next month on recognition of a state of Palestine.
France has already declared its plan to recognize Palestinian statehood. Britain and Canada have said they will do so if certain conditions are met.
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Japan Times
9 hours ago
- Japan Times
Palestinian mother 'destroyed' after image used to deny Gaza starvation
Palestinian-Canadian Faiza Najjar was able to leave Gaza last year, but could not bring her four adult daughters with her. She watched from a distance as food shortages in the territory worsened. From Canada, where she lives with her six other children, Najjar pursued a monthslong effort to get those she had left out of Gaza. She finally embraced her daughters and seven grandchildren when they arrived at Toronto's airport last month. But when clips of the emotional reunion were posted on social media, pro-Israeli accounts mocked her physical appearance saying it disproved claims of starvation in Gaza. "As a mother it just destroyed me," Najjar, 50, said. Najjar did not claim that she went hungry while in Gaza. But as recently as this past weekend a post viewed more than 300,000 times across multiple platforms ridiculed her, erroneously implying she had just left Gaza. "Did you see what that woman looked like?" the poster said, pointing out Najjar does not look undernourished. United Nations agencies have warned that famine was unfolding in Gaza, with Israel severely restricting the entry of aid. Images of sick and emaciated Palestinian children have drawn international outrage. The allegation has been denied by Israel. "There is no starvation in Gaza," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month. Palestinians hustle around a humanitarian parcel dropped by a military aircraft in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on Aug. 9 | AFP-Jiji The ridicule Najjar faced is part of a broader trend. Israeli anchors on the country's right-wing Channel 14 — sometimes described as the Hebrew Fox News — have laughed at "obese" mothers, alleging they steal their children's food. For Najjar, the fact that her family's reunion got caught up in a misinformation campaign was devastating. "After all the suffering, and losing everything, and nearly dying, some people still had the heart to mock them," she said, referring to her family. "My daughters lived there and their children went to sleep hungry ... with bombs outside their tents," Najjar said. Pro-Israeli commentators online also focused on her grandchildren's apparently healthy appearance. Najjar said they received medical treatment, including renourishment, at a hospital in Jordan before flying to Canada. Deflecting attention Mert Can Bayar, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, said the posts targeting Najjar are "just one little piece" of a misleading online narrative. Toronto's Mayor Olivia Chow removed a video she had posted on Instagram in which she welcomed arriving Palestinians because of abusive comments directed at the family. Comments on Chow's video also cited the family's physical appearance to broadly dismiss claims of starvation in Gaza. X's chatbot Grok also misidentified a 2025 AFP photo of an emaciated child in Gaza, incorrectly saying it was taken in Yemen seven years ago, fueling further claims that reports of starvation in Gaza have been fabricated. Valerie Wirtschafter, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, said the claims were reminiscent of falsehoods that emerged weeks into the war alleging Palestinians had posed as so-called crisis actors and staged their injuries. Wirtschafter said the hoax narrative "deflects from the real humanitarian harms that are happening right now." 'Denial' Israel's offensive has killed at least 61,430 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, figures the United Nations deems reliable. Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the war, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Forty-nine of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead. When Najjar left Gaza last year, her daughters — all in their 20s — did not have Canadian citizenship. With the family separated, she lived with crippling fear at the prospect of receiving word that they had been killed. While her daughters now have citizenship and are in Canada with their children, her sons-in-law remain in Gaza, where the U.N.'s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification says "widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths." "I just want the world to know the crisis is real," Najjar said. "Denial is deadly."
