“Grow a spine for Palestine!” was a frequent theme among about 5000 people protesting in the heart of New Zealand’s largest city today as the protesters demanded that the coalition government should recognise the state of Palestine and stop supporting impunity for Israel.
More than 62,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza in the past 22 months and the country’s military have doubled down on their attacks on residential areas in the besieged enclave.
Several speakers, including opposition parliamentarians, spoke at the rally, strongly condemning Israel for its genocidal policies and crimes against humanity.
Many children took part in the rally at Te Komititanga Square and the return march up Queen Street in spite of the bitterly wet and cold weather. Many of them carried placards and Palestinian flags like their parents.
One young boy carried a placard declaring “Just a kid standing in front of his PM asking him to grow a heart and a spine”. The heart was illustrated as a Palestinian flag.
Other placards included slogans such as “Wanted MPs with a spine” and “Grow a spine for Palestine”, and “They try to bury us forgetting we are seeds” with the resistance watermelon symbol.
Many placards demanded sanctions and condemned Israel, saying “Gaza is starving. Words won’t feed them — sanction Israel now”, “NZ government: Your silence is complicity with Israeli genocide” and “Free Palestine now”.
Disillusionment with leaders
One poster expressed disillusionment with both the coalition government and opposition Labour Party leaders, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins, denouncing “apologists for genocide”.
Another poster challenged both Hipkins and Luxon over “what values” they stood for. It said:
“Our ‘leaders’ have refused to call for a ceasefire even after 10,000+ innocent civilians have been brutally murdered in their own homes, including 4000+ CHILDREN all under the name of “Kiwi values”.
“They, like a lot of other world politicians, are apologists for genocide.”
A “Palestine forever” banner at the head of the Auckland march today as it prepares to walk up Queen Street. Image: APR
Frustration has been growing among the public with the government’s reluctance to declare support for Palestinian statehood after 96 consecutive weeks of protests organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and other groups, not just in the largest city of Auckland and the capital Wellington, but also in Christchurch and in at least 20 other towns and communities across the motu.
The “spine” theme in chants and posters followed just days after Parliament suspended Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick following a fiery speech about Gaza when she said government MPs should grow a spine and sanction Israel for its atrocities.
She had refused to apologise to the House and supporters at the rally today gave her rousing cheers in support of her defiance.
‘We need your help’
Te Pati Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told the crowd: “We need you to help her put the pressure on so that we can fight together in that place [Parliament] for our people to free, free Palestine; from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
“Return our dignity Aotearoa. Stand up for what is right. There is only one side to support in genocide, only one side. And Te Pati Māori will only work with those.”
When Swarbrick spoke to the crowd, she repeated her goal to find six government MPs “with a spine” to support her bill to “sanction Israel for its war crimes”.
She also said the Palestinian people were being “starved and slaughtered by Israel” in Gaza, adding that their breath was being “stolen from them” by the IDF (Israeli “Defence” Force).
“It is our duty, all human beings with breath left in our lungs, with the freedom to chant and to move and to demand action from our politicians, to do all that we can to fight for liberation for all peoples,” she said.
Other politicians speaking were Orini Kaipara, the Te Pati Māori candidate for the Tāmaki Mākaurau byelection, and Kerrin Leoni, mayoral candidate for Tamaki.
Targeted assassinations
Earlier, the targeted assassinations of six journalists by the Israeli military last Sunday — taking the toll to 272 — was condemned by independent journalist and Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie. He also criticised the NZ media silence.
Noting that New Zealand journalists had not condemned the killings or held a vigil as the Media Alliance (MEAA) had done in Australia, he cited an Al Jazeera journalist, Hind Khoudary, whose message to the world was:
“We are being hunted and killed in Gaza while you watch in silence. For two years, your fellow journalists here have been slaughtered.
What did you do? Nothing.”
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick (left) and Te Pati Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer at today’s rally in Te Komitanga Square, Auckland. Image: APR
A recent poll on whether New Zealanders want sanctions to be imposed on Israel, showed that of those who gave an opinion, 60 percent favoured sanctions.
The PSNA commissioned survey by Talbot Mills in July with 1216 respondents gave a similar result to one commissioned by Justice for Palestine a year ago.
Popular support for sanctions
PSNA co-chair John Minto said the numbers showed strong popular support for sanctions. The 60 percent overall rose to 68 percent for the 18–29 year category.
