New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon attends a press conference with Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (not pictured) at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Aug. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Wednesday that Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu had “lost the plot” as the country weighs whether to recognize a Palestinian state.

Luxon told reporters that the lack of humanitarian assistance, the forceful displacement of people, and the annexation of Gaza were utterly appalling and that Netanyahu had gone way too far.

“I think he has lost the plot,” added Luxon, who heads the center-right coalition government. “What we are seeing overnight, the attack on Gaza City, is utterly, utterly unacceptable.”

Luxon said earlier this week New Zealand was considering whether to recognize a Palestinian state. Close ally Australia on Monday joined Canada, the UK, and France in announcing it would do so at a UN conference in September.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached “unimaginable levels,” Britain, Canada, Australia and several of their European allies said on Tuesday, calling on Israel to allow unrestricted aid into the war-torn Palestinian enclave.

Israel recently increased the flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza, after imposing a temporary embargo in an effort to keep them out of the hands of Hamas, which often steals the aid for its own use and sells the rest to civilians at inflated prices. While facilitating the entry of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza, Israeli officials have condemned the UN and other international aid agencies for their alleged failure to distribute supplies, noting much of the humanitarian assistance has been stalled at border crossings or stolen. According to UN data, the vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients.

Ahead of Wednesday’s parliamentary session, a small number of protesters gathered outside New Zealand’s parliament buildings, beating pots and pans. Local media organixation Stuff reported protesters chanted “MPs grow a spine, recognize Palestine.”

On Tuesday, Greens parliamentarian Chloe Swarbrick was removed from parliament’s debating chamber after she refused to apologize for a comment insinuating government politicians were spineless for not supporting a bill to “sanction Israel for its war crimes.”

Swarbrick was ordered to leave the debating chamber for a second day on Wednesday after she again refused to apologize. When she refused to leave, the government voted to suspend her.

“Sixty-eight members of this House were accused of being spineless,” House speaker Gerry Brownlee said. “There has never been a time where personal insults like that delivered inside a speech were accepted by this House and I’m not going to start accepting it.”

As Swarbrick left, she called out “free Palestine.”

The Al Jazeera Media Network logo is seen on its headquarters building in Doha, Qatar, June 8, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Naseem Zeitoon

Outrageous reporting this week enabled terrorism to hide behind the mask of journalism, portraying an Al Jazeera reporter targeted by Israel in Gaza as a heroic figure.

In reality, it was a sea of lies that ignored clear evidence that Anas al-Sharif was, in fact, a member of Hamas.

Almost all foreign media outlets mourned the death of al-Sharif in an IDF strike on Monday, August 12, while doubting or altogether omitting hard evidence presented by the IDF proving that he was a commander of a terrorist cell in a Hamas guided rockets platoon.

Western press have eaten up Al Jazeera *cough* Hamas propaganda over Anas al-Sharif’s elimination by the IDF.

Here’s a  of some of the most egregious coverage. https://t.co/zrgp91N4EP

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 12, 2025

The IDF presented an internal Hamas document where al-Sharif was registered as a soldier and team commander, as well as a photo showing him embraced by former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7, 2023, attack against Israel.

كما قلنا منذ البداية ورفض البعض تصديقه: لا يجلس مجالس الارهابيين إلا الإرهابي. #أنس_الشريف لم يكن صحفيًا بل إرهابيًا حمساويًا pic.twitter.com/KG6DPrlyoW

— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) August 11, 2025

The media did not even bother displaying these. Instead, al-Sharif’s photo in a press vest circulated everywhere, and Israel’s claims were either ignored or undermined.

Sky News, for example, lauded al-Sharif as a “crucial reporting voice,” but IDF evidence of his Hamas affiliation was disregarded.

On social media network X, Sky News also posted a story quoting Al Jazeera’s condemnation of Al Sharif’s “assassination.” The network did not respond when Israeli former hostage Shlomi Ziv commented: “I was held by a journalist in captivity and his father was a Doctor!!!!!!!”

Meanwhile, the AP and Reuters — the world’s two leading news agencies — failed to properly report what the IDF was stating.

The AP simply lied, saying that Israel said “without producing evidence that al-Sharif had led a Hamas cell. It was a claim the news organization and al-Sharif had denied” — as if a denial is a clear-cut refutation of hard evidence.

Reuters did the same, saying Israel did not disclose any evidence.

And instead of headlines such as “IDF kills Hamas terror cell leader posing as ‘Al Jazeera’ journalist,” both agencies’ headlines were one-sided.

They took the Palestinian narrative that Israel targets journalists as gospel, even though this narrative is based on the Qatari-funded network that supports Hamas and the denial that its worker has been exposed as a terrorist:

The New York Times went as far as eulogizing al-Sharif and the four other journalists who were killed in the strike, displaying Israel’s proven claims as mere accusations.

Nowhere did the Times display al-Sharif’s photo with Sinwar or the documents showing his Hamas affiliation.

This evidence was also omitted from a Washington Post headline and sub-header that made Israel look like it deliberately targets journalists:

Meanwhile, CNN produced hard-hitting videos showing al-Sharif’s Al Jazeera’s dispatches from war-torn Gaza, but without showing any of Israel’s evidence.

Ultimately, this is symptomatic of a wider problem throughout this war — whereby the media treat IDF statements with disdain while treating the claims of a terrorist organization as fact.

All these outlets, of course, failed to mention that al-Sharif conveniently ignored Gazans’ protests against Hamas throughout the war. Courage, apparently, applies only to reporting what Hamas wants the world to hear.

And almost none of them mentioned that al-Sharif was not the first terrorist who posed as a journalist in Gaza, perhaps in an attempt to hide the fact that it is a common phenomenon — from CNN’s Hassan Eslaiah to Al Jazeera’s Ismail Al Ghoul, among others.

Will the media ever doubt the Qatari network’s statements as it doubts the IDF?

Will they ever question what any journalist in Gaza says?

They can’t. Because they project their own conceptions on what it is like to cover a warzone, especially Gaza. They think that any journalist there deserves automatic solidarity and protection, instead of professional scrutiny.

With a pre-existing pro-Palestinian bias –  it means the entire global media sings to Hamas’ tune.

Indeed, it proves Hamas’ evil brilliance of using the term “journalist” as a cover for terrorism. If anyone doubts it, it is an assault on the freedom of the press. Thus, the global media outcry over al-Sharif and his colleagues is a betrayal of real journalism, manipulated to demonize Israel and enable attacks against it. The outcry should have been directed against the exploitation of respected titles to promote terrorist agendas or fire rockets at innocent civilians.

Al Jazeera has already succeeded in promoting its own Hamas-friendly narrative in the aftermath of al-Sharif and his colleagues’ deaths — one where Israel is attempting to “silence voices” from revealing the truth of what is going on inside Gaza. As the IDF gears up for a potential invasion of Gaza City, we can expect to hear more of this narrative, as Al Jazeera and its fellow travelers in Western media falsely claim that Israel is attempting to cover up alleged crimes by deliberately targeting media workers.

The truth is quite the opposite. But it is unlikely to be reported.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The new Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, March 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

The Israeli military said on Wednesday that chief of staff Eyal Zamir has approved the “main concept” for an attack plan in the Gaza Strip.

Israel has 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.