John Pilger: Veteran journalist and Palestine supporter dies

Veteran Australian journalist John Pilger died aged 84, his family have said. 

In a statement on social media platform X, his relatives said he died on Saturday in London.

"His journalism and documentaries were celebrated around the world, but to his family, he was simply the most amazing and loved Dad, Grandad and partner. Rest In Peace," the statement said. 

Pilger was born in 1939 in Australia's Bondi, New South Wales, and lived mostly in London since the 1960s. 

He worked as a foreign correspondent and filmmaker for various news networks, including Reuters. 

Throughout his career, he won many awards for his films and was named journalist of the year in 1967 and 1979. 

He covered conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh and was well known for criticising Israel's occupation of Palestine, western foreign policy and Australia's treatment of indigenous people. 

In 1977, he created a documentary titled Palestine Is Still the Issue and in 2002 produced another film with the same title, which was nominated for a Bafta award. 

He visited the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, speaking to Palestinians and Israelis about the occupation. 

'When the Palestinians rise again, as they will, they may not succeed at first - but they will eventually if we understand that they are us, and we are them'

- John Pilger

In a previous interview, he said the film was about a "nation of people, traumatised, humiliated and yet resilient.

"In trying to liberate less than a quarter of historic Palestine, they have had no army, no air force, and no powerful friends - and have fought back with slingshots and now with the terrorism of the suicide bombers."

At the onset of the current Israeli war on Gaza, he appeared to dismiss labelling Palestinian "resistance" as "unprovoked".

"The Palestinians are again fighting for their lives, refusing to live in the prison known as Gaza, controlled and policed by Israel with Palestinians killed and maimed, unreported, day after day," he said in a post on X published on 8 October. 

"Now their resistance, to which they have a right, is called 'unprovoked'."

In another post a month after the war started, Pilger recalled his last trip to Gaza in which he witnessed "Israeli air force terrorise the population by flying fast and loud and low at night".

In a 2017 article, also titled "Palestine Is Still the Issue", he wrote: "When the Palestinians rise again, as they will, they may not succeed at first - but they will eventually if we understand that they are us, and we are them."