“The government is well out of step with public opinion and ignores this message at its peril. There is popular support for sanctions against Israel,” he said.
“People see that Israel is committing the worst atrocities of the 21st century with impunity. It is starving a whole population.
“It has destroyed just about every building in Gaza. It is assassinating journalists. It holds 7000 Palestinian hostages in its jails without charge. Its goal of occupying all of Gaza and ethnically cleansing its people into the Sudan desert, is all public knowledge.”
Minto said Israel’s “depraved Prime Minister” who was wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICJ) for war crimes and crimes against humanity, had boasting that if Israel was really committing genocide, “it could have killed everyone in Gaza in a single afternoon”.
“The poll shows New Zealand First supporters are most opposed to sanctions against Israel (59 percent of those who gave an opinion were opposed) so it’s little surprise Winston Peters is dragging the chain.”
“Just a kid” with his blunt message to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Image: APR
The word “Gaza” is taking on similar connotations to what the word “Auschwitz” meant to a previous generation. It signifies a deliberate and systematic attempt to erase an entire people from history on the basis of their ethnic identity.
On Monday night a five-year-old disabled child starved to death. Reportedly, he weighed only three kilograms when he died. Muhammad Zakaria Khudr was the 101st child among the 227 Palestinians now reported to have died from starvation.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters keep on saying that with regard to New Zealand recognising a Palestinian state, it is a matter of “Not if, but when.” Yet why is “ but not now” still their default position?
At this rate, a country that used to pride itself on its human rights record — New Zealand has never stopped bragging that this is where women won the right to vote, before they did anywhere else — will be among the last countries on earth to recognise Palestine’s right to exist.
What can we do? Some options:
Boycott all Israeli goods and services;
Engage with the local Palestinian community, and support their businesses, and cultural events;
Donate financial support to Gaza. Here’s a reliable link to directy support pregnant Gaza women and their babies;
Lobby your local MP, and Immigration Minister Erika Stanford — to prioritise the inclusion of hundreds of Gazans in our refugee programme, just as we did in the wake of the civil war in Syria, and earlier, in Sudan;
Write and phone your local MP, and urge them to support economic sanctions against Israel. These sanctions should include a sporting and cultural boycott along the lines we pursued so successfully against apartheid South Africa
Contact your KiwiSaver provider and let it be known that you will change providers if they invest in Israeli firms, or in the US, German and UK firms that supply the IDF with weapons and targeting systems. Contact the NZ Super Fund and urge them to divest along similar lines;
Identify and picket any NZ firms that supply the US/Israeli war machines directly, or indirectly;
Contact your local MP and urge him or her to support Chloe Swarbrick’s private member’s bill that would impose economic sanctions on the state of Israel for its unlawful occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Swarbrick’s Bill is modelled on the existing Russian sanctions framework.If 61 MPs pledged support for Swarbrick’s Bill, it would not have to win a private members ballot before being debated in Parliament. Currently 21 MPs (the Greens and TPM) formally support it. If and when Labour’s 34 MPs come on board, this will still require another six MPs (from across the three coalition parties) to do the right thing. Goading MPs into doing the right thing got Swarbrick into a world of trouble this week. (Those wacky Greens. They’re such idealists.);
We should all be lobbying our local MPs for a firm commitment that they will back the Swarbrick Bill. Portray it to them as being in the spirit of bi-partisanship, and as them supporting the several UN resolutions on the status of the occupied territories. And if they still baulk ask them flatly: if not, why not?
Email/phone/write to the PM’s office, and ask him to call in the Israeli ambassador and personally express New Zealand’s repugnance at Israel’s inhumane actions in Gaza and on the West Bank. The PM should also be communicating in person New Zealand’s opposition to the recently announced Israeli plans for the annexation of Gaza City, and expansion of the war in Gaza.
Write to your MP, to the PM, and to Foreign Minister Winston Peters urging them to recognise Palestinian statehood right now. Inquire as to what further information they may need before making that decision, and offer to supply it. We need to learn how to share our outrage; and
Learn about the history of this issue, so that you convince friends and family to take similar actions.
This map showing (in white) the countries that are yet to recognise Palestinian statehood speaks volumes:
Those holdout nations in white tend to have been the chief enablers of Israel’s founding in 1948, a gesture of atonement driven by European guilt over the Holocaust.