Japan Times
13 hours ago
- Japan Times
Israel's overnight bombardment of Gaza City kills at least 11
Israeli planes and tanks kept bombarding eastern areas of Gaza City overnight, killing at least 11 people, witnesses and medics said on Tuesday, with Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya arriving in Cairo for talks to revive a U.S.-backed ceasefire plan. The latest round of indirect talks in Qatar ended in deadlock in late July with Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas trading blame over the lack of progress on a U.S. proposal for a 60-day truce and hostage release deal. Israel has since said it will launch a new offensive and seize control of Gaza City, which it captured shortly after the war's outbreak in October 2023 before pulling out. Hamas' meetings with Egyptian officials, scheduled to begin on Wednesday, will focus on ways to stop the war, deliver aid, and "end the suffering of our people in Gaza," Hamas official Taher al-Nono said in a statement. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to expand military control over the Gaza Strip, expected to be launched in October, has increased a global outcry over the widespread devastation, displacement and hunger afflicting the enclave's 2.2 million people. It has also stirred criticism in Israel, with the military chief of staff warning it could endanger surviving hostages and prove a death trap for Israeli soldiers. It has also raised fears of further displacement and hardship among the estimated 1 million Palestinians in the Gaza City region. Foreign ministers of 24 countries including Britain, Canada, Australia, France and Japan, said on Tuesday the humanitarian crisis in Gaza had reached "unimaginable levels" and urged Israel to allow unrestricted aid into the enclave. Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike in northern Gaza, as seen from Israel's border with the enclave on Tuesday. | REUTERS Israel denies responsibility for hunger in Gaza, accusing Hamas of stealing aid. It says it has taken steps to increase deliveries, including pausing fighting for parts of the day in some areas and announcing protected routes for aid convoys. A Palestinian official with knowledge of the mediated ceasefire talks said Hamas was prepared to return to the negotiating table, and the leaders who were visiting Cairo on Tuesday would reaffirm that stance. "Hamas believes negotiation is the only way to end the war and is open to discuss any ideas that would secure an end to the war," the official, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said. However, the gaps between the sides appear to remain wide on key issues, including the extent of any Israeli military withdrawal and demands for Hamas to disarm. A Hamas official said on Tuesday the Islamist movement was ready to relinquish Gaza governance on behalf of a non-partisan committee, but it would not relinquish its arms before a Palestinian state is established. Netanyahu, whose far-right ultranationalist coalition allies want an outright Israeli takeover of all of Gaza, has vowed the war will not end until Hamas is eradicated. On Tuesday, Gaza's health ministry said that 89 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli fire in the past 24 hours. Witnesses and medics said Israeli bombardments overnight killed seven people in two houses in Gaza City's Zeitoun suburb and another four in an apartment building in the city center. In the south of Gaza, five people, including a couple and their child, were killed by an Israeli airstrike on a house in the city of Khan Younis and four others by a strike on a tent encampment in nearby coastal Mawasi, medics said. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports of the latest bombardments and that its forces take precautions to mitigate civilian harm. Separately, it said its forces had killed dozens of militants in north Gaza over the past month and destroyed more tunnels used by militants in the area. Five more people, including two children, have died of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza in the past 24 hours, the territory's health ministry said. The new deaths raised the number of deaths from the same causes to 227, including 103 children, since the war started, it added. Israel disputes the malnutrition fatality figures reported by the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave. The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures. Israel's offensive against Hamas in Gaza since then has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.
Japan Times
a day ago
- Japan Times
Hamas hostage videos silenced Israeli media's talk of Gaza aid crisis
A growing willingness among Israeli news media to critically explore the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip has all but evaporated in recent weeks after militant group Hamas released videos of two emaciated Israeli hostages. In late July, as images of starving Gazans stirred international outcry, some Israeli press and broadcasters began to carry reports on the worsening conditions there, urging a more robust aid response. Yonit Levi, the main news anchor of Channel 12, branded the humanitarian crisis in Gaza a "moral failure" live on air, and the heads of some universities and the national Holocaust memorial appealed to the government to help hungry Gazans. Israeli media has largely focused during 22 months of war on the trauma and impact on Israelis of Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 attack, in which, according to Israeli tallies, some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. Coverage has concentrated on the fate of the hostages and the casualties suffered by the Israeli army. Some Israelis welcomed Levi's comment and the spate of reports discussing conditions in Gaza as evidence of a readiness to examine