Israel’s targeting of educational institutes across Gaza is “shameful” and contributing to a global crisis for students, says the head of an educational foundation.
Talal al-Hathal, director of the Al Fakhoora Programme at Education Above All foundation in Qatar, said: “War has exacerbated the plight of Gaza’s educational sector.”
Israel’s targeting of educational institutes across Gaza was “shameful as we consider the global education crisis where we see that more than 250 million children are out of school globally”, said Al-Hathal.
Hundreds of educational institutes in Gaza, including schools run by the UN, have been bombed, and students and teachers killed.
The attacks have ravaged educational infrastructure and caused mental trauma to thousands of beleaguered students.
“The war will undoubtedly leave educational institutions, access to critical infrastructure, and the regularity of the education process in Gaza in a worse state than before the war,” al-Hathal told Al Jazeera.
“With almost 400 school buildings in Gaza sustaining damage, the war has exacerbated the plight of the educational sector.
“This damage is compounded by the internal displacement with these schools now serving as shelters and hosting nearly four times their intended capacity, further burdening the already strained educational infrastructure.”
Jordan’s king laments ‘Gaza failure’
Meanwhile, Jordan’s king has said the international community has failed to find solution to the Gaza war
Speaking at the G7 summit in Italy, Jordan’s King Abdullah II has called the greatest threat to the Middle East region was the continued occupation of Palestine by Israel.
As the latest attempt to reach an agreement that could lead to a full ceasefire remains stalled, he said the international community had not done enough to bring about peace.
“The international community has failed to achieve the only solution that guarantees the security of the Palestinians, Israelis, the region and the world,” he said.
The New Zealand government remains disturbingly quiet on the unfolding genocide in Gaza.
New Zealand’s silence is clearly undermining its self-image as a principled and independent state within the United Nations. It is following its Anglosphere English-speaking partners (United States, UK, Canada, and Australia) in avoiding putting in place any sanctions against Israel — as has been done with Russia — in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
Not only is New Zealand doing nothing to influence Israel to stop its slaughter of Palestinian children and civilians, New Zealand is at risk of being seen to be complicit in a genocide. New Zealand, as a contracting party to the UN Convention on Genocide, has a responsibility under the convention.
It is doubtful that New Zealand’s “performance” in the UN General Assembly (UNGA), where it typically votes the “right way”, supporting a ceasefire and Palestinian membership of the UN, provides a get out of jail card for New Zealand vis-a-vis its responsibilities under the convention.
That the New Zealand government is ignoring the spate of decisions by UN international bodies calling out Israel for contravening international humanitarian and criminal law is, if anything, puzzling.
These bodies are the guardians of the international rule of law. Member states of the UN are obliged to support their decisions actively, not just in voice, and again, New Zealand’s rhetoric historically is that it supports the international rule of law.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) deemed that a probable genocide is occurring in Gaza and has recently called for an immediate ceasefire in Rafah. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has recommended that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant be held criminally liable for the act of starvation inflicted against the Palestinian people.
New Zealand also stubbornly refuses to recognise Palestinian statehood, even though it has been argued by successive New Zealand governments, since 1993, that it supports the Oslo Accords and its key feature, the two-state solution.
This positioning has always provided a convenient smoke screen for New Zealand to appear to be supportive of an independent Palestinian state but in reality successive New Zealand governments have shown no real interest in doing so.
Importantly, New Zealand fails to distinguish between Israel as the occupier of Palestinian land and the Palestinians as the occupied people. Given this inequivalence, the New Zealand rhetoric of “leaving it to the parties” to agree what Palestinian state arrangements and borders might look like is laughable, if it wasn’t so cruel.
There are now more than 700,000 Israeli illegal citizens which have been illegally transferred (settled) by Israel to the Occupied Territories — which under a two-state solution would be a future Palestinian state. This area is tiny, only about half the size of the area of Auckland (which is about 5600 sqkm.) It makes the task of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state near impossible to achieve.
The illegal transfer of Israeli citizens on to Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank has a clear purpose — to transfer Palestinians off their land.
By remaining quiet the New Zealand government is effectively ignoring the rules-based order which it has historically argued it bases its foreign policy decision-making on. Indeed, this shift or “reset” in New Zealand foreign policy was intimated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winton Peters, in a recent speech to the NZ Institute of International Affairs.
Aware of the growing criticism of the lack of independence in New Zealand foreign policy, the minister stated that “New Zealand’s independent foreign policy does not, and never has, meant we are a non-aligned nation, although that is the way some critics in politics and the media see us . . . We take the world as it is, and this realism is a shift from our predecessors’ vaguer notions of an indigenous foreign policy that no-one else understood, let alone shared.”
This is clearly a move to a more “realpolitik” approach to international relations, where New Zealand’s “interests” are paramount. Our values are clearly a secondary consideration, and it is only by good luck that our interests and values might align.
As a recent Palestinian speaker in New Zealand, Professor Mazim Qumsiyeh, so rightly put it, “in the end we will not remember the words of our enemies but we will remember the silence of our friends.” Accordingly, New Zealand must employ all of its endeavours to place real pressure on Israel to stop its genocidal attack on the Palestinian people now.
It only needs to look to its Ukrainian/Russian playbook, to begin to do the right thing.
John Hobbs is a doctoral candidate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPCS), University of Otago.
This morning I did something I seldom do, I looked at the Twitter newsfeed.
Normally I take the approach of something that I’m not sure is an American urban legend, or genuinely something kids do over there. The infamous bag of dog poo on the front porch, set it on fire then ring the doorbell so the occupier will answer and seeing the flaming bag stamp it out.
In doing so they obviously disrupt the contents of the bag, quite forcefully, distributing it’s contents to the surprise, and annoyance, of said stamper.
So that’s normally what I do. Deposit a tweet on that platform, then duck for cover. In the scenario above the kid doesn’t hang around afterwards to see what the resident made of their prank.
I’m the same with Twitter. Get in, do what you’ve got to do, then get the heck out of there and enjoy the carnage from a distance.
But this morning I clicked on the Home button and the first tweet that came up in my feed was about an article in The Daily Blog:
Surely not?
I know our government hasn’t exactly been outspoken in condemning the massacre of Palestinians that has been taking place since last October — but we’re not going to take part in training exercises with them, are we? Surely not.
A massacre — not a rescue
A couple of days ago I was thinking about the situation in Gaza, and the recent so-called rescue of hostages that is being celebrated.
Look, I get it that every life is precious, that to the families of those hostages all that matters is getting them back alive. But four hostages freed and 274 Palestinians killed in the process — that isn’t a rescue — that’s a massacre.
Another one.
It reminds me of the “rescues” of the 1970s where they got the bad guys, but all the good guys ended up dead as well. According to some sources, and there are no really reliable sources here, the rescue also resulted in the deaths of three hostages.
While looking at reports on this training exercise, one statistic jumped out at me:
Israel has dropped more bombs on Gaza in eight months than were dropped on London, Hamburg and Dresden during the full six years of the Second World War. Israel is dropping these bombs on one of the most densely populated communities in the world.
It’s beyond comprehension. Think of how the Blitz in London is seared into our consciousness as being a terrible time — and how much worse this is.
Firestorm of destruction
As for Dresden, what a beautiful city. I remember when Fi and I were there back in 2001, arriving at the train station, walking along the river. Such a fabulous funky place. Going to museums — there was an incredible exhibition on Papua New Guinea when we were there, it seemed so incongruous to be on the other side of the world looking at exhibits of a Pacific people.
Most of all though I remember the rebuilt cathedral and the historical information about the bombing of that city at the end of the war. A firestorm of utter destruction. Painstakingly rebuilt, over decades, to its former beauty. Although you can still see the scars.
The ruins of Dresden following the Allied bombing in February 1945 . . . about 25,000 people were killed. Image: www.military-history.org
Nobody will be rebuilding Gaza into a beautiful place when this is done.
The best case for the Palestinians at this point would be some sort of peacekeeping force on the ground and then decades of rebuilding. Everything. Schools, hospitals, their entire infrastructure has been destroyed — in scenes that we associate with the most destructive war in human history.
And we’re going to take part in training exercises with the people who are causing all of that destruction, who are massacring tens of thousands of civilians as if their lives don’t matter. Surely not.
It is outrageous in the extreme that the NZ Defence Force will train with the Israeli Defence Force on June 26th as part of the US-led (RIMPAC) naval drills!
Our military’s honour and mana is stained by rubbing shoulders with an Army that is currently accused of genocide and conducting a real time ethnic cleansing war crime.
It’s like playing paintball with the Russian Army while they are invading the Ukraine.
RIMPAC, the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise, is held in Hawai’i every second year. The name indicates a focus on the Pacific Rim, although many countries attend.
In 2024 there will be ships and personnel attending from 29 countries. The usual suspects you’d expect in the region — like the US, the Aussies, Canada, and some of our Pacific neighbours. But also countries from further abroad like France and Germany. As well of course as the Royal NZ Navy and the Israeli Navy.
Which is pretty weird. I know Israel have to pretend they’re in Europe for things like sporting competitions or Eurovision, with their neighbours unwilling to include them. But what on earth does Israel have to do with the Pacific Rim?
Needless to say those who oppose events in Gaza are not overly excited about us working together with the military force that’s doing almost all of the killing.
“We are calling on our government to withdraw from the exercise because of Israel’s ongoing industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza”, said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national chair, John Minto.
“Why would we want to join with a lawless, rogue state which has demonstrated the complete suite of war crimes over the past eight months?”
Whatever you might think of John Minto, he has a point.
Trade and travel embargo
Personally I think we, and others, should be undertaking a complete trade and travel embargo with Israel until the killing stops. The least we can do is not rub shoulders with them as allies. That’s pretty repugnant. I can’t imagine many young Kiwis signed up to serve their country like that.
The PSNA press release said, “Taking part in a military event alongside Israel will leave an indelible stain on this country. It will be a powerful symbol of New Zealand complicity with Israeli war crimes. It’s not on!”
Aotearoa is not the only country in which such participation is being questioned. In Malaysia, for example, a group of NGOs are urging the government there to withdraw:
“On May 24, the ICJ explicitly called for a halt in Israel’s Rafah onslaught. The Israeli government and opposition leaders, in line with the behaviour of a rogue lawless state, have scornfully dismissed the ICJ ruling,” it said.
“The world should stop treating it like a normal, law-abiding state if it wants Israeli criminality in Gaza and the West Bank to stop.
“We reiterate our call on the Malaysian government to immediately withdraw from Rimpac 2024 to drive home that message,” it said.
What do you think about our country taking part in this event, alongside Israel Military Forces, at this time?
Complicit as allies
To me it feels that in doing so we are in a small way complicit. By coming together as allies, in our region of the world, we’re condoning their actions with our own.
Valerie Morse of Peace Action Wellington had the following to say about New Zealand’s involvement in the military exercises:
“The depth and breadth of suffering in Palestine is beyond imagination. The brutality of the Israeli military knows no boundaries. This is who [Prime Minister] Christopher Luxon and Defence Minister Judith Collins have signed the NZ military up to train alongside.
“New Zealand must immediately halt its participation in RIMPAC. The HMNZS Aotearoa must be re-routed back home to Taranaki.
“This is not the first time that Israel has been a participant in RIMPAC so it would not have been a surprise to the NZ government. It would have been quite easy to take the decision to stay out of RIMPAC given what is happening in Palestine. That Luxon and Collins have not done so shows that they lack even a basic moral compass.”
The world desperately needs strong moral leadership at this time, it needs countries to take a stand against Israel and speak up for what is right.
There’s only so much that a small country like ours can do, but we can hold our heads high and refuse to have anything to do with Israel until they stop the killing.
At least 274 Palestinians were killed and more than 698 others were wounded on Saturday in the central Gaza Strip, in what Israel is celebrating as a “heroic” military operation to rescue four Israeli captives that were being held in Gaza.
Palestinian media reported intense bombardment in the early afternoon local time in various areas in the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
Video footage from the main market in the Nuseirat refugee camp showed crowds of Palestinian civilians fleeing under the sound of heavy artillery fire.