This “homeland” for the Jews already had residents known to have had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Yet since 1948 the people of Palestine have been made to bear all of the bad consequences of the West’s purging of its collective guilt.
Conditional justice The same indifference to the lives of Palestinians is evident in the belated steps towards supporting the right of Palestinians to self-determination. Even the recognition promised by the UK, Canada, France and Australia next month is decked out with further conditions that the Palestinians are being told they need to meet. No equivalent demands are being made of Israel, despite the atrocities it is committing in Gaza.
There’s nothing new about this. Historically, all of the concessions have been made by the Palestinians, starting with their original displacement. Some 30 years ago, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) formally recognised Israel’s right to exist. In response, Israel immediately expanded its settlements on Palestinian land, a flagrant breach of the commitments it made in the Oslo Accords, and in the Gaza-Jericho Agreement.
In a 1993 exchange of letters, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chairman, Yasir Arafat, recognized the “right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security” and committed the PLO to peaceful negotiations, renouncing terrorism and amending the Palestinian charter to reflect these commitments. In return, Israel would merely recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people — and only “in light of” Mr Arafat’s commitments. Palestinian sovereignty remained remote; Israeli occupation continued apace.
This double standard persists:
This fundamental unfairness has informed every diplomatic effort since. The rump Palestinian government built the limited institutions it was permitted under the Oslo Accords, co-operated with Israeli security forces and voiced support for a peace process that had long been undermined by Israel. Led by then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority’s statehood campaign in the 2000s was entirely based on playing the game according to rules set by Israel and the Western-dominated international community. Yet recognition remained stalled, the United States blocked Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations — and still, no conditions were placed on the occupying power.
That’s where we’re still at. Luxon, Peters and David Seymour are demanding more concessions from the Palestinians. They keep strongly denouncing the Hamas October 7 atrocities — which is valid — while weakly urging Israel to abide by the international laws and conventions that Israel repeatedly breaches.
When a state deploys famine as a strategic weapon, doesn’t it deserve to be condemned, up front and personal?
Instead, the language that New Zealand uses to address Israel’s crimes is almost invariably, and selectively, passive. Terrible things are “happening” in Gaza and they must “stop.” Children, mysteriously, are “starving.” This is “intolerable.”
It is as if there is no human agent, and no state power responsible for these outcomes. Things are just somehow “happening” and they must somehow “cease.” Enough is enough, cries Peters, while carefully choosing not to name names, beyond Hamas.
As mentioned, Israel is publicly discussing its plans for Gaza’s “voluntary emigration” and for the permanent annexation of the West Bank. Even when urged to do so by Christopher Luxon, it seems that Israel is not actually complying with international law, and is not fulfilling its legal obligations as an occupying power. Has anyone told Luxon about this yet?
Two state fantasy, one state reality At one level, continuing to call for a “two state” solution is absurd, given that the Knesset formally rejected the proposal a year ago. More than once, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly denounced it while also laying Israel’s claim to all of the land west of Jordan, which would include the West Bank and Gaza.
Evidently, the slogan “ from the river to sea” is only a terrorist slogan when Hamas uses it. Yet the phrase originated as a Likud slogan.Moreover, the West evidently thinks it is quite OK for Netanyahu to publicly call for Israeli hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Basic rule of diplomacy: bad is what they do, good is what we do, and we have always been on Team Israel.
Over the course of the three decades since the Oslo Accords were signed, the West has kept on advocating for a two state solution, while acting as if only one of those states has a right to exist. On what land do Luxon and Peters think that a viable Palestinian state can be built?
One pre-condition for Palestinian statehood that Luxon cited to RNZ last week required Israel to be “not undermining the territorial integrity that would then undermine the two state solution.” Really? Does Luxon not realise that this is exactly what Israel has been doing for the past 30 years?
Talking of which . . . are Luxon and Peters genuinely expecting Israel to retreat to the 1967 borders? That land was agreed at Oslo and mandated by the UN as the territory needed for a viable Palestinian state. Yet on the relatively small area of the West Bank alone, 3.4 million Palestinians currently subsist on disconnected patches of land under occupation amid extreme settler violence, while contending with 614 Israeli checkpoints and other administrative obstacles impeding their free movement.
