Alex McKinnon - Deep Cut News

The National Press Club is under fire for hosting Israel’s ambassador after cancelling other speakers and remaining largely silent on the killing of journalists in Gaza.

The National Press Club is fielding heavy criticism for extending a speaking invitation to the Israeli ambassador.

Hillel Newman, Israel’s new envoy to Canberra, addressed the press club on Tuesday, with the speech broadcast on ABC News 24. Unusually, however, Newman’s invitation was not advertised on the press club’s website or social media platforms.

Newman used his press club platform to claim, without evidence, that protesters against Israel’s genocide in Gaza “celebrated the slaughter of Jews and Israelis”, and that pro-Palestinian “graffiti and vandalism… escalated to bullets on Bondi Beach”.

Newman made headlines earlier this month after claiming that the UN is a “politicised body” that has “nothing to do with justice”, and for suggesting that the US-Israeli bombing of a girls’ school in Iran that killed at least 175 people – including more than 100 children – actually targeted a military facility.

“We do not have information yet that this actually was a school and there were children there,” Newman said. “Don’t believe what you hear coming out of Iran.”

Newman’s invitation to one of Australia’s most prestigious forums has infuriated anti-genocide advocates.

“It is disgraceful that the National Press Club has chosen to platform a representative and an apologist for the genocidal state of Israel, particularly as it expands its war crimes from Gaza to Lebanon and neighbouring countries,” Nasser Mashni, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), said.

Writing on social media, Greens Senator David Shoebridge said “many who’ve long argued Australian media is biased will see [Newman’s invitation] as proof”.

“The Press Club cancelled Pulitzer winner Chris Hedges after he submitted a speech on the killing of Palestinian journalists, then booked Israel’s ambassador instead. If you wonder why media reporting on Gaza genocide has been so disappointing this is what they think is normal,” Shoebridge said.

Israel’s record of killing journalists

According to figures collated by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Israel has killed at least 259 journalists and media workers since October 2023 – a campaign the CPJ calls “the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that CPJ has ever documented”.

The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate estimates that Israel killed at least 475 family members of Palestinian journalists in the two years to October 2025, as well as destroying 150 media offices and 140 journalists’ homes.

Last Saturday, the Israeli military killed three Lebanese journalists in an airstrike in southern Lebanon. The Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) official X account then falsely claimed that one of the journalists, Ali Shoeib, “operated as a Hezbollah Radwan Force terrorist under the guise of a journalist”. An IDF spokesperson later admitted on Fox News that an accompanying photo of Shoeib supposedly in a Hezbollah military uniform was doctored.

Free press or a free ride? Based in Canberra, the press club bills itself as “Australia’s most recognised forum for discussion and debate”. Besides the hundreds of journalists, editors, politicians, bureaucrats and diplomats who hold membership, the press club also has more than 80 corporate and government sponsors, including arms manufacturers BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, SAAB Technologies and Thales, as well as mining and energy giants BHP and Woodside Energy.

Despite its self-described status as “a vigorous champion of media freedom”, the press club has said little about Israel’s killing of journalists – or any other matter of press freedom. Its ‘Freedom of the Press’ webpage lists only four public statements, one of which links to an International Association of Press Clubs press release from September 2025 condemning “the killing of journalists in Gaza” while making no mention of Israel.

Two refer to instances where the press club withdrew invitations to scheduled speakers. In March 2022, the press club withdrewa speaking invitation to then-Russian ambassador Alexey Pavlovsky, citing “allegations of war crimes and bombing of civilian targets” in Ukraine, as well as “media censorship in Russia”.

In October 2025, the press club abruptly cancelled a planned address by former New York Times Middle East bureau chief Chris Hedges, who was due to speak on Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza. Hedges called the decision “a terrible betrayal of our colleagues in Gaza who have been killed for chronicling the daily savagery in Gaza; for doing their job”.

“No doubt the club is able to slither away from its journalistic integrity. No doubt it is spared the attacks that would come from allowing me to speak. But please, have the decency to remove the word ‘press’ from your club,” Hedges wrote at the time.

The National Press Club and journalist union the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance did not respond to questions.

Republished from Deep Cut News - National Press Club under fire for ‘disgraceful’ invitation to Israeli envoy, 1 April 2026.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/national-press-club-under-fire-for-disgraceful-invitation-to-israeli-envoy/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Caitlin Johnstone: The Empire Exposes Itself

What was once revealed solely by whistleblowers, investigative journalists, activists and dissident media is now being shown by the empire itself, because there’s only so long you can hide the truth about something so malignant.