— أنس الشريف Anas Al-Sharif (@AnasAlSharif0) June 8, 2024
Translation: A horrific scene shows the first moments of the [Israeli] occupation committing the Nuseirat massacre in the middle of the Gaza Strip.
Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif reported that Israeli forces “infiltrated” the Nuseirat refugee camp in trucks disguised as humanitarian aid trucks.
The Gaza government media office said in a statement that Israeli forces launched an “unprecedented brutal attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp” directly targeting civilians, and that ambulances and civil defence crews were unable to reach the area and evacuate the wounded due to the intensity of the bombing.
The media office added that according to its count, at least 210 Palestinians were killed and an estimated 400 others were wounded during the Israeli operation.
Video footage published on social media showed dozens of bodies of men, women and children lying in the streets in the Nuseirat area, as well as bloodied and injured civilians being rushed to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.
‘Complete bloodbath’
Al Jazeera quoted Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan with Doctors Without Borders as saying the emergency department at Al-Aqsa Hospital “is a complete bloodbath . . . It looks like a slaughterhouse”.
“The images and videos that I’ve received show patients lying everywhere in pools of blood . . . their limbs have been blown off,” she told Al Jazeera, adding “that is what a massacre looks like.”
As the death toll from the central Gaza Strip continued to rise, Israeli reports emerged that four Israeli captives were rescued in the operation and transferred back to Israel.
The four captives were identified as Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40. They were all reportedly taken on October 7 from the Nova Music festival in southern Israel close to the Gaza border.
According to Israeli media, the four captives were found in good health, and were transferred to a hospital in Israel where they were reunited with their families. One member of the Israeli special forces was killed during the attack.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz cited Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari as saying the captives were “rescued under fire, and that during the operation the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] attacked from the air, sea, and land in the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah areas in the center of the Gaza Strip.”
Haaretz added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant approved the operation on Thursday evening. Netanyahu hailed the operation as “successful,” while Gallant reportedly described it as “one of the most heroic operations he had seen in all his years in the defence establishment”, according to Israeli media.
Families praised military
The families of Israeli captives held a press conference on Saturday afternoon in reaction to the news. Relatives of the four captives rescued on Saturday praised both the Israeli military and the government.
Some relatives of the remaining captives still being held in Gaza demanded an end to the war and a prisoner exchange in order to secure the release of those still being held in Gaza.
On Saturday evening local time, spokesman for the Qassam Brigades Abu Obeida said “the first to be harmed by [the Israeli army] are its prisoners”, saying that while some of the captives were freed in the operation, a number of other Israeli captives were reportedly killed.
The Israeli government and military have not commented on the reports that Israeli captives were killed in the operation.
It is reported that there are 120 captives still held in the Gaza Strip, including 43 who have been killed since October, many reportedly by Israel’s own forces.
On its official Telegram channel, Hamas said the release of the four captives “will not change the Israeli army’s strategic failure in the Gaza Strip” and that “the resistance is still holding a larger number of captives and can increase it.”
Reports of US involvement in Nuseirat massacre As news flooded on the scale of the massacre in central Gaza, and of celebrations in Israel at the release of the four captives, reports emerged of alleged US involvement in the operation.
Axios, citing a US administration official, reported that “the US hostage cell in Israel supported the effort to rescue the four hostages.”
Of the operation, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said: “The United States is supporting all efforts to secure the release of hostages still held by Hamas, including American citizens. This includes through ongoing negotiations or other means.”
Some reports claimed that American forces were involved in the operation on the ground, and that the humanitarian aid trucks that were reportedly used to disguise the entry of special forces into Nuseirat departed from the US built humanitarian pier off the Gaza coast.
Mondoweiss has not been able to independently verify some of these reports.
Videos circulating on social media showed the helicopters that were used in the operation to evacuate the Israeli captives taking off from the vicinity of the US pier that was built off the coast of Gaza in order to deliver “much-needed humanitarian aid” to Gaza.
The US$230 million pier, which was completed last month, has drawn significant criticism from rights groups and activists who say the pier is an ineffective way to deliver aid.
According to Axios, citing a U.S. administration official, the American hostages unit in Israel assisted in the release of the four Israeli captives in Gaza.
Footage published by an Israeli occupation soldier confirms Israel’s use of the American temporary pier in central Gaza… pic.twitter.com/GJJp1ZSA7T
Intense criticism
Reported US involvement in the attacks on central Gaza on Saturday, and the alleged use of the pier in the operation, has sparked intense criticism and outrage online.
In response to the reports, Hamas said it proves “once more” that Washington is “complicit and completely involved in the war crimes being perpetrated” in Gaza.
US President Joe Biden has not commented on US involvement in the operation, but in response said: “We won’t stop working until all the hostages come home and a ceasefire is reached. It is essential that it happens.”
Reported by the Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau. Republished under Creative Commons.
New Zealand will make its annual payment of $1 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as scheduled.
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has confirmed the news in a tweet.
“This follows careful consideration of the UN’s response — including through external and internal investigations — to serious allegations against certain UNRWA staff being involved in the 7 October terrorist attacks on Israel,” he said.
“It also reflects assurances received from the UN Secretary-General about remedial work underway to enhance UNRWA’s neutrality.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in January confirmed New Zealand would hold off on making the usual June payment until Peters was satisfied over accusations against the agency’s staff.
UNRWA is the UN’s largest aid agency operating in Gaza, but in January Israel levelled allegations that a dozen of UNRWA’s staff had been involved in the October 7 attack by Hamas fighters into southern Israel.
The attack left about 1139 people dead and about 250 Israeli soldiers and civilians were reported to have been taken hostage.
Never suspended
Speaking from Fiji on the final day of his trip to the Pacific, Luxon said New Zealand had never suspended its payments as other countries had.
“Our funding is made once a year. It was due by the end of June. As I said at the time, they were serious allegations. The UN investigated then, the deputy prime minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters also got assurances from the UN Secretary-General.
“We’re reassured that it’s a good investment and it’s entirely appropriate that we now make that payment.”
NZ Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters . . . “This follows careful consideration of the UN’s response.” Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
The independent report commissioned by the UN into the agency concluded it needed to improve its neutrality, vetting and transparency, but Israel had failed to back up the claims which led many countries to halt their funding.
Secretary-General António Guterres said any UN employee found to have been involved in acts of terror would be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.
Luxon said he was “absolutely” satisfied due diligence had been done on the matter, and New Zealand was “very comfortable” making the payments.
New Zealand will be making its annual payment of $1 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on schedule and in coming days. This follows careful consideration of the UN’s response – including through external & internal investigations – to serious…
$17m in other aid
“Remember also that we’ve made $17 million worth of additional investments in aid to organisations like the World Food Programme, International Red Cross and others.
Good slogans have people nodding their heads in agreement because they recognise an underlying truth in the words.
I have a worn-out t-shirt which carries the slogan, “The first casualty of war is truth — the rest are mostly civilians”.
If you find yourself nodding in agreement it’s possibly because you have found it deeply shocking to find this slogan validated repeatedly in almost eight months of Israel’s war on Gaza.
The mainstream news sources which bring us the “truth” are strongly Eurocentric. Virtually all the reporting in our mainstream media comes via three American or European news agencies — AP, Reuters and the BBC — or from major US or UK based newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Washington Post or The New York Times.
This reporting centres on Israeli narratives, Israeli reasoning, Israeli explanations and Israeli justifications for what they are doing to Palestinians. Israeli spokespeople are front and centre and quoted extensively and directly.
Palestinian voices, when they are covered, are usually at the margins. On television in particular Palestinians are most often portrayed as the incoherent victims of overwhelming grief.
In the mainstream media Israel’s perverted lies dominate.
Riddled with examples The last seven months is riddled with examples. Just two days after the October 7 attack on Israel, pro-Palestinian protesters were accused of chanting “Gas the Jews” outside the Sydney Opera House.
The story was carried around the world through mainstream media as a nasty anti-semitic slur on Palestinians and their supporters. Four months later, after an intensive investigation New South Wales police concluded it never happened. The words were never chanted.
However the Radio New Zealand website today still carries a Reuters report saying “A rally outside the Sydney Opera House two days after the Hamas attack had ignited heated debate after a small group were filmed chanting “Gas the Jews”.
Even if RNZ did the right thing and removed the report now the old adage is true: “A lie is halfway around the world before the truth has got its trousers on”. Four months later and the police report is not news but the damage has been done as the pro-Israel lobby intended.
The same tactic has been used at protests on US university campuses. A couple of weeks ago at Northeastern University a pro-Israel counter protester was caught on video shouting “Kill the Jews” in an apparent attempt to provoke police into breaking up the pro-Palestine protest.
The university ordered the protest to be closed down saying “the action was taken after some protesters resorted to virulent antisemitic slurs, including ‘Kill the Jews’”. The nastiest of lies told for the nastiest of reasons — protecting a state committing genocide.
Similarly, unverified claims of “beheaded babies” raced around the world after the October 7 attack on Israel and were even repeated by US President Joe Biden. They were false.
No baby beheaded
Even the Israeli military confirmed no baby was beheaded and yet despite this bare-faced disinformation the Israeli ambassador to New Zealand was able to repeat the lie, along with several others, in a recent TVNZ interview on Q&A without being challenged.
War propaganda such as this is deliberate and designed to ramp up anger and soften us up to accept war and the most savage brutality and blatant war crimes against the Palestinian people.
Recall for a moment the lurid claims from 1990 that Iraqi soldiers had removed babies from incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals and left them to die on the floor. It was false but helped the US convince the public that war against Iraq was justified.
Twelve years later the US and UK were peddling false claims about Iraq having “weapons of mass destruction” to successfully pressure other countries to join their war on Iraq.
Perhaps the most cynical misinformation to come out of the war on Gaza so far appeared in the hours following the finding of the International Court of Justice that South Africa had presented a plausible case that Israel was committing genocide.
Israel smartly released a short report claiming 12 employees of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) had taken part in the October 7 attack on Gaza. The distraction was spectacularly successful.
Western media fell over themselves to highlight the report and bury the ICJ findings with most Western countries, New Zealand included, stopping or suspending funding for the UN agency.
Independent probe
eedless to say an independent investigation out a couple of weeks ago shows Israel has failed to support its claims about UNRWA staff involved in the October 7 attacks. It doesn’t need forensic analysis to tell us Israel released this fact-free report to divert attention from their war crimes which have now killed over 36,000 Palestinians — the majority being women and children.
The problem goes deeper than manufactured stories. For many Western journalists the problem starts not with what they see and hear but with what their news editors allow them to say.
A leaked memo to New York Times journalists covering the war tells them they are to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to avoid using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land.
They have even been instructed not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” or the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza settled by Palestinian refugees driven off their land by Israeli armed militias in the Nakba of 1947–49.
These reporting restrictions are a blatant denial of Palestinian history and cut across accurate descriptions under international law which recognises Palestinians as refugees and the occupied Palestinian territories as precisely what they are — under military occupation by Israel.
People reading articles on Gaza from The New York Times have no idea the story has been “shaped” for us with a pro-Israel bias.
These restrictions on journalists also typically cover how Palestinians are portrayed in Western media. Every Palestinian teenager who throws a stone at Israeli soldiers is called a “militant” or worse and Palestinians who take up arms to fight the Israeli occupation of their land, as is their right under international law, are described as “terrorists” when they should be described as resistance fighters.
The heavy pro-Israel bias in Western media reporting is an important reason Israel’s military occupation of Palestine, and the ongoing violence which results from it, has continued for so long.
The answer to all of this is people power — join the weekly global protests in your centre against Israel’s settler colonial project with its apartheid policies against Palestinians.
And give the mainstream media a wide berth on this issue.
John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.
The editorial board of the Columbia Law Review journal — made up of faculty and alumni from the university’s law school — shut down the review’s website on Monday after editors refused to halt publication of an academic article by a Palestinian human rights lawyer that was critical of Israel.
Al Jazeera reports that the student editors of the journal said they were pressured by the board to not publish the article which accused Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza and implementing an apartheid regime against Palestinians.
The review’s website was taken down after the article was published on Monday morning and remained offline last night, reports AP news agency.
Several editors at the Columbia Law Review described the board’s intervention as an unprecedented breach of editorial independence at the periodical.
