*Rabuka outraged Fiji Times runs Ali's depiction of him and Netanyahu
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Human rights campaigner Shamima Ali has unleashed her most scathing criticism yet of the Fiji government’s decision to open an embassy in Israel, calling the moment “shameful” and “a betrayal of humanity.”
Ali, who chairs the Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights, said the images of Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were a moral and political disgrace. “There was a wanted war criminal standing next to a coup perpetrator,” she declared, in a blunt reference to Netanyahu’s international war crimes indictment and Rabuka’s role in Fiji’s 1987 coups.
For Ali, this was not mere symbolism. It reflected Fiji abandoning its moral compass at a time when Gaza faces catastrophic human suffering and international law is under siege. “We are aligning ourselves with impunity, not justice,” she said.
Ali has repeatedly warned that Fiji’s foreign policy is setting a dangerous precedent. By legitimising Israel at this moment, she argued, Fiji risks being complicit in alleged crimes against humanity while also eroding its own credibility as a nation once respected for peacekeeping and human rights advocacy.
She has urged Fijians to speak out and reject silence, saying the government’s action must not define the people’s conscience. Whether her words fuel a broader pushback at home or stir international criticism of Fiji’s stance remains to be seen, but her message is clear: history will not forget the company Fiji’s leaders chose to keep.
“Like Esther Before the King: Shamima Ali Speaks Truth to Power Over Gaza”
When Shamima Ali denounced Fiji’s leaders for standing “a wanted war criminal next to a coup perpetrator” at the opening of the new embassy in Israel, her words cut deeper than political protest. They echoed a much older story - one of defiance, conscience, and the courage to confront power when silence would mean complicity.
In the Bible, Esther was a young woman who became queen of Persia. She concealed her Jewish identity until a royal decree ordered the extermination of her people. Her cousin Mordecai urged her to act, reminding her: “Who knows if you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
To save her people, Esther had to break the law. She entered the king’s court uninvited, a move punishable by death. Yet instead of perishing, her boldness turned the tide. By speaking the truth at great personal risk, she exposed the plot against her people, reversed the king’s decree, and saved thousands of lives. Her defiance is still honoured in the Jewish festival of Purim, a celebration of resistance and survival.
Shamima Ali now stands in a similar position. She cannot stop the bombs falling on Gaza, but she can refuse Fiji’s silence. By calling out the alliance between Rabuka and Netanyahu, she has chosen the path of moral defiance. Like Esther, she speaks into a dangerous moment: when aligning with the powerful is easier, but standing with the oppressed is right.
The images of Fiji’s leaders smiling beside a man accused of war crimes will remain part of our history. But so too will Ali’s refusal to let that moment pass unchallenged. Her message is clear: neutrality in the face of mass suffering is complicity. Conscience demands courage.
Esther’s story ended with deliverance. Whether Fiji’s story ends with shame or redemption may now depend on whether its people heed Shamima Ali’s call to break their silence before history closes its judgment. Meanwhile, the Palestinians live dispossessed, starved and bombarded, while the world looks away. As for i-Taukei:
Ali, who chairs the Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights, said the images of Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were a moral and political disgrace. “There was a wanted war criminal standing next to a coup perpetrator,” she declared, in a blunt reference to Netanyahu’s international war crimes indictment and Rabuka’s role in Fiji’s 1987 coups.
For Ali, this was not mere symbolism. It reflected Fiji abandoning its moral compass at a time when Gaza faces catastrophic human suffering and international law is under siege. “We are aligning ourselves with impunity, not justice,” she said.
Ali has repeatedly warned that Fiji’s foreign policy is setting a dangerous precedent. By legitimising Israel at this moment, she argued, Fiji risks being complicit in alleged crimes against humanity while also eroding its own credibility as a nation once respected for peacekeeping and human rights advocacy.
