Israeli Hostages & Palestinian Prisoners
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Editorial
By Matt Annett
Five minute read
In the past week, it's been hard to avoid news about a massive hostage exchange between Hamas and the Israeli government. Al Jazeera has reported that the official exchange was about 1,950 Palestinians for just 20 Israelis (plus the remains of another 28 deceased Israelis).
It seems hard to read these numbers as anything other than representative of the sheer disproportionality of this conflict - one state with a highly trained and highly funded military, inaccurately purporting itself to be the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’, indiscriminately bombarding another state who can barely manage to be recognised as such, and has been purposely crippled and occupied for the better part of the last century.
Media outlets around the world have been using some specific terminology for the last two years: captive Israelis in Gaza are ‘hostages’, but captive Palestinians are ‘prisoners’. There is immense power in this branding, and it's never been more on display than in these past weeks since the so-called ‘peace deal’.
The term ‘hostage’, as other outlets have pointed out, indicates victimhood - a hostage is often a non-combatant who is held against their will by a violent party, and to blame that hostage for their position would be nothing short of inhumane. The majority of Israelis who were taken hostage on October 7th were, it seems, certainly in that category.
‘Prisoner’, on the other hand, evokes a different feeling, right? Although a hostage and a prisoner may both be placed in a small room against their will and not allowed to leave, there is a strong implication that a ‘prisoner’ is a criminal, and has thereby only ended up in this situation thanks to their own actions. They are a wrong-doer, a no-hoper, so we put them in a little room and punish them for their transgressions and prevent them from wreaking any more havoc on civilised society.
The egregious error that arises here, then, is the fact that a huge number of these detained Palestinians are not criminals - they’re held with neither charge nor trial. Anadolu Agency reports that 11,100 Palestinians were being detained as of September 2025, which includes 400 children and 3,577 people confirmed to be held without charge. Israel has not released details of how many of these detainees are being charged.
Many of these detentions are allowed under Israel’s 2002 Unlawful Combatants legislation, which uses dangerously vague wording to imprison people such as Fahamiya al-Khalidi, an 82-year-old Alzheimer’s patient, and her carer for six weeks. Al-Khalidi is just one of around 6,000 Palestinians who’ve been held as ‘unlawful combatants’, fewer than a quarter of whom have been identified by Israel as actual combatants, even using the legislation’s irresponsibly loose definition.
This is all to say that the purposeful use of these terms is part of the collective cowardice of media outlets and governments around the world - a subtle and subconscious effort to paint Israelis as only victims and Palestinians as all criminal aggressors. As usual, nuance is left on the cutting room floor, and the true story of the Israeli government’s genocidal aggression is papered over with claims of victimhood and a distinct and inhumane lack of regard for Palestinian lives and freedom.
Selective Curiosity in Australian Media
Our media in Australia has been fascinated with this comparatively minuscule number of people being imprisoned by Hamas, and often seems to treat mentioning them as if it’s a get-out-of-anti-Semitic-jail-free card. Over the past weeks, there have been tears of joy by Sky News employees at the prospect of this handful of Israelis returning home and claims that this exchange marks ‘the end of the war’.
However, these outlets do not share the same curiosity about the thousands of Palestinians who’ve been imprisoned, murdered, tortured, humiliated and abused sexually, physically and mentally in the last 2 years, let alone since the establishment of the state of Israel. There is no demand by international governments to return the thousands of Palestinians suffering in Israeli jails safely home, and there is seemingly a serious lack of onus placed on the Israeli government to release this hoard of detainees in order to facilitate an end of the current conflict. Why does our media celebrate the end of the war only when the Israeli prisoners are released, but seems to care little about the massive number of Palestinian prisoners who are still being held without charge?
On October 17th, Guardian Australia shared two posts on Instagram - first, a small collection of accounts from Israelis who were held by Hamas, then anecdotes from Palestinians who were held by Israel. The former post speaks of beatings and rough treatment, but also of one captive who spent his days playing cards with his captors. The post also frames ‘starvation’ as if it were part of Hamas’ evil torture techniques, and not a bi-product of Israel’s intentional deprivation of aid and food from everyone in the Gaza Strip.
Guardian Australia’s Instagram post on October 17th.
The latter post is more graphic. It describes in vivid detail some of the torture techniques employed by IDF captors - instead of playing cards, Palestinians were hung from walls and sprayed with cold water, according to former captive, Mohammed al-Asaliya.
It was Never about Hostages
Israel and its supporters have trotted out the ‘bring them home’ line at every opportunity in the last 2 years. Israeli counter-protesters attend Pro-Palestine and anti-genocide rallies around the world holding signs with details of Israeli hostages - their names, ages, aspirations - as if the Pro-Palestinian side of the street was in favour of these hostages being taken and held. In all my time attending and reporting on this issue in and around Australian cities, I have never heard anything that could be considered support for Hamas’ holding of these people.
This war, despite what Zionists and sympathisers continue to claim, was never simply about hostages. If it was, Netanyahu would have accepted any of the deals that the Israeli government was offered at multiple points throughout this conflict. In February of 2025, Hamas reportedly made an offer: all hostages released in exchange for a permanent ceasefire and IDF withdrawal. A similar deal was allegedly offered in July 2025 - to both offers, Israel responded with dismissal and continued bombardment.