In a letter sent to student editors yesterday, the board of directors said it was concerned that the article, titled “Nakba as a Legal Concept,” had not gone through the “usual processes of review or selection for articles”.
However, the editor involved in soliciting and editing the aricle said they had followed a “rigorous review process”.
‘A microcosm of repression’
The author of the article, human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah, a Harvard doctoral candidate, said the suspension of the journal’s website should be seen as “a microcosm of a broader authoritarian repression taking place across US campuses”.
The Intercept reports that this was the second time in barely eight months that Eghbariah had been censored by US academic publications.
Columbia Law Review. . . second journal to censor Palestinian law scholar over Nakba truth. Image: APR screenshot
Last November, the Harvard Law Review made the unprecedented decision to “kill” (not publish) the author’s edited essay prior to publication. The author was due to be the first Palestinian legal scholar published in the quality journal.
As The Intercept reported at the time, “Eghbariah’s essay — an argument for establishing ‘Nakba’, the expulsion, dispossession, and oppression of Palestinians, as a formal legal concept that widens its scope — faced extraordinary editorial scrutiny and eventual censorship.”
“When the Harvard publication spiked his article, editors from another Ivy League law school reached out to Eghbariah.
“Students from the Columbia Law Review solicited a new article from the scholar and, upon receiving it, decided to edit it and prepare it for publication.
“Now, eight months into Israel’s onslaught against Gaza, Eghbariah’s work has once again been stifled.”
We have come together as Palestinian academics and staff of Gaza universities to affirm our existence, the existence of our colleagues and our students, and the insistence on our future, in the face of all current attempts to erase us.
The Israeli occupation forces have demolished our buildings but our universities live on. We reaffirm our collective determination to remain on our land and to resume teaching, study, and research in Gaza, at our own Palestinian universities, at the earliest opportunity.
We call upon our friends and colleagues around the world to resist the ongoing campaign of scholasticide in occupied Palestine, to work alongside us in rebuilding our demolished universities, and to refuse all plans seeking to bypass, erase, or weaken the integrity of our academic institutions.
The future of our young people in Gaza depends upon us, and our ability to remain on our land in order to continue to serve the coming generations of our people.
We issue this call from beneath the bombs of the occupation forces across occupied Gaza, in the refugee camps of Rafah, and from the sites of temporary new exile in Egypt and other host countries.
We are disseminating it as the Israeli occupation continues to wage its genocidal campaign against our people daily, in its attempt to eliminate every aspect of our collective and individual life.
Our families, colleagues, and students are being assassinated, while we have once again been rendered homeless, reliving the experiences of our parents and grandparents during the massacres and mass expulsions by Zionist armed forces in 1947 and 1948.
Our infrastructure is in ruins
Our civic infrastructure — universities, schools, hospitals, libraries, museums and cultural centres — built by generations of our people, lies in ruins from this deliberate continuous Nakba. The deliberate targeting of our educational infrastructure is a blatant attempt to render Gaza uninhabitable and erode the intellectual and cultural fabric of our society.
However, we refuse to allow such acts to extinguish the flame of knowledge and resilience that burns within us.
Allies of the Israeli occupation in the United States and United Kingdom are opening yet another scholasticide front through promoting alleged reconstruction schemes that seek to eliminate the possibility of independent Palestinian educational life in Gaza. We reject all such schemes and urge our colleagues to refuse any complicity in them.
We also urge all universities and colleagues worldwide to coordinate any academic aid efforts directly with our universities.
We extend our heartfelt appreciation to the national and international institutions that have stood in solidarity with us, providing support and assistance during these challenging times. However, we stress the importance of coordinating these efforts to effectively reopen Palestinian universities in Gaza.
We emphasise the urgent need to reoperate Gaza’s education institutions, not merely to support current students, but to ensure the long-term resilience and sustainability of our higher education system.
Education is not just a means of imparting knowledge; it is a vital pillar of our existence and a beacon of hope for the Palestinian people.
Long-term strategy essential
Accordingly, it is essential to formulate a long-term strategy for rehabilitating the infrastructure and rebuilding the entire facilities of the universities. However, such endeavours require considerable time and substantial funding, posing a risk to the ability of academic institutions to sustain operations, potentially leading to the loss of staff, students, and the capacity to reoperate.
Given the current circumstances, it is imperative to swiftly transition to online teaching to mitigate the disruption caused by the destruction of physical infrastructure. This transition necessitates comprehensive support to cover operational costs, including the salaries of academic staff.
Student fees, the main source of income for universities, have collapsed since the start of the genocide. The lack of income has left staff without salaries, pushing many of them to search for external opportunities.
Beyond striking at the livelihoods of university faculty and staff, this financial strain caused by the deliberate campaign of scholasticide poses an existential threat to the future of the universities themselves.
Thus, urgent measures must be taken to address the financial crisis now faced by academic institutions, to ensure their very survival. We call upon all concerned parties to immediately coordinate their efforts in support of this critical objective.
The rebuilding of Gaza’s academic institutions is not just a matter of education; it is a testament to our resilience, determination, and unwavering commitment to securing a future for generations to come.
The fate of higher education in Gaza belongs to the universities in Gaza, their faculty, staff, and students and to the Palestinian people as a whole. We appreciate the efforts of peoples and citizens around the world to bring an end to this ongoing genocide.
We call upon our colleagues in the homeland and internationally to support our steadfast attempts to defend and preserve our universities for the sake of the future of our people, and our ability to remain on our Palestinian land in Gaza.
We built these universities from tents. And from tents, with the support of our friends, we will rebuild them once again.
This open letter by the university academics and administrators of Gaza to the world was first published by Al Jazeera. The full list of signatories is here.
A New Zealand solidarity group for Palestine with a focus on settler colonialism has condemned the latest atrocities by the Israeli military in its attack on Rafah — in defiance of the International Court of Justice order last Friday to halt the assault — and also French brutality in Kanaky New Caledonia.
In its statement, Justice for Palestine (J4Pal) said that Monday had been “a day of unconscionable and unforgivable violence” against the people of Rafah.
As global condemnation over the attack on displaced Palestinians in a tent camp and the UN Security Council convened an emergency meeting on the ground invasion, a new atrocity was reported yesterday.
Israeli forces shelled a tent camp in a designated “safe zone” west of Rafah and killed at least 21 people, including 13 women and girls, in the latest mass killing of Palestinian civilians.
“Gaza deserves better. Kanaky deserves better. Aotearoa deserves better. All our babies deserve better,” said the group.
“It is not our role to articulate what indigenous Kanak people are fighting for. Kanak people are the experts in their own lives and struggle, and they must be listened to on their own terms at this critical moment,” the statement said.
“Our work for Palestinian rights is, however, part of a larger struggle against settler-colonialism. It is our duty, honour and joy to make connections in this common struggle.
‘Dangerous ideologies’
“These connections begin right here in Aotearoa, where Māori never ceded sovereignty. As New Zealand’s current government, France and Israel all demonstrate, the dangerous ideologies of colonialism are not yet the footnotes in history we strive to make them.
“We recognise common injustices:
• The failure of media to place the current uprising in the context of 150 years of history of French violence in Kanak,
• The characterisation of Kanak activists as ‘terrorists’ all while a militarised foreign force represses them on their own land,
• The deliberate transfer of a settler population to disenfranchise indigenous people and their control over their own territory,
• A refusal to engage with the righteous aspirations of the Kanak people, and
•The lack of support from Western governments around these aspirations.”
Justice for Palestine said in its statement that it was its sincere belief that a world without colonialism was not only necessary, it was near.
“With thanks to the steadfastness of not only Kanak, Māori and Palestinian people, and indigenous people everywhere.
“The struggle of the Kanak people is an inspiration and reminder that while we may face the brute power of empire, we are many, and we are not going anywhere.”
Justice for Palestine is a human rights organisation working in Aotearoa to promote justice, peace and freedom for the Palestinian people.
It added: “Now is the hour for Te Tiriti justice, and liberation for both the Kanak and Palestinian people.”
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Pro-Palestine protesters picketed the offices of Auckland-based electronics manufacturer Rakon today, accusing it of exporting military-capable products for Israel, which is under investigation by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for genocide against the 2 million people of Gaza.
The ICJ, the world’s highest lawcourt, last Friday ordered Israel to stop its military assault on Rafah in the southern half of the besieged Gaza Strip.
Legal commentators have argued that any country assisting Israel could potentially be prosecuted for complicity in Israel’s alleged war crimes.
Former Shortland Street actor Will Alexander — who is in his 10th day of a hunger strike in protest over Israel’s war on Gaza war — also spoke at the Rakon rally.
A statement by Rakon claimed it was “not aware” of any of its products being used in weapons that were supplied to Israel.
“Rakon does not design or manufacture weapons. We do not supply products to Israel for weapons, and we are not aware of our products being incorporated into weapons which are provided to Israel,” the statement said.
However, Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has written to the government asking it to suspend military-capable exports from Rakon pending an independent investigation into their use in Israel’s “genocidal attacks on Gaza”.
Rakon makes crystal oscillators used in the guidance systems of smart bombs, PSNA national chair John Minto said in a statement published today by The Daily Blog.
Company’s ‘military objective’
“Their 2005 business plan says the company’s objective was to dominate ‘the lucrative and expanding guided munitions and military positioning market’ within five years,” he said.
“Rakon sends these ‘smart bomb’ parts to US arms manufacturers which build the bombs which inevitably end up in Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza.
“Already the United Nations Human Rights Council has passed a resolution calling for a halt to all arms sales to Israel and last Friday the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end its attacks on Rafah because of Israel’s indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians.”
Minto added that the New Zealand government had been “muddying the water” by saying New Zealand did not export arms to Israel.
“Exporting parts for guided munitions and JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) bombs which end up in the killing fields of Gaza means we are actively supporting Israel’s genocide”, Minto said.
“It is highly likely the bombs used in these mass killing events (43 civilians killed — 19 children, 14 women and 10 men) have parts manufactured in Rakon’s Mt Wellington factory,” Minto said.
The UN Genocide Convention requires all 153 signatory countries, including New Zealand, to take action to prevent genocide.
Pro-Palestinian protesters today condemned Google for sacking protesting staff and demanded that the New Zealand government immediately “cut ties with Israeli genocide”.
Wearing Google logo masks and holding placards saying “Google complicit in genocide” and “Google drop Project Nimbus”, the protesters were targeting the global tech company for sacking more than two dozen employees following protests against its US$1.2 billion cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government.
The workers were terminated earlier this month after a company investigation ruled they had been involved in protests inside the tech giant’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California.
Nine demonstrators were arrested, according to the protest organisers of No Tech for Apartheid.
In Auckland, speakers condemned Google’s crackdown on company dissent and demanded that the New Zealand government take action in the wake of both the UN’s International Court of Justice, or World Court, and separate International Criminal Court rulings last week.
“On Friday, the ICJ made another determination — stop the military assault on Rafah, something that Israel ignores,” Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott said.
Earlier in the week, the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was also seeking arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders.
‘Obvious Israel is committing genocide’
“That brings us to our politicians,” said Scott.
“It is obvious that Israel is committing genocide. We all know that Israel is committing genocide.
“It is obvious that the Israeli leadership is committing crimes against humanity.”
Scott said the New Zealand government — specifically Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters — “must now be under the spotlight in the court of public opinion here in Aotearoa”.
“They have done nothing but mouth platitudes about Israeli behaviour. They have done nothing of substance.
“They could cut ties with genocide.”
Bosnian support for the Palestinian protest rally . . . two days ago the UN General Assembly approved a resolution establishing July 11 as an international day in remembrance for the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. Image: Del Abcede/APR
Two demands of government
Scott said the protests — happening every week in New Zealand now into eight months, but rarely reported on by media — had made a raft of calls, including the blocking of Rakon supplying parts for Israeli “bombs dropped on Gaza” and persuading the Superfund to divest from Israeli companies.
He said that today the protesters were calling for the government to do two things given the Israeli genocide:
End “working holiday” visas for young Israelis visiting Aotearoa, and
Expelling the Israeli ambassador and shut the embassy
International outrage continues to reverberate as Israel ignores the International Court of Justice’s order to immediately cease its attack on southern Rafah, with UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese saying: “Israel will not stop this madness until we make it stop.”
