Right. I am sorry about the length of this press review, but my oh my what a shitty week. This week has been dominated by violence, mostly from Israel (no surprise) and the West (also always at the scene of the crime). It is in moments like this that we need excellent reporting, we need journalists to tell us the facts, to make sense of the events and to explain their implications - so where are they? Not in mainstream or legacy media it seems. I try to keep a chronological order to the articles, but this story can be told differently.
It’s been hard to complete this newsletter and not include the latest development. From what I gathered in the news this morning, the vocabulary is increasingly imperialist and reminds me of the 2003 narrative surrounding the invasion of Iraq. We’ll analyse all that in detail in the near future, of course.
Hide the pain: how a war reporter keeps going when their own family are victims, The Guardian, 11 JUNE 2025
Foreign journalists have not been allowed in Gaza since October 7 (CHECK DATE ACTUALLY). All the information we are getting is either from Israeli officials (the BBC loves those), Palestinian authorities or Palestinian journalists on the ground. Journalists who are witnessing the death of their colleagues (at least 225 journalists have been murdered by Israel, a grave attack on press freedom), friends, families. Yet they keep going.
Wael Al-Dahdouh is one of those journalists and his experience is a testimony to human bravery.
Dahdouh says journalist colleagues in safer regions have a duty to support those in Gaza by speaking out for them, raising awareness about the killing of journalists and putting pressure on Israel to protect members of the media.
[…]
“I want to see the journalists’ colleagues from all over the world using their conscience, morals and international law to do what they can for their colleagues and brothers in the Gaza Strip. At least then we can feel that we were not abandoned and the world did not silence our murder.”
It goes without saying that journalists must be granted the right to report from the ground in Gaza. It also goes without saying that doing so, considering Israel’s habit of killing everything with a press vest, it would be extremely dangerous. For Israel, not allowing reporters is the best deal ever: no one can see what they’re doing (can’t trust the Palestinians, they’re all Hamas), they don’t risk killing foreigners and tarnishing their relations with the West (the West is A-OK with genocide), and they can use media as a propaganda arm. It’s a win win win situation.
Did Israel Just “Blow Up” Trump’s Bid for an Iran Nuclear Deal?, The Intercept, 12 JUNE 2025
According to Tehran, 78 people, mostly civilians, were killed by Israel’s attack.1
In what it deemed a “preemptive strike,” the Israeli military claimed to target Iran’s nuclear sites, like the one in Natanz, its ballistic missile program, nuclear scientists, and senior military officials. Among them was armed forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri, who was initially rumored to be dead but is apparently safe.
Given that Iran had neither shown any preparations for an attack on Israel nor made any military threats against it, the preemptive strike was certainly illegal under international law — not that Netanyahu has shown any particular concern for such niceties.
+ Israel Attacks Iran, Promising Full-Scale Military Operation, Drop Site News, 13 JUNE 2025
“The U.S. is reaping what it sowed in 2018. We had a deal—not a perfect deal, but a good deal that the Iranians were fully implementing,” said Sina Azodi, a specialist in international relations and Middle East politics at George Washington University. “But Donald Trump came in, he withdrew from it, and he mistakenly calculated that Iran would come back and beg for a better deal. Everything he thought has proven wrong.”
Cuts to BBC World Service funding would ‘make us less safe’, MPs tell ministers, The Guardian, 08 JUNE 2025
Remembering Dahdouh’s words in mind, let’s think about the information we have been getting from the BBC on Palestine. Garbage huh. Now let’s read these lines:
The service is just one institution promoting Britain’s soft power abroad, but it is arguably the most powerful, reaching 450m people a week, according to the broadcaster’s own figures.
Britain’s soft power abroad. What does that mean? To quote myself: The term ‘soft power’ was coined in 1990 by Joseph S. Nye, an American political scientist, in a Foreign Policy article. He described the shift from ‘hard’ military power that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, “the factors of technology, education, and economic growth are becoming more significant in international power, while geography, population, and raw materials are becoming somewhat less important.” Power, he wrote, is the ability to change the behaviour of states; if the culture and ideology are attractive, other countries will be willing to follow. Uh oh, sounds like imperialism to me.