Here’s what the land left to the Palestinians looks like today:
A brief backgrounder on Areas A, B and C and how they operate can be found here. Obviously, this situation cannot be the template for a viable Palestinian state.
What is the point? You might well ask . . . in the light of the above, what is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? Given the realities on the ground, it can only be a symbolic gesture. The reversion to the 1967 borders (a necessary step towards a Palestinian state) can happen only if the US agreed to push Israel in that direction by withholding funds and weaponry.
That’s very hard to imagine. The hypocrisy of the Western nations on this issue is breath-taking. The US and Germany continue to be Israel’s main foreign suppliers of weapons and targeting systems. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership as well, the UK sales of military equipment to Israel have sharply increased.
New export licensing figures show that the UK approved licenses for £127.6 million worth of military equipment to Israel in single issue licenses between October to December 2024. This is a massive increase, with the figure in this three-month period totaling more than 2020-2023 combined.
Thanks to an explicitly enacted legal exemption, the UK also continues to supply parts for Israel’s F-35 jets.
UK industry makes 15% of every F-35 in contracts [estimated] to be worth at least £500 million since 2016, and [this] is the most significant part of the UK arms industry [relationship]with Israel . . . at least 79 companies [are] involved in manufacturing components.
These are the same F-35 war planes that the IDF has used to drop 2000 pound bombs on densely populated residential neighbourhoods in Gaza. Starmer cannot credibly pose as a man of peace.
So again . . . what exactly is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? No doubt, it would boost Palestinian morale if some major Western powers finally conceded that Palestine has a right to exist. In that narrow sense, recognition would correct a historical injustice.
There is also optimistic talk that formal Palestinian statehood would isolate the US on the Security Council (Trump would probably wear that as a badge of honour) and would make Israel more accountable under humanitarian law. As if.
Theoretically, a recognition of statehood would also enable people in New Zealand and elsewhere to apply pressure to their governments to forthrightly condemn and sanction Israel for its crimes against a fellow UN member state. None of this, however, is likely to change the reality on the ground, or prevent the calls for Israel’s “accountability” and for its “compliance with international law” from ringing hollow.
As the NYT also says:
After almost two years of severe access restrictions and the dismantling of the UN-led aid system in favour of a militarised food distribution that has left more than 1300 Palestinians dead, [now 1838 dead at these “aid centres” since late May, as of yesterday] . . . The 15 nations [at a UN meeting in late July that signed a declaration on Gaza] still would not collectively say “Israel is responsible for starvation in Gaza”. If they cannot name the problem, they can hardly hope to resolve it.
In sum . . . the world may talk the talk of Palestinian statehood being a matter of “not if, but when” and witter on about the “irreversible steps” being taken toward statehood, and finally — somewhere over the rainbow — towards a two state solution. Faint chance:
“For those who are starving today, the only irreversible step is death. Until statehood recognition brings action — arms embargoes, sanctions, enforcement of international law — it will remain a largely empty promise that serves primarily to distract from Western complicity in Gaza’s destruction.
Exactly. Behind the words of concern are the actions of complicity. The people of Gaza do not have time to wait for symbolic actions, or for sanctions to weaken Israel’s appetite for genocide. Consider this option: would New Zealand support an intervention in Gaza by a UN-led international force to save Gaza’s dwindling population, and to ensure that international humanitarian law is respected, however belatedly?
Would we be willing to commit troops to such a force if asked to do so by the UN Secretary-General? That is what is now needed.
Footnote One: On Gaza, the Luxon government has a high tolerance for double standards and Catch 22 conditions. We are insisting that the Palestinians must release the remaining hostages unconditionally, lay down their arms and de-militarise the occupied territories. Yet we are applying no similar pre-conditions on Israel to withdraw, de-militarise the same space, release all their Palestinian prisoners, allow the unrestricted distribution of food and medical supplies, and negotiate a sustainable peace.
Understandably, Hamas has tied the release of the remaining hostages to the Israeli cessation of their onslaught, to unfettered aid distribution, and to a long-term commitment to Palestinian self-rule. Otherwise, once the Israeli hostages are home, there would be nothing to stop Israel from renewing the genocide.
We are also demanding that Hamas be excluded from any future governing arrangement in Gaza, but – simultaneously – Peters told the House recently that this governing arrangement must also be “representative.” Catch 22. “Representative” democracy it seems, means voting for the people pre-selected by the West. Again, no matching demands have been made of Israel with respect to its role in the future governance of Gaza, or about its obligation to rebuild what it has criminally destroyed.