It used to be hard to help Westerners see the depravity of the U.S. empire. Now it’s just right in everyone’s face with raw genocide footage and insanely evil warmongering of direct economic consequence.

It took a lot of work to help the average Westerner understand that NATO aggressions actively provoked the war in Ukraine, or that Western interventionism played a major role in the violence and chaos in Syria, or that U.S. economic warfare was largely responsible for the suffering of Cubans and Venezuelans. 

The murderous savagery of the empire was hidden behind layers of obfuscation, allowing the propagandists to frame the Western power structure as a passive witness to the abuses of foreign regimes.

Now the propagandists have very little to work with, so those obfuscations can no longer take place. There’s no way you can spin a school full of children blown up by an American double-tap airstrike as anything other than what it is. 

There’s only so much narrative manipulation you can exert on raw video footage of a Western-backed genocide playing out in full view of the entire world day after day for years. 

There’s no way to propagandize Westerners into believing they want to pay a lot more more money for their fuel and groceries.

I saw former EU Parliament member Luis Garicano complaining on Twitter that Trump’s actions are making it look as though leftists have been correct about the U.S. empire this whole time, saying 

“Many of us, liberal Europeans, spent decades pushing back against the European extreme left’s cartoon version of America ( it’s all oil/ imperialism/getting rich at the expense of others) and then one dumb administration walks in and performs the caricature to perfection.”

Garicano’s entire worldview depends on his ability to avoid recognizing the obvious truth: that the so-called “extreme left” has always been correct, and that the empire he worships has always been evil. It’s just having a harder and harder time masking its true nature, because of the very evils it has tried to conceal.

Everything’s becoming more and more revealed. More and more transparent. What was once done solely by whistleblowers, investigative journalists, activists and dissident media is now being done by the empire itself, because there’s only so long you can hide the truth about something so malignant. 

An empire that is held together by lies, corruption and endless slaughter was never going to remain unseen. The brutality necessary to dominate the planet had to come out into the light eventually.

“May all be revealed” has been my prayer for our world for many years now. That dearly held wish is now being answered, and the truth is looking every bit as ugly as expected.

May all be revealed. May all that is hidden become seen. In the empire. In our governments. In our culture. In our community. In our interpersonal relationships. In ourselves.

All abusiveness ultimately boils down to a lack of clear seeing. Governments are able to abuse people because the dynamics of corruption and tyranny aren’t clearly seen by the public, who would violently revolt if they truly understood what their leaders are doing to them and to their world. 

Domestic violence and family sexual abuse can only continue when the rest of the community doesn’t see and understand what the abuser is doing.

Our own abusive tendencies can only persist for as long as our trauma responses and maladaptive coping mechanisms remain hidden in the shadows of our subconscious mind.

All of these dysfunctional dynamics will lose their durability as we become more and more conscious of what’s really going on, in ourselves and in our world. Things look ugly now because the truth is ugly, but it is only by truth revealing itself that we can move toward health and harmony as a species.

If you’ve ever done deep inner work on your own psychology you have seen this play out in your own personal experience. You can heal your inner woundedness if you can gather up the courage to plunge into your own darkness and face with uncompromising honesty the uncomfortable realities you’ve been avoiding within yourself throughout your entire life — but you kept those things unconscious for a reason.

They’re scary. They’re painful. They’re shameful. Facing them can feel like the end of the world. Yet it is only by coaxing them into the light of consciousness that they can be fully seen, reconciled and healed.

The whole world is like that. Humans as a collective cannot fix problems which we don’t clearly see and understand. 

Our rulers pour so much energy into maintaining influence operations like news media propaganda, Hollywood psyops, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation and government secrecy in order to obstruct our clear seeing and understanding.

But it’s all coming tumbling out into the cold light of day now. More and more is becoming visible.

May the lies and obfuscations continue to unravel. May the truth continue to reveal itself.

Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes.  For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.

This article is from Caitlin’s Newsletter

https://consortiumnews.com/2026/04/03/caitlin-johnstone-the-empire-exposes-itself/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

AT THIS LEVEL OF EXPOSURE, DONALD J. TRUMP DOES NOT CARE MUCH ABOUT BEING SEEN AS A RUTHLESS DANGEROUS BASTARD.... HE ACTUALLY ENJOYS IT AND HE KNOWS THERE ARE ENOUGH PSYCHOPATHS ON THIS STUPID PLANET TO MAINTAIN HIS MOMENTUM....