Earlier, she had called for sanctions against Israel for defying the court order.
At least 35,903 people have been killed and 80,420 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7, reports Al Jazeera.
The death toll in Israel from Hamas’s attack stands at 1139 with dozens still held captive.
The Israeli military holds 3424 “administrative detainees” — prisoners held indefinitely and without charge — mostly Palestinian and seized since October 7. This figure is 26 times more “hostages” than being held by Hamas.
Israel’s public radio, Radio Israel, has cited General Yair Golan, former deputy chief-of-staff of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), saying that “there will be no deal [between Israel and Hamas] without the cessation of fighting” in Gaza.
‘Let’s be real’
“Let’s be real with ourselves, and we will not listen to the poison machine coming out of Jerusalem,” the general was quoted as saying.
Dr Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, citing a report in Politico, said “70 percent of Hamas’s fighting force remains intact on fighting in Gaza” and that Hamas had been able to recruit thousands of new members.
The report, he said, also indicated Hamas’s extensive tunnel network under the Gaza Strip remained largely intact.
Professor Elmasry told Al Jazeera there had also been reports that Hamas had been able to repurpose unexploded Israeli bombs, so the Palestinian resistance group no longer had a weapons supply issue.
“I think Israel is clearly getting all it can handle on the battlefield right now,” he concluded.
Israeli forces were reported to be advancing on Jabalia, trying to take control of Gaza’s largest refugee camp.
Fighting intensifies
Fighting in the camp has intensified during the past two weeks as Israel continues with its military operation in the camp located in the north of the enclave.
Insult on injury.
The #US will have to go through full introspection, internal and external scrutiny over the disaster it has contributed to create in Gaza. https://t.co/oQ2YOQN8hk
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) May 25, 2024
Craig Mokhiber, a former top UN human rights official, has questioned the US plan to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza through a temporary pier after the US said four vessels supporting the pier were washed away in the high seas on Saturday.
Mokhiber, who resigned from the UN last year, described the pier as a “fig leaf to cover US complicity in genocide and in the destruction of UNRWA” in a post on X.
He said the pier had “failed to have any meaningful impact” while “Israel continues to block aid at all crossing points”.
Meanwhile, in Canberra the leader of the Australian Greens, Adam Bandt, said his party would call a vote on Palestinian statehood in Australia’s Parliament this week, after a similar move announced by Ireland, Spain and Norway last week.
“Labor says today they support recognition of Palestine,” Bandt said in a post on X, referring to Australia’s Labor party-led government. “Let’s see how Labor votes.”
A West Papuan independence group has condemned French “modern-day colonialism in action” in Kanaky New Caledonia and urged indigenous leaders to “fight on”.
In a statement to the Kanak pro-independence leadership, exiled United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda said the proposed electoral changes being debated in the French Parliament would “fatally damage Kanaky’s right to self-determination”.
He said the ULMWP was following events closely and sent its deepest sympathy and support to the Kanak struggle.
“Never give up. Never surrender. Fight until you are free,” he said.
“Though the journey is long, one day our flags will be raised alongside one another on liberated Melanesian soil, and the people of West Papua and Kanaky will celebrate their independence together.”
“This crisis is one chapter in a long occupation and self-determination struggle going back hundreds of years,” Wenda said in his statement.
‘We are standing with you’
“You are not alone — the people of West Papua, Melanesia and the wider Pacific are standing with you.”
“I have always maintained that the Kanak struggle is the West Papuan struggle, and the West Papuan struggle is the Kanak struggle.
“Our bond is special because we share an experience that most colonised nations have already overcome. Colonialism may have ended in Africa and the Caribbean, but in the Pacific it still exists.”
“We are one Melanesian family, and I hope all Melanesian leaders will make clear statements of support for the FLNKS’ current struggle against France.
“I also hope that our brothers and sisters across the Pacific — Micronesia and Polynesia included — stand up and show solidarity for Kanaky in their time of need.
“The world is watching. Will the Pacific speak out with one unified voice against modern-day colonialism being inflicted on their neighbours?”
Pro-Palestinian protesters dressed in blue “press” vests tonight staged a vigil calling on New Zealand journalists to show solidarity with the media of Gaza who have suffered the highest death toll in any war.
They staged the vigil at the Viaduct venue of NZ’s annual Voyager Media Awards.
Organised by Palestinian Youth Aotearoa (PYA) and People for Palestine (P4P), supporters were making a stand for the journalists of Gaza, who were awarded the 2024 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize earlier this month.
Fathi Hassneiah of PYA condemned the systematic killing, targeting and silencing of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) throughout the war on Gaza that is now in its eighth month.
Often the families of journalists have been martyred alongside them, Hassneiah said.
A media spokesperson, Leondra Roberts, said PYA and P4P were calling on “all journalists in Aotearoa to stand in solidarity with the courageous journalists of the Gaza Strip who continue to report on what the International Court of Justice has called a plausible genocide”.
Maori journalists commended
She commended Kawea Te Rongo (Māori Journalists Association) for their support for their Palestinian colleagues in November 2023 with co-chair Mani Dunlop saying: “Journalists and the media are integral to ensuring the world and its leaders are accurately informed during this conflict …
“Daily we are seeing stories of journalists who face extreme brutality . . . including the unconscionable worry of their families’ safety while they themselves risk their lives.
“It is a deadly trade-off, every day they put on their press vest and helmet to do their job selflessly for their people and the rest of the world.”
PYA spokesperson and musician Rose Freeborn appealed to journalists reporting from Aotearoa to critically examine Israel’s treatment of their peers in Gaza and called on “storytellers of all mediums to engage with Palestinian voices”.
“We unequivocally condemn the mass murder of 105 journalists in Gaza by the IDF since October 7, as well as Israel’s longstanding history of targeting journalists across the region — from Shireen Abu Akleh to Issam Abdallah — in an attempt to smother the truth and dictate history,” she said.
She criticised the “substandard conduct” of some journalists in New Zealand.
Media industry ‘failed’
Broadcaster, singer and journalist Moana Maniapoto . . . speaking to the Palestinian protesters tonight. Image: PYA/P4P
“At times, the media industry in this country has failed not only the Palestinian community but New Zealand society at large by reporting factual inaccuracies and displaying a clear bias for the Israeli narrative.
“This has led to people no longer trusting mainstream media outlets to give them the full story, so they have turned to each other and the journalists on the ground in Gaza via social media.
“The storytellers of Gaza, with their resilience and extraordinary courage, have provided a blueprint for journalists across the globe to stand in defence of truth, accuracy and objectivity.”
A Palestinian New Zealander and P4P spokesperson, Yasmine Serhan, said: “While it is my people being subjected to mass murder and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, it is the peers of New Zealand journalists who are being systematically targeted and murdered by Israel in an attempt to stop the truth being reported.”
RNZ News reports that RNZ won two major honours tonight at the annual Voyager Media Awards, which recognise New Zealand’s best journalism, with categories for reporting, photography, digital and video.
RNZ was awarded the Best Innovation in Digital Storytelling for their series The Interview and longform journalist te ao Māori Ella Stewart took out the prize for Best Up and Coming Journalist.
Le Mana Pacific award went to Indira Stewart of 1News, and Mihingarangi Forbes (Aotearoa Media Collective) and Moana Maniapoto (Whakaata Māori) were joint winners of the Te Tohu Kairangi Award.
Some of the Palestine protesters taking part in the vigil in support of Gazan journalists at NZ’s Voyager Media Awards tonight. Image: ER
“Only the struggle counts . . . death is nothing.” Éloi Machoro — “the Che Guevara of the Pacific” — said this shortly before he was gunned down by a French sniper on 12 January 1985.
Machoro, one of the leaders of the newly-formed FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) — today the main umbrella movement for New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak people — slowly bled to death as the gendarmes moved in.
The assassination is an apt metaphor for what France is doing to the Kanak people of New Caledonia and has been doing to them for 150 years.
As the New Zealand and Australian media fussed and bothered over tourists stranded in New Caledonia over the past week, the Kanaks have been gripped in an existential struggle with a heavyweight European power determined to keep the archipelago firmly under the control of Paris. We need better, deeper reporting from our media — one that provides history and context.
According to René Guiart, a pro-independence writer, moments before the sniper’s bullets struck, Machoro had emerged from the farmhouse where he and his comrades were surrounded. I translate:
“I want to speak to the Sous-Prefet! [French administrator],” Machoro shouted. “You don’t have the right to arrest us. Do you hear? Call the Sous-Prefet!”
The answer came in two bullets. Once dead, Machoro’s comrades inside the house emerged to receive a beating from the gendarmes. Standing over Machoro’s body, a member of the elite mobile tactical unit said: “He wanted war, he got it!”
Weeks earlier, New Zealand journalist David Robie had photographed Machoro shortly before he smashed open a ballot box with an axe and burned the ballots inside. “It was,” says Robie, “symbolic of the contempt Kanaks had for what they saw as the French’s manipulated voting system.”
Every year on January 12, the anniversary of Machoro’s killing, people gather at his grave. Engraved in stone are the words: “On tue le révolutionnaire mais on ne tue pas ses idées.”You can kill the revolutionary but you can’t kill his ideas. Why don’t most Australians and New Zealanders even know his name?
Decades after his death and 17,000 km away, the French are at it again. Their National Assembly has shattered the peace this month with a unilateral move to change voting rights to enfranchise tens of thousands of more recent French settlers and put an end to both consensus building and the indigenous Kanak people’s struggle for self-determination and independence.
Thanks to French immigration policies, Kanaks now number about 40 percent of the registered voters. New Zealand and Australia look the other way — New Caledonia is France’s “zone of interest”.
But what’s not to like about extending voting rights? Shouldn’t all people who live in the territory enjoy voting rights?
“They have voting rights,” says David Robie, now editor of Asia Pacific Report, “back in France.” And France, not the Kanaks, control who can enter and stay in the territory.
Back in 1972, French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer argued in a since-leaked memo that if France wanted to maintain control, flooding the territory with white settlers was the only long-term solution to the independence issue.
Robie says the French machinations in Paris — changing the boundaries of citizenship and voting rights – and the ensuing violent reaction, is effectively a return to the 1980s — or worse.
The violence of the 1980s, which included massacres, led to the Matignon Accords of 1988 and the Nouméa Accords of 1998 which restricted the voting to only those who had lived in Kanaky prior to 1998 and their descendents. Pro-independence supporters include many young whites who see their future in the Pacific, not as a white settler colonial outpost of France.
Most whites, however, fear and oppose independence and the loss of privileges it would bring.
After decades of calm and progress, albeit modest, things started to change from 2020 onwards. It was clear to Robie and others that French calculations now saw New Caledonia as too important to lose; it is a kind of giant aircraft carrier in the Pacific from which to project French power. It is also home to the world’s third-largest nickel reserves.
How have the Kanaks benefitted from being a French colony? Kanaks were given citizenship in their own country only after WWII, a century after Paris imposed French rule. According to historian David Chappell:
“In practice, French colonisation was one of the most extreme cases of native denigration, incarceration and dispossession in Oceania. A frontier of cattle ranches, convict camps, mines and coffee farms moved across the main island of Grande Terre, conquering indigenous resisters and confining them to reserves that amounted to less than 10 percent of the land.”
It was a pattern of behaviour similar to France’s colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Little wonder the people of Niger have recently become the latest to expel them.
Deprived of education — the first Kanak to qualify for university entrance was in the 1960s — socially and economically marginalised, subjected to what historians describe as among the most brutal colonial overlordships in the Pacific, the Kanaks have fought to maintain their languages, their cultures and their identities whilst the whites enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world.
“There was no consultation — except with the anti-independence groups. Any new constitutional arrangement needs to be based around consensus. France has now polarised the situation so much that it will be virtually impossible to get consensus.”
Author Dr David Robie . . . warned for years that France is pushing New Caledonia down a slippery slope. Image: Alyson Young/PMC
Macron also pushed ahead with a 2021 referendum on independence versus remaining a French territory. This was in the face of pleas from the Kanak community to hold off until the covid pandemic that had killed thousands of Kanaks had passed and the traditional mourning period was over.