If this was just a war about these hostages, the IDF would not be using the immensely barbaric and unprecise military tactics that they are. The IDF has, in its brave and delicate conquest to rescue innocent Israeli civilians, killed a swathe of them - it turns out that levelling buildings, many of which contain said hostages, is not a safe and effective way to ‘bring them home’. Hamas reports that ‘over 70’ Israeli hostages have been killed, but this number has not been corroborated. Popular Israeli newspaper Haaretz found that Israel has killed 20 of these hostages and severely endangered the lives of 34 more.
If the war was simply about hostages, these people would likely still be alive. If the war was about hostages, the unspeakable number of children may not have been murdered by the IDF. From an outsider perspective, this reporter can only conclude that this war does seem to be about the intentional killing of a people and the aggressive and violent seizure of land. Now that the hostages have been released, the Israeli government and their supporters can no longer claim otherwise, and the Australian government and media are running out of sand to stick their heads into.
Bomb Convention Flees to Perth
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By Matt Annett
4 minute read
Prominent biennial weapons expo, Landforces, has recently announced their intention to hold their next event in Perth, despite a previous agreement with the Victorian Government that the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) would be the home of the convention ‘in 2024 and beyond’. In fact, there was seemingly already confirmation from all parties that Landforces 2026 would take place in Melbourne.
The Landforces website in mid-2025, proudly naming Melbourne as its host in 2026.
The current Landforces wesbite.
The lack of reasons for this migration to the far west seems curious, particularly given that the expo’s initial move from Brisbane to Melbourne came about partly as a result of increased capacity needs, aiming to take advantage of MCEC’s expansive 70,000m² volume. This makes the recent move to Perth's Convention and Exhibition Centre even more puzzling, marking a downgrade to a mere 28,000m².
This comes after Landforces 2024 - exactly one year ago today - was gifted an exorbitant police security force by the Victorian Government, with Premier Jacinta Allen amassing a swarm of NSW Police to add to the presence, based solely on the stretch goal of one organiser’s website to gather 25,000 protesters.
The 2024 event itself was known to host such exhibitors as IAI - Israeli Aerospace Industries - through their Australian affiliate, IAI Australia. IAI is owned by the Israeli Government, and is a primary supplier to the Israeli Defence Forces.
Some 1000-1800 police officers from Victoria and New South Wales were corralled to protect the building full of bombs and suits, the payroll for which ran the taxpayer a brisk $10-15 million. This sea of blue included members of the often-violent Public Order Response Team, the mounted brigade and regular officers dressed head-to-toe in riot armor, sporting ‘non-lethal’ firearms which were used to injure approximately 100 protesters on the first day of the event.
This first day of the event saw 24 heavily armoured, gun-wielding police officers allegedly sustain minor injuries from small objects thrown by protesters. A photographer, who was not taking part in the protest, was hit in the ear by a 40mm rubber bullet, and has reportedly suffered permanent hearing damage.
Big Press was on the scene that day, and can personally attest to the sheer militarism of the police officers. We saw protesters beaten to the ground from behind, dragged along concrete, kneeled on by 4 officers at once, tear gassed, pepper-sprayed, shot at, pushed and violently arrested. It seems hard to describe it as anything other than state violence in the name of protecting the business of selling guns, bombs and tanks. If you’re interested in what we saw, you can watch our video.
The months after the expo were marred by 21 further protester arrests, which often included groups of as many as 12 police officers barging into sharehouses to search through the closets and under the beds of young people who’d been present at the protest that day. The majority of those arrested on the day or in the following months have seen their charges dropped, painting these arrests as a waste of time and money at best, blatant intimidation of protesters at worst.
Further details about the violent police conduct on that day can be read about in an open letter to members of the Victorian state government from Disrupt Land Forces, as well as a thorough and damning report by Melbourne Activist Legal Service. Then-Chief Commissioner Shane Patterson stated at the time that he could not be more proud of the conduct of officers on the ground.
The Landforces website has scrubbed all mentions of any previous deal with MCEC and the Victorian government. This appears to be an attempt to both cover their escape from Victoria's capital and reframe the move as being necessary for Western Australia’s economy. One is left to wonder why Landforces seems to have forgotten to mention the immense costs to the taxpayer and social cohesion that come with hosting the event.
To the bruised, bloodied, spluttering protesters of Disrupt Landforces 2024: job done.
See you in Perth.
The Problem with Killing Journalists
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BIG PRESS !!!
Editorial
By Matt Annett
6 minute read
Big Press reporter Tom Buckingham spoke with an IDF soldier and counter-protester outside the Israeli Embassy in Canberra.
There are a variety of reports of IDF soldiers sexually assaulting Palestinian adults and children. Independent NGO, Save the Children, was reporting on children being strip-searched by Israeli soldiers in July 2023 - three months before October 7th. The succinctly-named United Nations International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel released a report in March of 2025 which detailed instances of men and boys being stripped naked, assaulted and humiliated. These acts were videoed and photographed by Israeli Security Forces members. The same report details a case of a 14-year-old girl being sexually assaulted and a pregnant woman and her three and four-year-old children being threatened with rape by Israeli soldiers. The Associated Press shared this report. Much of the coverage of this issue comes either straight from the United Nations or from established media outlets who draw on UN reports.