She has urged Fijians to speak out and reject silence, saying the government’s action must not define the people’s conscience. Whether her words fuel a broader pushback at home or stir international criticism of Fiji’s stance remains to be seen, but her message is clear: history will not forget the company Fiji’s leaders chose to keep.
“Like Esther Before the King: Shamima Ali Speaks Truth to Power Over Gaza”
When Shamima Ali denounced Fiji’s leaders for standing “a wanted war criminal next to a coup perpetrator” at the opening of the new embassy in Israel, her words cut deeper than political protest. They echoed a much older story - one of defiance, conscience, and the courage to confront power when silence would mean complicity.
In the Bible, Esther was a young woman who became queen of Persia. She concealed her Jewish identity until a royal decree ordered the extermination of her people. Her cousin Mordecai urged her to act, reminding her: “Who knows if you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
To save her people, Esther had to break the law. She entered the king’s court uninvited, a move punishable by death. Yet instead of perishing, her boldness turned the tide. By speaking the truth at great personal risk, she exposed the plot against her people, reversed the king’s decree, and saved thousands of lives. Her defiance is still honoured in the Jewish festival of Purim, a celebration of resistance and survival.
Shamima Ali now stands in a similar position. She cannot stop the bombs falling on Gaza, but she can refuse Fiji’s silence. By calling out the alliance between Rabuka and Netanyahu, she has chosen the path of moral defiance. Like Esther, she speaks into a dangerous moment: when aligning with the powerful is easier, but standing with the oppressed is right.
The images of Fiji’s leaders smiling beside a man accused of war crimes will remain part of our history. But so too will Ali’s refusal to let that moment pass unchallenged. Her message is clear: neutrality in the face of mass suffering is complicity. Conscience demands courage.
Esther’s story ended with deliverance. Whether Fiji’s story ends with shame or redemption may now depend on whether its people heed Shamima Ali’s call to break their silence before history closes its judgment. Meanwhile, the Palestinians live dispossessed, starved and bombarded, while the world looks away. As for i-Taukei:
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Rabuka's God: From 1987 Coups to the Israel Embassy, Faith as a Weapon of Exclusion
When Fiji opened its embassy in Israel, the government presented it as routine diplomacy, a gesture of friendship, perhaps even a matter of faith. But the decision cannot be separated from the human tragedy of Palestine, nor from the man who now leads Fiji: Sitiveni Rabuka.
To understand Rabuka’s politics, one must confront a disturbing truth. In 1987, he did not simply seize power for the army or for the i-Taukei. He justified his coups by claiming that his God woke him up one morning and told him to disregard, sideline, and suppress the Indo-Fijian people.
This was not politics in the ordinary sense. It was Christian fundamentalism as state ideology.
Divine Instruction as Political Violence
Rabuka’s coup was not just military. It was theological. He invoked God as the author of his actions. Indo-Fijians were reduced to obstacles in the divine plan, their votes and rights erased at the command of heaven.
This is precisely the logic of fundamentalism: when a leader claims God has spoken directly to him, democratic principles and human rights vanish. The “other” - whether Indo-Fijians in Fiji, or Palestinians in Palestine - is dehumanised, treated as disposable, a hindrance to God’s chosen order.
The Embassy in Israel: Theology Masquerading as Diplomacy
Fast forward to 2025. The embassy in Israel is not just foreign policy. It is the continuation of Rabuka’s religious nationalism on a global stage.
Indo-Fijians and Palestinians: Parallel Dispossession
There is a cruel symmetry between the experiences of Indo-Fijians under Rabuka’s coups and Palestinians under Israeli occupation:
The embassy in Israel therefore reveals more about Rabuka than about Fiji. It shows that the same worldview that stripped Indo-Fijians of equality in 1987 still guides him today: a fusion of ethno-nationalism and Christian fundamentalism.
The Dangerous Legacy of Rabuka’s God
It is important to name this clearly: Rabuka’s God was never the God of justice, compassion, or reconciliation. It was the God of domination, used to justify violence and exclusion.