Having created the problem with actions like the disputed referendum and the current law changes, Macron now condemns today’s violence in New Caledonia. Éloi Machoro rebukes him from the grave: “Where is the violence, with us or with them?” he asked weeks before his killing. “The aim of the [law changes] is to destroy the Kanak people in their own country.” That was 1985; as the French say: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same thing.
Kanaky and Palestine . . . “the same struggle” against settler colonialism. Image: Solidarity/APR
Young people are at the forefront of opposing Paris’s latest machinations. Hundreds have been arrested. Several killed. The White City, as Nouméa is called by the marginalised Melanesians, is lit by arson fires each night. Thousands of French security forces have been rushed in.
Leaders who have had nothing to do with the violence have been arrested; an old colonial manoeuvre.
“What happened was clearly avoidable,” Robie says “ The thing that really stands out for me is: what happens now? It is going to be really extremely difficult to rebuild trust — and trust is needed to move forward. There has to be a consensus otherwise the only option is civil war.”
Nadia Abu-Shanab, an activist and member of the Wellington Palestinian community, sees familiar behaviour and extends her solidarity to the people of Kanaky.
“We Palestinians know what it is for people to choose to ignore the context that leads to our struggle. Indigenous and native people have always been right to challenge colonisation. We are fighting for a world free from the racism and the theft of resources and land that have hurt and harmed too many indigenous peoples and our planet.”
Eugene Doyle is a Wellington-based writer and community activist who publishes the Solidaritywebsite. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at Solidarity under the title “The French are at it again: New Caledonia is kicking off”. For more about Éloi Machoro, read Dr David Robie’s 1985 piece “Éloi Machoro knew his days were numbered”.
Thousands of students across Aotearoa New Zealand protested in a nationwide rally at seven universities across the country in a global day of solidarity with Palestine, calling on their universities to divest all partnerships with Israel.
A combined group of students and academic staff from the country’s two largest universities chanted “AUT take a stand” at their rally in the Hikuwai Plaza in the heart of Auckland University of Technology (AUT).
Students from the neighbouring University of Auckland (UOA) also took part.
The students carried placards such as “Educators against genocide”, “Stand for students. Stand for justice. Stand with Palestine”, “Maite Te Awa Ki Te Moana” – te reo for “From the river to the sea – Free Palestine”.
Another sign said, “No universities left in Gaza”, referring to Israeli military forces having destroyed all 12 universities in the besieged enclave during the war now in its eighth month.
“Let’s hold our institutions accountable, demanding they meet our calls for action and adhere to the guidelines of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
‘Gross injustices’
“Together, we can push for change and recognise Israel’s violations for what they are — gross injustices against humanity.
“Stand with us in this global movement of solidarity with Palestine.”
“No universities left in Gaza” . . . because Israel bombed or destroyed all 12. Image: David Robie/APR
The rally was in support of thousands of students around the world demonstrating against the Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Their aim with their universities:
* Declare and recognise Palestine as an independent and sovereign state;
* Disclose and divest all partnerships with Israel; and
* Denounce antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of discrimination.
Ali, the “voice of Free Palestine”. Video: Café Pacific
A declaration said that the nationwide protest expressed “our unapologetic solidarity with Palestinians and our commitment to the Palestinian struggle for liberation “.
“We refuse to be silent or complicit in genocide, and we reject all forms of cooperation between our institutions and the Israeli state.
“End the genocide” . . . a watermelon protest. Image: David Robie/APR
Protest leaders told a media conference at the University of Melbourne that had agreed to end the protest after the institution had agreed to disclose research partnerships with weapons manufacturers.
“After months of campaigning, rallies, petitions, meetings and in recent weeks, the encampment, the University of Melbourne has finally agreed to meet an important demand of our campaign,” a spokesperson later told the ABC.
“This is a major win.”
Some of the protesting students at AUT University’s Hikuwai Plaza today. Image: David Robie/APR
The split opening up in Israel’s “War Cabinet” is not just between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his long-term rival Benny Gantz. It is actually a three-way split, set in motion by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
It was Gallant’s open criticism of Netanyahu that finally flushed Gantz out into the open.
What Gallant wanted from Netanyahu was a plan for how Gaza is to be governed once the fighting ends and an assurance that the Israel Defence Force will not end up being Gaza’s de facto civil administrator.
To that end, Gallant wanted to know what Palestinian entity (presumably the Palestinian Authority) would be part of that future governing arrangement, and on what terms.
To Gallant, that is essential information to ensure that the IDF (for which he is ultimately responsible) will not be bogged down in Gaza for the duration of a forever war. By voicing his concerns out loud, Gallant pushed Gantz into stating publicly what his position is on the same issues.
What Gantz came up with was a set of six strategic “goals” on which Netanyahu has to provide sufficient signs of progress by June 8, or else Gantz will resign from the war Cabinet.
Maybe, perhaps. Gantz could still find wiggle room for himself to stay on, depending on the state of the political/military climate in three weeks time.
The Gantz list
For what they’re worth, Gantz’s six points are:
The return of the hostages from Gaza;
The overthrow of Hamas rule, and de-militarisation in Gaza;
The establishment of a joint US, European, Arab, and Palestinian administration that will manage Gaza’s civilian affairs, and form the basis for a future alternative governing authority;
The repatriation of residents of north Israel who were evacuated from their homes, as well as the rehabilitation of Gaza border communities;
The promotion of normalisation with Saudi Arabia; and
The adoption of an outline for military service for all Israeli citizens. [Gantz has already tabled a bill to end the current exemption of Hadadim (i.e. conservative Jews) from the draft. This issue is a tool to split Netanyahu away from his extremist allies. One of the ironies of the Gaza conflict is that the religious extremists egging it on have ensured that their own sons and daughters aren’t doing any of the fighting.]
Almost instantly, this list drew a harsh response from Netanyahu’s’ office:
“The conditions set by Benny Gantz are laundered words whose meaning is clear: the end of the war and a defeat for Israel, the abandonment of most of the hostages, leaving Hamas-rule intact and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Our soldiers did not fall in vain and certainly not for the sake of replacing Hamastan with Fatahstan,” the PM’s Office added.
In reality, Netanyahu has little or no interest in what a post-war governing arrangement in Gaza might look like. His grip on power — and his immunity from criminal prosecution — depends on a forever war, in which any surviving Palestinians will have no option but to submit to Gaza being re-settled by Israeli extremists. (Editor: ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has today filed an application for arrest warrants for crimes against humanity by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders for war crimes.)
— Int’l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) May 20, 2024
Gantz, no respite Palestinians have no reason to hope a Gantz-led government would offer them any respite. Gantz was the IDF chief of staff during two previous military assaults on Gaza in 2012 and 2014 that triggered accusations of war crimes.
While Gantz may be open to some minor role for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in helping to run Gaza in future, this would require the PA to be willing to duplicate in Gaza the same abjectly compliant security role it currently performs on behalf of Israel on the West Bank.
So far, the PA has shown no enthusiasm for helping to run Gaza, given that any collaborators would be sitting ducks for Palestinian retribution.
In sum, Gantz is a centrist only when compared to the wingnut extremists (e.g. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich) with whom Netanyahu currently consorts. In any normal democracy, such public dissent by two senior Cabinet Ministers crucial to government stability would have led directly to new elections being called.
Not so in Israel, at least not yet.
Counting the cost in Nouméa A few days ago, the Chamber of commerce in Noumea estimated the economic cost of the ongoing unrest in New Caledonia — both directly and to rebuild the country’s trashed infrastructure — will be in excess of 200 million euros (NZ$356 million).
Fixing the physical infrastructure though, may be the least of it.
The rioting was triggered by the French authorities preparing to sign off on an expansion of the eligibility criteria for taking part in decisive votes on the territory’s future. Among other things, this measure would have diluted the Kanak vote, by extending the franchise to French citizens who had been resident in New Caledonia for ten years.
This thorny issue of voter eligibility has been central to disputes in the territory for at least three decades.
This time around, the voting roll change being mooted came hard on the heels of a third independence referendum in 2021 that had been boycotted by Kanaks, who objected to it being held while the country was still recovering from the covid pandemic.
With good reason, the Kanak parties linked the boycotted 2021 referendum — which delivered a 96 percent vote against independence — to the proposed voting changes. Both are being taken as evidence of a hard rightwards shift by local authorities and their political patrons in France.
An inelegant inégalité On paper, New Caledonia looks like a relatively wealthy country, with an annual per capita income of US$33,000 __ $34,000 estimated for 2024. That’s not all that far behind New Zealand’s $US42,329 figure, and well in excess of neighbours in Oceania like Fiji ($6,143) Vanuatu $3,187) and even French Polynesia ($21,615).
The New Caledonian economy suffers from a lack of productivity gains, insufficient competitiveness and strong income inequalities… Since 2011, economic growth has slowed down due to the fall in nickel prices… The extractive sector developed relatively autonomously with regard to the rest of the economy, absorbing most of the technical capabilities. Apart from nickel, few export activities managed to develop, particularly because of high costs..[associated with] the narrowness of the local market, and with [the territory’s] geographic remoteness.
No doubt, tourism will be hammered by the latest unrest. Yet even before the riots, annual tourism visits to New Caledonia had always lagged well behind the likes of Fiji, and French Polynesia.
Over the past 50 years, the country’s steeply unequal economic base has been directly manipulated by successive French governments, who have been more intent on maintaining the status quo than on establishing a sustainable re-balance of power.
History repeats The violent unrest that broke out between 1976-1989 culminated in the killing by French military forces of several Kanak leaders (including the prominent activist Eloï Machoro) while a hostage-taking incident on Ouvea in 1988 directly resulted in the deaths of 19 Kanaks and two French soldiers.
Tragically in 1989, internal rifts within the Kanak leadership cost the lives of the pre-eminent pro-independence politician Jean-Marie Tjibaou and his deputy.
Eventually, the Matignon Accords that Tjibaou had signed a year before his death ushered in a decade of relative stability. Subsequently, the Noumea Accords a decade later created a blueprint for a 20-year transition to a more equitable outcome for the country’s various racial and political factions.
Of the 270,000 people who comprise the country’s population, some 41 percent belong to the Kanak community.
About 24 percent identify as European. This category includes (a) relatively recent arrivals from mainland France employed in the public service or on private sector contracts, and (b) the politically conservative “caldoches” whose forebears have kept arriving as settlers since the 19th century, including an influx of settlers from Algeria after France lost that colony in 1962, after a war of independence.
A further 7.5 percent identify as “Caledonian” but again, these people are largely of European origin. Some 11.3% of the population are of mixed race. Under the census rules, people can self-identify with multiple ethnic groups.
In sum, the fracture lines of race, culture, economic wealth and deprivation crisscross the country, with the Kanak community being those most in need, and with Kanak youth in particular suffering from limited access to jobs and opportunity.
Restoring whose ‘order’? The riots have been the product of the recent economic downturn, ethnic tensions and widely-held Kanak opposition to French rule. French troops have now been sent into the territory in force, initially to re-open the international airport.
It is still a volatile situation. As Le Monde noted in its coverage of the recent rioting, New Caledonia is known for its very high number of firearms in relation to the size of the population.
If illegal weapons are counted, some 100,000 weapons are said to be circulating in a territory of 270,000 inhabitants.
Even allowing for some people having multiple weapons, New Caledonia has, on average, a gun for every three or four people. France by contrast (according to Franceinfo in 2021) had only 5.4 million weapons within a population of more than 67 million, or one gun for every 12 people.
The restoration of “order” in New Caledonia has the potential for extensive armed violence. After the dust settles, the divisive issue of who should be allowed to vote in New Caledonia, and under what conditions, will remain.
Forging on with the voting reforms regardless, is now surely no longer an option.
For more than 76 years, Palestinians have resisted occupation, dispossession and ethnic cleansing, culminating in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Yet in the midst of this catastrophic seven months of “hell on earth”, it is a paradox that there exists an extraordinary oasis of peace and nature.
Nestling in an Al-Karkarfa hillside at the University of Bethlehem is the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS), a remarkable botanical garden and animal rehabilitation unit that is an antidote for conflict and destruction.