Footnote Two: There is only one rational explanation for why New Zealand is currently holding back from joining the UK, Canada, France and Australia in voting next month to recognise Palestine as a full UN member state. It seems we are cravenly hoping that Australia’s stance will be viewed with such disfavour by Donald Trump that he will punish Canberra by lifting its tariff rate from 10%, thereby erasing the 5% advantage that Australia currently enjoys oven us in the US market.
At least this tells us what the selling price is for our “independent” foreign policy. We’re prepared to sell it out to the Americans – and sell out the Palestinians in the process – if, by sitting on the fence for now, we can engineer parity for our exports with Australia in US markets. ANZAC mates, forever.
Netanyahu’s mass ethnic cleansing strategy pulls the rug out from under the West’s cherished pretext for supporting Israeli criminality: the fabled two-state solution.
ANALYSIS:By Jonathan Cook
If you thought Western capitals were finally losing patience with Israel’s engineering of a famine in Gaza nearly two years into the genocide, you may be disappointed.
As ever, events have moved on — even if the extreme hunger and malnourishment of the two million people of Gaza have not abated.
Western leaders are now expressing “outrage”, as the media call it, at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to “take full control” of Gaza and “occupy” it.
At some point in the future, Israel is apparently ready to hand the enclave over to outside forces unconnected to the Palestinian people.
The Israeli cabinet agreed last Friday on the first step: a takeover of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are huddled in the ruins, being starved to death. The city will be encircled, systematically depopulated and destroyed, with survivors presumably herded southwards to a “humanitarian city” — Israel’s new term for a concentration camp — where they will be penned up, awaiting death or expulsion.
At the weekend, foreign ministers from the UK, Germany, Italy, Australia and other Western nations issued a joint statement decrying the move, warning it would “aggravate the catastrophic humanitarian situation, endanger the lives of the hostages, and further risk the mass displacement of civilians”.
Germany, Israel’s most fervent backer in Europe and its second-biggest arms supplier, is apparently so dismayed that it has vowed to “suspend” — that is, delay — weapons shipments that have helped Israel to murder and maim hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the past 22 months.
Netanyahu is not likely to be too perturbed. Doubtless, Washington will step in and pick up any slack for its main client state in the oil-rich Middle East.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has once again shifted the West’s all-too-belated focus on the indisputable proof of Israel’s ongoing genocidal actions — evidenced by Gaza’s skeletal children — to an entirely different story.
Now, the front pages are all about the Israeli prime minister’s strategy in launching another “ground operation”, how much pushback he is getting from his military commanders, what the implications will be for the Israelis still held captive in the enclave, whether the Israeli army is now overstretched, and whether Hamas can ever be “defeated” and the enclave “demilitarised”.
We are returning once again to logistical analyses of the genocide — analyses whose premises ignore the genocide itself. Might that not be integral to Netanyahu’s strategy?
Life and death It ought to be shocking that Germany has been provoked into stopping its arming of Israel — assuming it follows through — not because of months of images of Gaza’s skin-and-bones children that echo those from Auschwitz, but only because Israel has declared that it wants to “take control” of Gaza.
It should be noted, of course, that Israel never stopped controlling Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territories — in contravention of the fundamentals of international law, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled last year. Israel has had absolute control over the lives and deaths of Gaza’s people every day — bar one — since its occupation of the tiny coastal enclave many decades ago.
On 7 October 2023, thousands of Palestinian fighters briefly broke out of the besieged prison camp they and their families had endured after Israel momentarily dropped its guard.
Gaza has long been a prison that the Israeli military illegally controlled by land, sea and air, determining who could enter and leave. It kept Gaza’s economy throttled, and put the enclave’s population “on a diet” that saw rocketing malnourishment among its children long before the current starvation campaign.
Trapped behind a highly militarised fence since the early 1990s, unable to access their own coastal waters, and with Israeli drones constantly surveilling them and raining down death from the air, the people of Gaza viewed it more as a modernised concentration camp.
But Germany and the rest of the West were fine supporting all that. They have continued selling Israel arms, providing it with special trading status, and offering diplomatic cover.
Only as Israel carries through to a logical conclusion its settler-colonial agenda of replacing the native Palestinian people with Jews, is it apparently time for the West to vent its rhetorical “outrage”.