Jonathan McClory, the managing partner at Sanctuary Counsel and an expert on soft power, said: “It’s a gratuitous accident of history that we have the BBC World Service. You couldn’t recreate it if you were starting from scratch, but it enables us to shape a global information landscape and promote British values, such as a free press, transparency and broad support for human rights.”
I gagged while reading those last few words. Silly. Human rights aren’t a British value. Look how our governments treat migrants, refugees, people with disabilities, Palestinians (actually any colonised country), POC, transpeople, poor people, children, workers, unemployed... So, is the BBC the propaganda arm of Westminster, or is it a watchdog, ready to inform Britons (and most of the world) truthfully?
Two things can be true: the BBC should be properly funded and be able to maintain the World Service, but the BBC should also be held responsible for its coverage and must improve greatly to uphold the highest standards of journalism. Because this ain’t it.
Greta Thunberg tried to shame western leaders - and found they have no shame, Jonathan Cook for Middle East Eye, 12 JUNE 2025
Were you to only read one piece on the topic, this is the one. A very comprehensive perspective of the Madleen, the West’s guilt and the long history of manipulation by Israel of the media, and how it fuels conflicts in Gaza (other than the genocide).
The journalists have publicly worried that they are being excluded because Israel has something to hide. As though Israel had nothing to hide in the preceding 20 months, when those same journalists docilely accepted their exclusion - and invariably regurgitated Israel’s deceitful spin on its atrocities.
If you imagine that the reporting from Gaza would have been much different had the BBC, CNN, the Guardian or the New York Times had reporters on the ground, think again.
The truth is the coverage would have looked much as it has done for more than a year and a half, with Israel dictating the story lines, with Israel’s denials foregrounded, with Israel’s claims of Hamas “terrorists” in every hospital, school, bakery, university, and refugee camp used to justify the destruction and slaughter.
+ Attack dogs: how Europe supplies Israel with brutal canine weapons, The Guardian, 12 JUNE 2025
+ Compare the courage of Greta Thunberg’s Gaza aid mission with the inaction and complicity of western governments, The Guardian, 10 JUNE 2025
(Let’s take a quick minute to appreciate the new low LBC has found for itself:)
+ Israel preparing to deport Gaza aid boat activists, including Greta Thunberg,2 The Guardian, 10 JUNE 2025
Turkey condemned the interception as a “heinous attack” and Iran denounced it as “a form of piracy” in international waters.
Quite hard to believe that, once again, Turkey and Iran have said more than the UK... oh well. The West has no high horse to look up from, our government are actively and knowingly participating in the genocide.
This article reflects the Western media tone when talking about Gaza: Israel’s crimes are merely mentioned. Greta Thunberg is ‘deported’ as if she came in illegally, the Madleen was ‘intercepted’, the Israeli forces ‘boarded’ and not forcefully, ‘Dozens of people have been killed near GHF distribution points’ and not murdered by Israel when waiting in queue for food while being starved…. The list goes on and on and on.
Egypt's Crackdown on the Global March to Gaza, Drop Site News, 14 JUNE 2025
A convoy that has been widely ignored by the media, or at least the media I consumed this week. The convoy’s aim is, like the Madleen, to break the siege of Gaza. This is a brilliant example of a grassroots movement and a show of support from the people. A lot of us do not stand with our governments: we do not agree with their belligerent policies and their complicity in the genocide committed by Israel.
Palestinians are currently deprived of internet, of access to the outside world (on top of having no water, food, electricity, medicines, etc.), and I can’t imagine how abandoned they must feel. Why is no one helping? Why is no one stopping the massacre? Does no one care?
Egyptian authorities are cracking down on hundreds of international activists who arrived in the country to take part in a planned march to the Rafah border crossing and call for an end to Israel’s siege of Gaza.