“There is both a genocide and an ecocide going on, supported by some Western governments against the will of the Western public,” says environmental justice advocate Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, the founder and director of the institute.
It has been a hectic week for him and his wife and mentor Jessie Chang Qumsiyeh.
On Wednesday, May 15 — Nakba Day 2024 — they were in Canberra in conversation with local Palestinian, First Nations and environmental campaigners. Nakba – “the catastrophe” in English — is the day of mourning for the destruction of Palestinian society and its homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian people (14 million, of which about 5.3 million live in the “State of Palestine”.)
Three days later in Auckland, they were addressing about 250 people with a Palestinian Christian perspective on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and the war in the historic St Mary’s-in-Holy-Trinity Church in Parnell.
This followed a lively presentation and discussion on the work of the PIBS and its volunteers at the annual general meeting of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) along with more than 100 young and veteran activists such as chair John Minto, who had just returned from a global solidarity conference in South Africa.
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh’s speech at Saint Mary’s-in-Holy-Trinity Church in Parnell. Video: Radio Inqilaab
Environmental impacts less understood
While the horrendous social and human costs of the relentless massacres in Gaza are in daily view on the world’s television screens, the environmental impacts of the occupation and destruction of Palestine are less understood.
As Professor Qumsiyeh explains, water sources have been restricted, destroyed and polluted; habitat loss is pushing species like wolves, gazelles, and hyenas to the brink; destruction of crops and farmland drives food insecurity; and climate crisis is already impacting on Palestine and its people.
The PIBS oasis as pictured on the front cover of the institute’s latest annual report. Image: David Robie/APR
The institute was initiated in 2014 by the Qumsiyehs at Bethlehem University along with a host of volunteers and supporters. After 11 years of operation, the latest PIBS 2023 annual report provides a surprisingly up-to-date and telling preface feeding into the early part of this year.
“In 2023, there were increased restrictions on movement, settler and soldier attacks on Palestinians throughout the occupied territories, combined with the ongoing siege and strangulation of the Gaza Strip, under Israel’s extreme rightwing government.
“This led to the Gaza ghetto uprising that started on 7 October 2023. The Israeli regime’s ongoing response is a genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh . . . In contrast to false perceptions of violence about Palestinians, “these methods have been the exception to what is a peaceful and creative.” Image: Del Abcede/Pax Christi
“[Since that date], 35,500 civilians were brutally killed, 79,500 were wounded (72 percent women and children) and nearly 2 million people displaced. Thousands more still lay under the rubble.
“An immense amount – nearly two-thirds – of Gaza’s infrastructure was destroyed , including 70 per cent of residential buildings, hospitals, schools, universities and government buildings.
Total food, water blockade
“Israel also imposed a total blockade of, among other things, fuel, food, water, and medicine.
“This fits the definition of genocide per international law.
“Israel also attacked the West Bank, killing hundreds of Palestinians in 2023 (and into 2024), destroyed homes and infrastructure (especially in refugee camnps), arrested thousands of innocent civilians, and ethnically cleansed communities in Area C.
“Many of these marginalised communities were those that worked with the institute on issues of biodiversity and sustainability.”
This is the context and the political environment that Professor Qumsiyeh confronts in his daily sustainability struggle. He is committed to a vision of sustainable human and natural communities, responding to the growing needs for education, community service, and protection of land and environment.
Popular Resistance in Palestine cover (2011). Image: Pluto Press/APR
In one of his many books, Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment, he argues that in contrast to how Western media usually paints Palestine resistance as exclusively violent: armed resistance, suicide bombings, and rocket attacks. “In reality,” he says, “these methods have been the exception to what is a peaceful and creative
Call for immediate ceasefire
An enormous global movement has been calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, to end decades of colonisation, and work toward a free Palestine that delivers sustainable peace for all in the region.
Professor Qumsiyeh reminded the audience at St Mary’s that the first Christians were in Palestine.
“The Romans used to feed us to the lions until the 4 th century,” when ancient Rome adopted Christianity and it became the Holy Roman Empire.
He spoke about how Christians had also paid a high price for Israel’s war on Gaza as well as Muslims.
PSNA’s Billy Hania . . . a response to Professor Qumsiyeh. Image: David Robie/APR
Christendom’s third oldest church and the oldest in Gaza, the Greek Orthodox church of Saint Porphyrius in the Zaytoun neighbourhood — which had served as a sanctuary for both Christians and Muslims during Israel’s periodic wars was bombed just 12 days after the start of the current war.
There had been about 1000 Christians in Gaza; 300 mosques had been bombed.
He said “everything we do is suspect, we are harassed and attacked by the Israelis”.
‘Don’t want children to be happy’
“They don’t want children to be happy, they have killed 15,000 of them in Gaza. They don’t want us to survive.”
Palestine action for the planet . . . a slide from Professor Qumsiyeh’s talk earlier in the day at the PSNA annual general meeting. Image: David Robie/APR
He said colonisers did not seem to like diversity — they destroy it, whether it is human diversity, biodiversity.
“Palestine is a multiethnic, multicultural and multireligious country.”
“Diversity is healthy, an equal system. We have all sorts of religions in our part of the world.
“Life would be boring if we were all the same – that’s human. A forest with only one kind of trees is not healthy.’
Professor Qumsiyeh was critical of much Western news media.
“If you watch Western media, Fox news and so on, you would be told that we are people who have been fighting for years.”
That wasn’t true. “We had the most peaceful country on earth.”
“If you go back a few years, to the Crusades, that is when political ideas from Europe such as principalities and kingdoms started to spread.”
Heading into nuclear war
He warned against a world that was rushing headlong into a nuclear war, which would be devastating for the planet – “only cockroaches can survive a nuclear war.”
“Humanity for Gaza” . . . a slide from Professor Qumsiyeh’s talk earlier in the day. Image: David Robie
Professor Qumsiyeh likened his role to that of a shepherd, “telling the world that something must be done” to protect food sovereignty and biodiversity as “climate change is coming to us with a vengeance. So please help us achieve the goal.”
The institute says that they are leaders in “disseminating information and ideas to challenge the propaganda spread about Palestine”.
It annual report says: “We published 17 scientific articles on areas like environmental justice, protected areas, national parks, fauna, and flora.
“Our team gave over 210 talks locally, only and abroad, and over 200 interviews (radio and TV).
“We produced statements responding to attacks on institutions for higher education, natural areas, and cultural heritage.
“We published research on the impact of war, on Israel’s weaponisation of ‘nature reserves’ and ‘national parks, and a vision for peace based on justice and sustainability.”
When it is considered that Israel destroyed all 12 universities in Gaza, the sustaining work of the institute on many fronts is vital.
Professor Qumsiyeh also appealed for volunteers, interns and researchers to come to Bethlehem to help the institute to contribute to a “more liveable world”.
Jean-Marie Tjibaou, a revered Kanak visionary, was inspirational to indigenous Pacific political activists across Oceania, just like Tongan anthropologist and writer Epeli Hao’ofa was to cultural advocates.
Tragically, he was assassinated in 1989 by an opponent within the independence movement during the so-called “les événements” in New Caledonia, the last time the “French” Pacific territory was engulfed in a political upheaval such as experienced this week.
His memory and legacy as poet, cultural icon and peaceful political agitator live on with the impressive Tjibaou Cultural Centre on the outskirts of the capital Nouméa as a benchmark for how far New Caledonia had progressed in the last 35 years.
However, the wave of pro-independence protests that descended into urban rioting this week invoked more than Tjibaou’s memory. Many of the martyrs — such as schoolteacher turned security minister Eloï Machoro, murdered by French snipers during the upheaval of the 1980s — have been remembered and honoured for their exploits over the last few days with countless memes being shared on social media.
Among many memorable quotes by Tjibaou, this one comes to mind:
“White people consider that the Kanaks are part of the fauna, of the local fauna, of the primitive fauna. It’s a bit like rats, ants or mosquitoes,” he once said.
“Non-recognition and absence of cultural dialogue can only lead to suicide or revolt.”
And that is exactly what has come to pass this week in spite of all the warnings in recent years and months. A revolt.
Among the warnings were one by me in December 2021 after a failed third and “final” independence referendum. I wrote at the time about the French betrayal:
“After three decades of frustratingly slow progress but with a measure of quiet optimism over the decolonisation process unfolding under the Nouméa Accord, Kanaky New Caledonia is again poised on the edge of a precipice.”
As Paris once again reacts with a heavy-handed security crackdown, it appears to have not learned from history. It will never stifle the desire for independence by colonised peoples.
New Caledonia was annexed as a colony in 1853 and was a penal colony for convicts and political prisoners — mainly from Algeria — for much of the 19th century before gaining a degree of autonomy in 1946.
“Kanaky Palestine – same combat” solidarity placard. Image: APR screenshot
Here are my five takeaways from this week’s violence and frustration:
1. Global failure of neocolonialism – Palestine, Kanaky and West Papua
Just as we have witnessed a massive outpouring of protest on global streets for justice, self-determination and freedom for the people of Palestine as they struggle for independence after 76 years of Israeli settler colonialism, and also Melanesian West Papuans fighting for 61 years against Indonesian settler colonialism, Kanak independence aspirations are back on the world stage.
Neocolonialism has failed. French President Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to reverse the progress towards decolonisation over the past three decades has backfired in his face.
2. French deafness and loss of social capital
The predictions were already long there. Failure to listen to the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) leadership and to be prepared to be patient and negotiate towards a consensus has meant much of the crosscultural goodwill that been developed in the wake of the Nouméa Accord of 1998 has disappeared in a puff of smoke from the protest fires of the capital.
The immediate problem lies in the way the French government has railroaded the indigenous Kanak people who make up 42 percent pf the 270,000 population into a constitutional bill that “unfreezes” the electoral roll pegging voters to those living in New Caledonia at the time of the 1998 Nouméa Accord. Under the draft bill all those living in the territory for the past 10 years could vote.
Kanak leaders and activists who have been killed . . . Jean-Marie Tjibaou is bottom left, and Eloï Machoro is bottom right. Image: FLNKS/APR
This would add some 25,000 extra French voters in local elections, which would further marginalise Kanaks at a time when they hold the territorial presidency and a majority in the Congress in spite of their demographic disadvantage.
Under the Nouméa Accord, there was provision for three referendums on independence in 2018, 2020 and 2021. The first two recorded narrow (and reducing) votes against independence, but the third was effectively boycotted by Kanaks because they had suffered so severely in the 2021 delta covid pandemic and needed a year to mourn culturally.
The FLNKS and the groups called for a further referendum but the Macron administration and a court refused.
3. Devastating economic and social loss New Caledonia was already struggling economically with the nickel mining industry in crisis – the territory is the world’s third-largest producer. And now four days of rioting and protesting have left a trail of devastation in their wake.
At least five people have died in the rioting — three Kanaks, and two French police, apparently as a result of a barracks accident. A state of emergency was declared for at least 12 days.
But as economists and officials consider the dire consequences of the unrest, it will take many years to recover. According to Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) president David Guyenne, between 80 and 90 percent of the grocery distribution network in Nouméa had been “wiped out”. The chamber estimated damage at about 200 million euros (NZ$350 million).
Twin flags of Kanaky and Palestine flying from a Parisian rooftop. Image: APR
4. A new generation of youth leadership As we have seen with Generation Z in the forefront of stunning pro-Palestinian protests across more than 50 universities in the United States (and in many other countries as well, notably France, Ireland, Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom), and a youthful generation of journalists in Gaza bearing witness to Israeli atrocities, youth has played a critical role in the Kanaky insurrection.
Australian peace studies professor Dr Nicole George notes that “the highly visible wealth disparities” in the territory “fuel resentment and the profound racial inequalities that deprive Kanak youths of opportunity and contribute to their alienation”.
A feature is the “unpredictability” of the current crisis compared with the 1980s “les événements”.
“In the 1980s, violent campaigns were coordinated by Kanak leaders . . . They were organised. They were controlled.
“In contrast, today it is the youth taking the lead and using violence because they feel they have no other choice. There is no coordination. They are acting through frustration and because they feel they have ‘no other means’ to be recognised.”