the impact of the war on Palestinian civilians. But the mood in Israel hardened dramatically when, on July 31, Hamas released a video of the skeletal 21-year-old Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski, weeping and in pain. It was followed three days later by a video of Evyatar David, 24, who said he was being forced to dig his own grave. The videos — which one Palestinian source said were designed to show the terrible impact of restricted aid flows in Gaza — backfired, shutting down the growing sympathy in Israel towards civilians there. Amid international condemnation of Hamas, thousands of protestors took to the streets in Israel to demand the immediate return of the hostages. About 50 hostages are still in Gaza, but only around 20 of them are thought to still be alive. Uri Dagon, deputy editor-in-chief of Yisrael Hayom, Israel's most widely circulated newspaper, said that with hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, Israelis "don't have the ability to experience the pain of the other side." "I know that sounds terrible, but it's the truth," he said. Dagon accused foreign media of falling into a "campaign of lies" about starvation in Gaza: while his paper had published articles on suffering there, it emphasized that Hamas was to blame. He questioned why foreign outlets that published photos of emaciated Gazans had not given the same prominence to the harrowing images of Evyatar David. "I suggest senior editors in the international press review themselves and only then discuss how the Israeli press is conducting itself," Dagon said. Denials of starvation Polls in the wake of Oct. 7 that showed most Palestinians approved of the attack sowed anger in Israel. Videos of Gazans crowding around hostages in the immediate aftermath of the raid, filming them on their mobile phones, spitting on them and beating them also fueled lasting resentment. Harel Chorev, a senior researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University specializing in media and Palestinian society, said such incidents made it difficult for many Israelis to feel sympathy for people in Gaza. While international media, barred by Israel from entering Gaza, have relied on Palestinian journalists, many Israelis have little faith in their reporting. Some cite the lack of press freedom in Gaza under Hamas' authoritarian rule. Elnav Zangauker, center, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, holds a sign as she joins in a demonstration in Tel Aviv on Saturday, calling for a deal to free hostages held in Gaza. | AMIT ELKAYAM / THE NEW YORK TIMES "I don't think there is a famine in Gaza," said Orit Maimon, 28, a lawyer from Tel Aviv. "I don't think the situation there is ideal or very good but I don't think there is a famine." The Gaza health ministry says 222 people have died of starvation and malnutrition, including 101 children, since the war began. Right-leaning Channel 14 has devoted coverage in recent weeks to discrediting some reports of starving children. When a child featured in a front-page photograph in Britain's Daily Express newspaper was discovered to have a preexisting health condition, some Israeli outlets reacted with outrage. A poll released this month by The Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank, found that 78% of Jewish Israelis think Israel is making a substantial effort to avoid Palestinian suffering while only 15% think Israel could do more and chooses not to. The Israeli offensive makes reporting in Gaza perilous. According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, a professional body, Israel has killed more than 230 journalists in Gaza since November. Those figures could not be independently verified. Israel denies deliberately targeting journalists and says many of those killed were members of militant groups working under the guise of the press. On Sunday, Israel's military said it killed an Al Jazeera journalist in an airstrike: it accused 28-year-old Anas Al Sharif of being a Hamas cell leader. Al Sharif had rejected the accusations, which Israel made before he was killed, and rights advocates said Al Sharif was targeted for his reporting. More than 61,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel's military campaign, according to Gaza health officials Criticism of the government Polls conducted over the course of the war found that around 70% of the Israeli public wants to see Israel make a deal to release the hostages, even if that means ending the war immediately. Several Israeli media have criticized Netanyahu's government for failing to bring the hostages home or to enunciate a clear plan for Gaza after the conflict. Among its most outspoken critics has been left-leaning newspaper Haaretz, which has also published considerable reporting on the suffering in Gaza, including investigative pieces on army operations there. In November, Netanyahu's cabinet — which includes far-right ultranationalist parties — approved a ban on officials talking to Haaretz and government advertising boycott of the paper, accusing it of supporting "the enemies of the state in the midst of a war." The Israeli prime minister's office declined to comment for this story. Netanyahu's ministers have also put forward a proposal to privatize Channel 11, the public broadcaster, which a spokesperson for his Likud party criticized for serving the radical left and damaging Israelis' morale. Some media experts have warned this could have a chilling effect on media coverage of the government. Asa Shapira, head of the Marketing and Advertising studies at Tel Aviv University, said the government's actions impact what Israeli channels decide to show. While editorial decisions to focus on the fate of Israeli hostages was a response to public concern, there was also fear of attracting government disapproval, he said.