The grassroots movement, called the Global March to Gaza, made repeated requests for permission at Egyptian embassies abroad in the days and weeks leading up to the planned action to cross into Sinai and gather in al-Arish for the march. But, according to organizers, Egypt has refused authorization and participants from 80 countries arriving in Cairo this week have instead been subject to hotel raids, harassment, arrests, and deportations.
The article emphasises Egypt’s position as a country with a long history of state repression of protests, while also pointing to the historical and political factors at play here, a reminder of the deep roots of imperialism:
Egypt remains tethered to the 1979 Camp David Accords—which form the bedrock of its relationship with the United States. It is the second largest recipient of US military aid in the world after Israel. For years, Egypt, the only country other than Israel to share a border with Gaza, has coordinated with Israel on security and helped enforce the blockade on the territory.
Trump sends thousands more troops to LA as mayor says city is being used as an ‘experiment’, The Guardian, 10 JUNE 2025
Over the last months, ICE officers have been kidnapping people. “The White House has aggressively ramped up immigration enforcement with mass detentions in overcrowded facilities, a new travel ban, a major crackdown on international students and rushed deportations without due process.”
Los Angeles county is home to 3.5 million immigrants, the Guardian also notes.
Civil rights activists criticized the militarized response of local law enforcement, including LAPD, which has a history of injuring protesters, sometimes leading to costly settlements. Several journalists were injured at the protests, with an Australian reporter on Sunday shot by a rubber bullet at close range while filming a segment.
“When residents come together to make use of their first amendment rights, often LAPD responds with a show of force,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, a legal support group, who was present at the protests. “When you show up in riot gear and paramilitary equipment, you inject into an already dynamic situation a volatile element that escalates things.”
[…] Perez, of the legal support group, noted how immigrants were deeply woven into the fabric of life in LA, making uprisings against raids inevitable: “When a city like this is the target of an immigration raid by an administration like this, you’re going to deal with a popular and massive outpouring of resistance.”
+ What Trump and Hegseth Really Fear, Lucid, 08 JUNE 2025
[…] there is no question that Trump is accelerating the creation of a police state in America. To justify the escalation, Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is parroting propaganda that is straight out of the authoritarian playbook in its creation of a fake emergency.
+ The Anti-ICE Uprising, New Means, 09 JUNE 2025
This offers a different (and much-needed) perspective on the so-called protestors’ violence.
What we have to keep in mind, always, is that protests against ICE do not ‘turn violent,’ they begin with the violence of ICE. They begin with federal agents raiding school graduations to tear families apart. They begin with ICE invading workplaces to tear people away from the lives they’ve built and the communities they live in. They begin with the lie that some people should be kidnapped, and with the immense violence inherent in that act.
+ Trump's civil war, Timothy Snyder, 12 JUNE 2025
On Trump’s vision for the US army and how it plays into his authoritarian agenda.
Misogyny in the metaverse: is Mark Zuckerberg’s dream world a no-go area for women?, The Guardian, 10 JUNE 2025
What a day to be a woman on the internet!3
[…] according to NSPCC research, while 150 apps, games and websites were used to groom children online between 2017 and 2023, where the means of communication was known, 47% of online grooming offences took place on products owned by Meta.
These are not isolated incidents or cherry-picked horror stories. Research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that users were exposed to abusive behaviour every seven minutes in the metaverse.
and why it is critical to act now:
If Zuckerberg’s vision comes to fruition and the boardrooms, classrooms, operating theatres, lecture halls and meeting spaces of tomorrow exist in virtual reality, then closing those spaces off from women, girls and other marginalised groups, because of the tolerance of various forms of prejudice and abuse in the metaverse, will be devastating. If we allow this now, when the metaverse is (relatively speaking) in its infancy, we are baking inequality into the building blocks of this new world.
It’s a bright future.
Source: The Guardian
Greta Thunberg was not alone on the ship. Alongside her, 11 people were kidnapped by Israel, including journalists and activists, but also a member of the European Parliament - Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian MEP. Yes, Israel kidnapped a foreign government official in international water, on a boat aiming to break the siege in Gaza.
Includes all those identifying as women and/or facing gendered violence.