According to another academic, Dr Évelyne Barthou, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Pau, who researched Kanak youth in a field study last year: “Many young people see opportunities slipping away from them to people from mainland France.
“This is just one example of the neocolonial logic to which New Caledonia remains prone today.”
Pan-Pacific independence solidarity . . . “Kanak People Maohi – same combat”. Image: APR screenshot
5. Policy rethink needed by Australia, New Zealand
Ironically, as the turbulence struck across New Caledonia this week, especially the white enclave of Nouméa, a whistlestop four-country New Zealand tour of Melanesia headed by Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, who also has the foreign affairs portfolio, was underway.
The first casualty of this tour was the scheduled visit to New Caledonia and photo ops demonstrating the limited diversity of the political entourage showed how out of depth New Zealand’s Pacific diplomacy had become with the current rightwing coalition government at the helm.
Heading home, Peters thanked the people and governments of Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Tuvalu for “working with New Zealand towards a more secure, more prosperous and more resilient tomorrow”.
The delegation is now heading home
Many thanks to the people and governments of Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu & Tuvalu for their kind hospitality – and for working with New Zealand towards a more secure, more prosperous & more resilient tomorrow.
His tweet came as New Caledonian officials and politicians were coming to terms with at least five deaths and the sheer scale of devastation in the capital which will rock New Caledonia for years to come.
News media in both Australia and New Zealand hardly covered themselves in glory either, with the commercial media either treating the crisis through the prism of threats to tourists and a superficial brush over the issues. Only the public media did a creditable job, New Zealand’s RNZ Pacific and Australia’s ABC Pacific and SBS.
In the case of New Zealand’s largest daily newspaper, The New Zealand Herald, it barely noticed the crisis. On Wednesday, morning there was not a word in the paper.
Thursday was not much better, with an “afterthought” report provided by a partnership with RNZ. As I reported it:
“Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, finally catches up with the Pacific’s biggest news story after three days of crisis — the independence insurrection in #KanakyNewCaledonia.
“But unlike global news services such as Al Jazeera, which have featured it as headline news, the Herald tucked it at the bottom of page 2. Even then it wasn’t its own story, it was relying on a partnership report from RNZ.”
Also, New Zealand media reports largely focused too heavily on the “frustrations and fears” of more than 200 tourists and residents said to be in the territory this week, and provided very slim coverage of the core issues of the upheaval.
With all the warning signs in the Pacific over recent years — a series of riots in New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga and Vanuatu — Australia and New Zealand need to wake up to the yawning gap in social indicators between the affluent and the impoverished, and the worsening climate crisis.
These are the real issues of the Pacific, not some fantasy about AUKUS and a perceived China threat in an unconvincing arena called “Indo-Pacific”.
Dr David Robie covered “Les Événements” in New Caledonia in the 1980s and penned the book Blood on their Banner about the turmoil. He also covered the 2018 independence referendum.
Loyalist French rally in New Caledonia . . . “Unfreezing is democracy”. Image: A PR screenshot
An open letter to The New Zealand Herald has challenged a full page Zionist advertisement this week for failing to acknowledge the “terrible injustices” suffered by the Palestinian people in Israel’s seven-month genocidal war on Gaza.
In the latest of several international reports that have condemned genocide against the people of Gaza while the International Court of Justice continues to investigate Israel for a plausible case for genocide, a human rights legal network of US universities has concluded that “Israel has committed genocidal acts of killing” and sought to “bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza”.
The University Network for Human Rights, along with the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University School of Law, the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School, the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, and the Lowenstein Human Rights Project at Yale Law School, conducted a legal analysis and the 100-page damning report,“Genocide in Gaza: Analysis of International Law and its Application to Israel’s Military Actions since October 7, 2023.”
The Israeli military have killed more than 35,000 people — mostly women and children — and more than 78,000 people and the UN General Assembly voted by an overwhelming 134-9 votes to back Palestinian statehood on May 11.
The full page Zionist advertisement in The New Zealand Herald this week, 14 May 2024. Image: NZH screenshot APR
In the full page Zionist advertisement in The New Zealand Herald on Tuesday, senior pastor Nigel Woodley of the Flaxmere Christian Fellowship Church in Hastings claimed “the current painful war is another episode in Israel’s history for survival” with no acknowledgement of the massive human cost on Palestinians.
The open letter by Reverend Chris Sullivan in response — dated the same day but not published by The Herald — says:
An advertisement in the Herald supports the creation of the State of Israel.
For the same reasons we should also support the creation of a Palestinian state; don’t Palestinians also deserve their own nation state?
Just as we decry Hitler’s Holocaust, so too must we raise our voices against the killing of 35,000 people in Gaza (most of them innocent civilians), the destruction of 70 percent of the housing, and imminent famine.
It is disingenuous to focus solely on the Arab invasions of Israel, without looking at their cause — the killing and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians which accompanied the creation of the modern state of Israel.
It is never too late for both sides to turn away from violence and war and build a lasting peace, based on mutual respect and a just solution to the terrible injustices the Palestinian people have suffered.
As Israel drives the Palestinians deeper into another Nakba in Gaza with its assault on Rafah, the Palestine Youth Aotearoa (PYA) and solidarity supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand tonight commemorated the original Nakba — “the Catastrophe” — of 1948.
The 1948 Nakba . . . more than 750,000 Palestinians were forced to leave their homeland and become exiles in neighbouring states. Many dream of their UN-recognised right to return. Image: Wikipedia
This was when Israeli militias slaughtered more than 15,000 people, perpetrated more than 70 massacres and occupied more than three quarters of Palestine, with 750,000 of the Palestinian population forced into becoming refugees from their own land.
The Nakba was a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing followed by the destruction of hundreds of villages, to prevent the return of the refugees — similar to what is being wrought now in Gaza.
The Nakba lies at the heart of 76 years of injustice for the Palestinians — and for the latest injustice, the seven-month long war on Gaza.
Participants told through their stories, poetry and songs by candlelight, they would not forget 1948 — “and we will not forget the genocide under way in Gaza.”
Photographs: David Robie
Nakba Day vigil in Tāmaki Makaurau in Aotearoa 2024
1 of 12
Nakba 1: Recalling the original Nakba in Palestine in 1948. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Nakba 2: Photos of the original 1948 Nakba and the atrocities that followed. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Nakba 3: A photographic timeline from 1948 until 2024. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Nakba 4: Blindfolded Palestinian captive. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Nakba 5: “Generation after generation until total liberation.” Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Nakba 6: Palestinian Kiwi children with miniature watermelons. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Nakba 7: Palestinian keys – symbolic of the Right To Return. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Nakba 10: A montage of Israeli settler colonial cruelty. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Nakba 11: Palestinian children sing about their homeland during the Nakba rally in Auckland’s Aotea Square on Sunday, 12 May 2024. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Nakba 12: A giant “key of return” during the Queen Street Nakba march on Sunday, 12 May 2024. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Sorry Palestinian women and children. It seems Australia’s leading women’s media company has more pressing issues to cover than the seemingly endless human rights atrocities committed against you.
It’s been seven months of almost complete silence from Mamamia and their most popular writers and podcast hosts.
I’ve respected and appreciated their work in the past, which is why it’s truly disheartening to see.
Mamamia Out Loud has found time and scope to speak about me personally in two recent episodes (both sadly devoid of context and riddled with inaccuracies) yet can’t seem to find the words to report on or reflect on the man made famine in Gaza.
The murdered and orphaned children. The women having c-sections with no anaesthesia. The haunting screams from mothers hugging their lifeless babies bodies for the last time.
Faux feminism? Or is it all still “too complex”? I can’t answer that, except to say it’s dispiriting and disappointing to witness given Mamamia’s tagline.
What we’re talking about
Because Gaza is what millions of Australian women “are actually talking about”. It’s what’s waking countless Australian women up at night. It’s what’s making Australian women tremble in tears watching children’s body parts dug out from beneath the rubble.
Mamamia’s audience is being let down, they deserve better.
As for the innocent women and girls of Palestine — tragically “let down” doesn’t even begin to describe it. They deserve so much more.
I’m utterly heartbroken witnessing such disregard for their lives.
So I fixed the Mamamia headline in the above photo.
Antoinette Lattouf is an Australian-Lebanese journalist, host, author and diversity advocate. She has worked with a range of mainstream media, and as a social commentator for various online and broadcast publications. This commentary was first published on her Facebook page.
A New Zealand pro-Palestinian protester who climbed onto the roof of the Christchurch City Council building has been handcuffed and taken away in a police car.
About 20 protesters gathered near the Christchurch Art Gallery today.
Officers were called to the scene near Worcester Boulevard about 11.20am, and police and firefighters worked to get the person down from the roof.
The UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to grant Palestine new rights and privileges, calling on the Security Council to reconsider its bid for full UN membership, reports TrimFeed.
The resolution on Friday was opposed by the US, Israel, and seven other countries — four of them island nations from the Pacific — citing concerns over direct negotiations and a two-state solution.
Papua New Guinea, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau were among the countries voting against Palestine.
Fiji abstains from UN vote on Palestinian membership bid. (Note: Australia voted yes, it did not abstain). Image: TrimFeed
The UN General Assembly called on the Security Council to reconsider Palestine’s request to become the 194th member of the United Nations.
The overwhelming vote in favour by 143-9, with 25 abstentions, reflects wide global support for full membership of Palestine in the world body.
The outcome of this vote has significant implications for the Israel-Palestine conflict, as it may influence the trajectory of future negotiations and the prospects for a two-state solution.
Furthermore, the level of international support for Palestinian statehood may impact on the balance of power in the region and beyond.
Fiji, Vanuatu, and Marshall Islands were among the countries that abstained from the vote, alongside the United States, Israel, Argentina, Czechia, Hungary, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Papua New Guinea voting against.
US will veto statehood
The US has made clear that it would block Palestinian membership and statehood until direct negotiations with Israel resolve key issues and lead to a two-state solution.
Many countries have expressed outrage at the situation and fears of a major Israeli ground offensive in Rafah.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN Ambassador, delivered an emotional speech, saying, “No words can capture what such loss and trauma signifies for Palestinians, their families, communities, and for our nation as a whole.”
Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan vehemently opposed the resolution, accusing UN member nations of not mentioning Hamas’ October 7 attack that killed 1139 people and he shredded a copy of the UN charter in protest.
US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood said: “For the US to support Palestinian statehood, direct negotiations must guarantee Israel’s security and future as a democratic Jewish state, and that Palestinians can live in peace in a state of their own.”
While the resolution grants Palestine some new rights and privileges, it reaffirms that it remains a non-member observer state without full UN membership and voting rights in the General Assembly.
Humanitarian ceasefire vote
Palestine became a UN non-member observer state in 2012. The United States vetoed a widely-backed council resolution on April 18 that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for Palestine.
The General Assembly’s vote calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza on October 27 and the ongoing violence underscore the urgent need for a resolution to the long-standing crisis.
As the international community remains divided on the issue of Palestinian statehood, the path to lasting peace remains uncertain.
Republished from TrimFeed.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
About 1000 people in Aotearoa New Zealand gathered for a two-hour rally in central Auckland today and marched down Queen Street and returned to Aotea Square to mark the Nakba three days early — and protest over Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
They called for an immediate ceasefire in the war as the death toll passed more than 35,000 people killed — mostly women and children – and chanted “hands off Rafah” as the Israeli military intensified their attack on the southern part of the besieged enclave.
Israel’s Defence Force (IDF) also deployed tanks in northern Gaza months after claiming that they had “dismantled” the resistance force Hamas in the area.
For the past seven months, protesters have staged rallies across New Zealand every week at more than 25 different towns and locations and they have rarely been reported by the country’s news media.
Ironically, today was also marked as Mother’s Day and many protesters carried placards and banners mourning the mothers and children killed in the seven-month war, such as “Every 15 min a Palestinian child dies”, “Israel/USA, how many kids did you kill today”, “Decolonise your mind — stand with Palestine”, and “Stop the genocide”.
Some protesters carried photographs of named children killed in the war, honouring their short and tragic lives, such as 13-year-old Hala Abu Sada, who “had a passion for the arts – she made educational and entertaining videos for deaf children”.