It is, of course, important to not take media reports at face value - we here in Australia know as well as any that every headline must be taken with a grain of Murdoch-flavoured salt. The UN, however, is not a media outlet. This is not to say that it does not also deserve the critical eye: grand as it may seem, the UN is, in one reporter’s opinion, a playground for destructive US foreign policy, but it cannot be considered unto a newspaper which might get away with the same kind of shameless dogmatism as the Herald Sun.
In the interview, Tom decided to pull up one of these reports of sexual violence by the IDF, googling the topic right there in front of the soldier. Upon a cursory glance at the extensive list of reports that such a search yields, the first of which being by the UN, the soldier added that the UN is ‘proven to have been infiltrated’ by Hamas. He’s likely referring to claims about UNRWA being ‘totally infiltrated by Hamas’ which are based solely on an Israeli Intelligence dossier which alleges that almost 200 UNRWA members were part of Hamas, and played a role in the October 7th attacks. This, like many other claims that the Israeli Government has made throughout this conflict, cannot be independently verified.
Independent verification would, as the name so intuitively suggests, involve organisations or journalists being able to verify these claims, independent of Hamas or the Israeli Government’s significantly partisan influences. This would have been made easier if Israel had released the aforementioned dossier which made these claims, but they didn’t. Claims of sexual assault on Palestinian children would be far more robust if there was more independent verification from a wider variety of news outlets (although, the amount of evidence for the latter of these two examples is far more extensive and compelling than that of the former.) This seems to be one of Netanyahu’s most powerful strategies in this conflict: without independent verification, claims cannot be confirmed, nor thoroughly debunked, thus giving the Israeli Government plausible deniability, however flimsy it may be.
Hamas is no friend to journalists either - the organisation has a history of intimidating both foreign and local journalists in Gaza, but importantly, there is no evidence to suggest that Hamas has killed or detained any journalists since October 7th, and thus does not deserve the same level of scrutiny on this issue.
Israel has made it effectively impossible for foreign journalists to enter Gaza. The restriction has been in place since October 7th, and was upheld in early 2024 by the Israeli Supreme Court, citing risks to journalists’ safety and the potential to compromise IDF military operations. BBC International editor Jeremy Bowen spoke earlier this year about being granted just half a day’s access to Gaza (under IDF supervision) within the previous 18 months. Ironically, it seems as though the greatest risk to the lives of journalists is the same group that claims to have their safety in mind - the IDF.
Since October 7th, there have been somewhere around 200 journalists killed in the bombardment of Gaza. This comes from UN and associated reports, and was independently verified by Reporters without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Associated Press and Al Jazeera, to name a few. It has become the deadliest conflict for media workers in history. According to a UN expert, “We have received disturbing reports that, despite being clearly identifiable in jackets and helmets marked “press” or travelling in well-marked press vehicles, journalists have come under attack, which would seem to indicate that the killings, injury, and detention are a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to obstruct the media and silence critical reporting.”
That, of course, leaves only one group of Journalists in Gaza - the ones who already live there. Of the plethora of journalists killed, the Committee to Protect Journalists names 178 of the 186 confirmed killed journalists and media workers as Palestinian. The organisation is in the process of investigating more than 130 further cases of journalists who’ve been killed, arrested, injured or had their homes or offices damaged. In July, four major media outlets released a joint statement which expressed deep concern for their journalists in Gaza, who are, like the rest ofthe Gazan population, suffering from starvation due to Israel’s staunch restrictions on aid entering the region.
One such journalist was a man named Anas al-Sharif. Al-Sharif was a well-known reporter for Al Jazeera Arabic, and on August 10th, an Israeli strike on his tent killed him, fellow Al Jazeera reporter Mohammed Qreiqeh, cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal and two freelance journalists, Momen Aliwa and Mohammed al-Khalidi. Israel has claimed that al-Sharif was a part of Hamas’ military wing, and in October 2024, named him ‘head of rocket launching’, a conclusion based on – you guessed it – unreleased documents. Al Jazeera has vehemently denied the claim, referring to the targeted attack as ‘a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.’ Al-Sharif had written a pre-prepared statement to be released upon his death, in which he speaks of his four-year-old daughter, Sham, and his one-year-old son, Salah.
Hundreds gathered outside Parliament House in July to protest the Israeli Government’s genocide and implore the Australian Government to impose sanctions.
Barring, killing and detaining journalists seems to be a strategy by the Israeli government to allow supporters such as our interviewee to rock on the balls of their feet and, instead of outright admitting any support for genocidal behaviour, simply purport that there’s just not enough proof.
We should always be critical of the media. Anything that’s only been reported by a single outlet or especially by a government deserves the deepest and most dogged skepticism, but we’ve reached the point where debating the realities of the Israeli government’s genocidal activity, in all its forms, is akin to debating a child who never stops asking ‘why?’.