This is not faith. It is ideology disguised as revelation.
Conclusion
When Rabuka stood behind the opening of Fiji’s embassy in Israel, he was not merely conducting diplomacy. He was repeating a pattern that began in 1987: using religion to sanctify exclusion.
The tragedy of Palestine casts a harsh light back on Fiji. Indo-Fijians were once made strangers in their own land by a leader who claimed divine authority. Palestinians today are treated the same way.
To understand Rabuka is to understand this: whenever he invokes God, someone else’s suffering is about to be justified. Now, he has gone back to "sleep", waiting for God to whisper and guide him next on the question of recognising a Palestinian state.
To understand Rabuka’s politics, one must confront a disturbing truth. In 1987, he did not simply seize power for the army or for the i-Taukei. He justified his coups by claiming that his God woke him up one morning and told him to disregard, sideline, and suppress the Indo-Fijian people.
This was not politics in the ordinary sense. It was Christian fundamentalism as state ideology.
Divine Instruction as Political Violence
Rabuka’s coup was not just military. It was theological. He invoked God as the author of his actions. Indo-Fijians were reduced to obstacles in the divine plan, their votes and rights erased at the command of heaven.
This is precisely the logic of fundamentalism: when a leader claims God has spoken directly to him, democratic principles and human rights vanish. The “other” - whether Indo-Fijians in Fiji, or Palestinians in Palestine - is dehumanised, treated as disposable, a hindrance to God’s chosen order.
The Embassy in Israel: Theology Masquerading as Diplomacy
Fast forward to 2025. The embassy in Israel is not just foreign policy. It is the continuation of Rabuka’s religious nationalism on a global stage.
- Israel, for Rabuka, is not merely a modern state but a biblical symbol.
- Palestinians, like Indo-Fijians in 1987, are invisible in this theology, erased from the divine map.
- By recognising Israel without recognising Palestine, Rabuka projects the same message: only some people are chosen, only some people matter.
Indo-Fijians and Palestinians: Parallel Dispossession
There is a cruel symmetry between the experiences of Indo-Fijians under Rabuka’s coups and Palestinians under Israeli occupation:
- Both were told they did not belong in the land they had lived in for generations.
- Both were excluded from power by force, their voices nullified.
- Both were demonised through religion, cast as outsiders against a supposedly divine destiny.
The embassy in Israel therefore reveals more about Rabuka than about Fiji. It shows that the same worldview that stripped Indo-Fijians of equality in 1987 still guides him today: a fusion of ethno-nationalism and Christian fundamentalism.
The Dangerous Legacy of Rabuka’s God
It is important to name this clearly: Rabuka’s God was never the God of justice, compassion, or reconciliation. It was the God of domination, used to justify violence and exclusion.
- In 1987, that God told him to disregard Indo-Fijians.
- In 2025, that same God tells him to disregard Palestinians.
- And at both times, the victims are those whose rights challenge the supremacy of the chosen group.
This is not faith. It is ideology disguised as revelation.
Conclusion
When Rabuka stood behind the opening of Fiji’s embassy in Israel, he was not merely conducting diplomacy. He was repeating a pattern that began in 1987: using religion to sanctify exclusion.
The tragedy of Palestine casts a harsh light back on Fiji. Indo-Fijians were once made strangers in their own land by a leader who claimed divine authority. Palestinians today are treated the same way.
To understand Rabuka is to understand this: whenever he invokes God, someone else’s suffering is about to be justified. Now, he has gone back to "sleep", waiting for God to whisper and guide him next on the question of recognising a Palestinian state.
Lynda Tabuya in Israel: From Women and Children in Fiji to Silence on Palestine’s Mothers and Children
The embassy opening in Israel was supposed to be a matter of foreign affairs, yet there was Fiji’s Minister for Information, Lynda Tabuya, smiling for the cameras.
Why?
She is not the Foreign Minister.
She is not the Prime Minister.
She has no portfolio that connects directly to Israel.