“Hala dreamed of becoming a singer.”
The Nakba – ‘ethnic cleansing’
Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world, numbering about 12.4 million, mark the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948, reports Al Jazeera.
The Palestinian experience of dispossession and loss of a homeland is 76 years old this year.
“Happy Mothers’ Day” in New Zealand . . . but protesters mourn the loss of mothers and children as the death toll in Israel’s War on Gaza topped 35,000 on Nakba Day. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
On that day, the State of Israel came into being. The creation of Israel was a violent process that entailed the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland to establish a Jewish-majority state — the wishes of the Zionist movement.
The 1948 Nakba . . . more than 750,000 Palestinians were forced to leave their homeland and become exiles in neighbouring states. Many dream of their UN-recognised right to return. Image: Wikipedia
Between 1947 and 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians from a 1.9 million population were forced out of their homeland and made refugees beyond the borders of the state.
Zionist forces seized more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities, including more than 70 massacres.
The current resolution does not give Palestinians full membership, but recognises them as qualified to join, and it gives Palestine more participation and some rights within the UNGA.
Thank you to the peoples of the world, nations, & majority of States who voted for Palestinian self-determination, for Palestinian existence & future. Thank you for standing for humanity, for the UN Charter, & for freedom & justice. Onwards, until 194th Member pic.twitter.com/H15egK4zwj
Overwhelming UN vote backs Palestine
The UN General Assembly (UNGA) has overwhelmingly voted to support a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognising it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”.
Memberships can only be decided by the UN Security Council, and last month, the US vetoed a bid for full membership.
The current resolution does not give Palestinians full membership, but recognises them as qualified to join, and it gives Palestine more participation and some rights within the UNGA.
Voting yes for the resolution were 143 countries, including three UN Security Council permanent members, China, France and Russia and also Australia, New Zealand and Timor-Leste.
Nine countries voted against, with four Pacific nations, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Papua New Guinea among those joining Israel and the US.
Twenty five countries abstained, including UNSC permanent member United Kingdom and three Pacific countries, Fiji, Marshall Islands and Vanuatu.
“Look up Nakba” . . . and The Key to returning home to historical Palestine. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific ReportPalestinian children singing at Aotea Square today . . . a speaker said their future was in “good hands with our young people”. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific ReportSome of the pro-Palestinian protesters at Auckland’s Aotea Square today . . . the background banner says “IDF = Murder Machine”. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Barangay New Zealand’s Rene Molina has interviewed the country’s first Filipino Green MP Francisco Hernandez who was sworn into Parliament yesterday as the party’s latest member.
This is the first interview with Hernandez who replaces former Green Party co-leader James Shaw after his retirement from politics to take up a green investment advisory role.
Hernandez talks about his earlier role as a climate change activist and his role with New Zealand’s Climate Commission, and his life experiences.
The interviewer — educator, digital media producer and community advocate Rene Nonoy Molina — is also a member of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).
“I was involved in the New Zealand climate crisis movement as an activist,” Hernandez says.
“I was involved in a group called Generation Zero, which is the youth climate justice group and that’s how I ended up getting involved in the New Zealand youth delegation that went to Paris.
“So that’s separate from my Climate Change Commission work which came after.”
Hernandez is the son of a member of Joseph Estrada’s ruling party in the Philippines before its government changed in 2001, according to the Otago University magazine.
He migrated to New Zealand with his family when he was 12 and is a former president of the Otago University Students’ Association with an honours degree in politics.
Francisco B. Hernandez talks to Rene Molina. Video: Barangay NZ
He has also worked as an advisor at the Climate Commission, reports RNZ News.
He stood for Dunedin in the last election, coming third with more than 8000 votes — not far behind National’s Michael Woodhouse (over 9000) but far behind the more than 17,000 votes of Labour’s Rachel Brooking.
Published in collaboration with Barangay New Zealand.
The United Nations General Assembly is expected to vote later today on a resolution that would grant new “rights and privileges” to Palestine and that — again — calls on the UN Security Council to favourably reconsider Palestine’s request for full UN membership, reports Al Jazeera.
The US vetoed a widely backed resolution on April 18 that would have paved the way for full UN membership for Palestine, a goal that Israel has worked strenuously to prevent and Washington has been instrumental in blocking on behalf of its key ally.
The US Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, said yesterday that the Biden administration remained opposed to Palestinian membership.
During the April 18 vote, Palestine’s application received strong support with a vote of 12 in favour, the UK and Switzerland abstaining, and the US alone in voting no.
The State of Palestine appealed for support on Thursday, saying a vote for UN membership comes at “a critical moment for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State … [and] rightful place among the community of nations”.
The State of #Palestine renews its appeal to all States for their support of the draft resolution when it is voted on by the General Assembly tomorrow morning, (#NYT) Friday, 10 May. A letter which clarifies our position & appeal @UNpic.twitter.com/llABBZX3l0
Palestinians are facing a critical shortage of clean water as Israel continues air strikes on eastern Rafah and blocks humanitarian aid from entering the besieged enclave.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths has said that the Israeli military has not allowed anything or anyone to go in or get out of Gaza since its takeover of the Rafah crossing on Tuesday.
“The closure of the crossings means no fuel. It means no trucks, no generators, no water, no electricity and no movement of people or goods. It means no aid,” he said.
Hamas says ‘ball in Israel’s hands’
French news agency AFP is reporting that Hamas announced early Friday that its delegation attending Gaza ceasefire talks in Cairo had left the city for Qatar and stated that the “ball is now completely” in Israel’s hands.
“The negotiating delegation left Cairo heading to Doha. In practice, the occupation [Israel] rejected the proposal submitted by the mediators and raised objections to it on several central issues,” the group said in a statement, adding it stood by the ceasefire proposal.
“Accordingly, the ball is now completely in the hands of the occupation,” the group said.
According to Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting on the US President Joe Biden’s exclusive interview with Erin Burnett this week with CNN, “We saw President Biden come out and say, ‘look, if they do this large-scale invasion of Rafah — there will be no bombs, no artillery shells, perhaps none of the technologies that turn dumb bombs into smart bombs’.
“And he is not just saying that it is going to happen. He is showing that it is already sort of happening.”
A shipment of bombs — 1800 900kg bombs that cause massive destruction and 1700 230kg bombs — due for delivery to Israel have been “paused”.
As student protests calling for an immediate ceasefire and divestment from universities in Israel spread around the globe, academics at two universities in New Zealand have condemned administrations for not standing up for their role as a “critic and conscience of society”.
Ohio’s top lawyer has warned the state’s public universities that a law written to deter Ku Klux Klan demonstrations could be used to impose felony charges on students who wear face coverings while protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza, reports Al Jazeera.
In a letter sent out this week, after weeks of pro-Palestinian campus protests around the United States, Republican Attorney-General Dave Yost advised the presidents of Ohio’s 34 public universities to forewarn students about the 1953 law.
“In our society, there are few more significant career-wreckers than a felony charge,” the letter said.
“I write to you today to inform your student bodies of an Ohio law that, in the context of some behavior during the recent pro-Palestinian protests, could have that effect.”
Violating this “anti-disguise” law is punishable by a fourth-degree felony charge, up to US$5000 in fines and five years on community control, Yost wrote.
Protests in NZ
In New Zealand, there have been rallies at two of the largest universities in the country, Auckland and Otago, and open letters of protest by academics against government inaction against Israel, while there have been large weekly pro-Palestine demonstrations at more than 20 centres across the country for seven months.
The global student protests are resonating with Palestinians who have endured the destruction of all 12 universities in Gaza.
Palestinian university presidents signed an open letter saying the protests serve as a “beacon of hope”.
Al Jazeera’s The Take podcast series speaks to student protesters as well as advocates in Palestine to examine the issue. Listen to the episode here.
“We stand here in solidarity with our fellow students in Gaza who do not have the same chance as us.”
University encampments and protests have now spread far beyond the United States.
As Israel presses ahead with strikes in Rafah and seizing the Rafah crossing from Egypt, aid agencies are sounding the alarm of a “catastrophic humanitarian situation”.
Rafah was “significant” because it was the only part in Gaza that had not been terribly damaged by the conflict, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) senior deputy director Scott Anderson told RNZ Checkpoint.
“And most importantly, we have 1.4 million of the 2.2 million people in Gaza sheltering here in Rafah. And of that number, more than half are children,” Anderson told Checkpoint.
“It’s the last place of safety within Gaza.”
UNRWA’s senior deputy director Scott Anderson . . . “Those two crossings very much are the lifeline of Gaza.” Image: Screenshot RNZ
He said people struggled daily to find food, water, showers and toilets.
Palestinians have now been ordered to evacuate parts of Rafah as Israel prepares for a long-threatened assault on Hamas holdouts in the city.
People displaced five times
Many of the people had already been displaced five or six times, Anderson said.
“And now come the evacuation orders and it makes people very nervous and apprehensive.
“For us it is a concern because Rafah is also where our main supply line for Gaza exists through Kerem Shalom from Israel, or through Rafah Gate from Egypt.”
He said it would affect aid reaching Rafah.
A map of southern Gaza showing the “evacuation” area from Rafah. Image: LM screenshot APR
In the north of Gaza, only 30 to 50 trucks could enter a day, whereas Kerem Shalom in the south could accommodate up to 600 trucks.
The Rafah terminal from Egypt was a path for fuel and diesel to come in.
“If we don’t have diesel, we don’t have hospitals running, we don’t have food being delivered, water is not being produced, waste isn’t being picked up, and the sewers aren’t running.
“So those two crossings very much are the lifeline of Gaza, and without those, it could become very much a catastrophic humanitarian situation beyond what already exists.”
A New Zealand local authority, Whanganui District Council, has passed a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, condemnation of all acts of violence and terror against civilians on both sides of the conflict and the immediate return of hostages.
It comes as Palestinian militant group Hamas agreed to a Gaza ceasefire proposal from mediators, but Israel said the terms did not meet its demands and pressed ahead with strikes in Rafah.
Councillor Josh Chandulal-Mackay moved the motion on behalf of the Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
He told council that it had a responsibility to the Palestinian and Israeli families living in Whanganui to make its voice heard.
“A community which upholds international law and human rights is a safer community for all,” he said.
“Speaking up has moral and political weight.”
The motion also called for the New Zealand government to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
‘Stand up for human rights’
“This motion is about us calling on our government to do its bit as part of the international community to stand up for human rights, to stand up for peace and to say that a ceasefire an immediate and permanent ceasefire should be called for in the region and implemented in the region without any caveats attached to it,” he said.
“So that then negotiations for a two-state solution and for peace can be achieved.”
Chandulal-Mackay said throughout history collective pressure had always driven social change, pointing to the end of apartheid in South Africa as an example.
Earlier, councillor Rob Vinsen had been at pains to ensure the immediate return of hostages was included in the motion.
“I know an Israeli in this community whose family, two of them were murdered during the October 7 attack into Israel. Four of his family were taken hostage. Two still are hostages and that’s why I was motivated to put this clause on here about calling for the release of hostages.”
Mayor Andrew Tripe spoke in support of the motion.
“We have 101 different nationalities in Whanganui. We live in a global society basically here in Whanganui and my rhetoric is all about peace and unity here in Whanganui and if we can promote that message for Whanganui but also for the rest of the world that’s something I hold strong to.”
One abstention
All but one councillor — who abstained — voted in favour of the motion.
Earlier, council received two petitions — signed by more than 2000 people — organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa.
One called for a ceasefire and the other for the Whanganui council not to do business with companies identified by the United Nations as being involved in the building or maintenance of illegal Israeli settlements.
PSNA spokesperson Sophie Reinhold told council that criticising Israel did not amount to anti-semitism.
“We want to see all the hostages brought home. We want to see an end to the mass slaughter. In 215 days over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, over two thirds of them women and children with thousands more still unaccounted for under the rubble.
“Nothing justifies this. Nothing. Not self-defence, not human shields. Nothing.”
She urged council “to give a voice to the call for a ceasefire” in a similar fashion as it had done when it condemned Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine in 2022.
The council received the petitions.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
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We hear from a few of them on 