For years, Shamima Ali has spoken boldly on women’s rights, children’s rights, and the plight of the vulnerable in Fiji. She has been one of Lynda Tabuya’s most vocal supporters in politics and public life.
But now, as Tabuya smiles in Jerusalem alongside Benjamin Netanyahu, the man whose government stands accused of starving and bombing Palestinian women and children, we ask Shamima Ali: Does she condone Tabuya’s silence on Gaza’s starving children? Does she believe Fiji’s former Women and Children Minister should legitimise Netanyahu at a time when the ICJ is investigating Israel for genocide?
When Fiji opened its embassy in Israel, one face stood out in the delegation: Lynda Tabuya. Until recently, she held the portfolio of Minister for Women, Children, and Poverty Alleviation. She has spoken often of compassion, of caring for the most vulnerable, of protecting mothers and children.
But in Jerusalem, standing at the side of Sitiveni Rabuka, she seemed to have forgotten that message.
The Unseen Women and Children
In Gaza and the West Bank, women and children are not statistics — they are the primary victims of Israel’s war and blockade.
For a Minister who once carried Fiji’s responsibility for women and children, Tabuya’s silence is staggering. She can speak about poverty alleviation in Suva, yet remain mute in the face of the most visible humanitarian crisis of our time.
The Politics of Selective Compassion
Tabuya’s presence at the embassy opening shows the politics of selective compassion:
A Woman Minister, a Missed Opportunity
Imagine if Tabuya had used her platform to speak for Palestinian mothers, women who, like Fijian women, want safety, dignity, and a future for their children in Gaza.
The embassy opening in Israel was supposed to be a matter of foreign affairs, yet there was Fiji’s Minister for Information, Lynda Tabuya, smiling for the cameras.
Why?
She is not the Foreign Minister.
She is not the Prime Minister.
She has no portfolio that connects directly to Israel.
For years, Shamima Ali has spoken boldly on women’s rights, children’s rights, and the plight of the vulnerable in Fiji. She has been one of Lynda Tabuya’s most vocal supporters in politics and public life.
But now, as Tabuya smiles in Jerusalem alongside Benjamin Netanyahu, the man whose government stands accused of starving and bombing Palestinian women and children, we ask Shamima Ali: Does she condone Tabuya’s silence on Gaza’s starving children? Does she believe Fiji’s former Women and Children Minister should legitimise Netanyahu at a time when the ICJ is investigating Israel for genocide?
When Fiji opened its embassy in Israel, one face stood out in the delegation: Lynda Tabuya. Until recently, she held the portfolio of Minister for Women, Children, and Poverty Alleviation. She has spoken often of compassion, of caring for the most vulnerable, of protecting mothers and children.
But in Jerusalem, standing at the side of Sitiveni Rabuka, she seemed to have forgotten that message.
The Unseen Women and Children
In Gaza and the West Bank, women and children are not statistics — they are the primary victims of Israel’s war and blockade.
- Thousands of children killed or maimed by bombing campaigns.
- Mothers delivering babies without electricity or medicine, in hospitals starved of supplies.
- Families going hungry, forced to choose between food and survival under Israel’s blockade.
- Girls and boys growing up amid rubble, trauma, and permanent displacement.
For a Minister who once carried Fiji’s responsibility for women and children, Tabuya’s silence is staggering. She can speak about poverty alleviation in Suva, yet remain mute in the face of the most visible humanitarian crisis of our time.
The Politics of Selective Compassion
Tabuya’s presence at the embassy opening shows the politics of selective compassion:
- When political optics demand it, she champions the poor and vulnerable in Fiji.
- But when Rabuka’s government embraces Israel, she plays along, even if that means ignoring the starvation of Palestinian children.
A Woman Minister, a Missed Opportunity
Imagine if Tabuya had used her platform to speak for Palestinian mothers, women who, like Fijian women, want safety, dignity, and a future for their children in Gaza.