Two-state trickery Why the pushback now? In part, it is because Netanyahu is pulling the rug out from under their cherished, decades-long pretext for supporting Israel’s ever-greater criminality: the fabled two-state solution.
Israel conspired in that trickery with the signing of the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s.
The goal was never the realisation of a two-state solution. Rather, Oslo created a “diplomatic horizon” for “final status issues” — which, like the physical horizon, always remained equally distant, however much ostensible movement there was on the ground.
Lisa Nandy, Britain’s Culture Secretary, peddled precisely this same deceit last week as she extolled the virtues of the two-state solution. She told Sky News: “Our message to the Palestinian people is very, very clear: There is hope on the horizon.”
UK Government Minister Lisa Nandy:
‘Our message to the Palestinian people is very clear. There is hope on the horizon.’
Palestinians are expected to believe words of ‘hope’ from a Minister of a government that has aided and supported Israel’s genocide against them pic.twitter.com/appizVm0QY
Every Palestinian understood her real message, which could be paraphrased as: “We’ve lied to you about a Palestinian state for decades, and we’ve allowed a genocide to unfold before the world’s eyes for the past two years. But hey, trust us this time. We’re on your side.”
In truth, the promise of Palestinian statehood was always treated by the West as little more than a threat — and one directed at Palestinian leaders. Palestinian officials must be more obedient, quieter. They had to first prove their willingness to police Israel’s occupation on Israel’s behalf by repressing their own people.
Hamas, of course, failed that test in Gaza. But Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank, bent over backwards to reassure his examiners, casting as “sacred” his lightly armed security forces’ so-called “cooperation” with Israel. In reality, they are there to do its dirty work.
Nonetheless, despite the PA’s endless good behaviour, Israel has continued to expel ordinary Palestinians from their land, then steal that land — which was supposed to form the basis of a Palestinian state — and hand it over to extremist Jewish settlers backed by the Israeli army.
Former US President Barack Obama briefly and feebly tried to halt what the West misleadingly calls Jewish “settlement expansion” — in reality, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians — but rolled over at the first sign of intransigence from Netanyahu.
Israel has stepped up the process of ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank even more aggressively over the past two years, while global attention has been on Gaza — with the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretzwarning this week that settlers have been given “free rein”.
A small window into the impunity granted to settlers as they wage their campaign of violence to depopulate Palestinian communities was highlighted at the weekend, when B’Tselem released footage of a Palestinian activist, Awdah Hathaleen, inadvertently filming his own killing.
Extremist settler Yinon Levi was released on grounds of self-defence, even though the video shows him singling out Hathaleen from afar, taking aim and shooting.
Alibi gone It is noticeable that, having stopped making reference to Palestinian statehood for many years, Western leaders have revived their interest only now — as Israel is making a two-state solution unrealisable.
That was graphically illustrated by footage broadcast this month by ITV. Shot from an aid plane, it showed the wholesale destruction of Gaza — its homes, schools, hospitals, universities, bakeries, shops, mosques and churches gone.
Apocalyptic scenes in Gaza Video: ITV News
Gaza is in ruins. Its reconstruction will take decades. Occupied East Jerusalem and its holy sites were long ago seized and Judaised by Israel, with Western assent.
Suddenly, Western capitals are noticing that the last remnants of the proposed Palestinian state are about to be swallowed whole by Israel, too. Germany recently warned Israel that it must not take “any further steps toward annexing the West Bank”.
US President Donald Trump is on his own path. But this is the moment when other major Western powers — led by France, Britain and Canada — have started threatening to recognise a Palestinian state, even as the possibility of such a state has been obliterated by Israel.
Australia announced it would join them this week after its foreign minister, a few days earlier, said the quiet part out loud, warning: “There is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise if the international community don’t move to create that pathway to a two-state solution.”
That is something they dare not countenance, because with it goes their alibi for supporting all these years the apartheid state of Israel, now deep into the final stages of a genocide in Gaza.
That was why British Prime Minister Keir Starmer desperately switched tack recently. Instead of dangling recognition of Palestinian statehood as a carrot encouraging Palestinians to be more obedient — British policy for decades — he wielded it as a threat, and a largely hollow one, against Israel.
He would recognise a Palestinian state if Israel refused to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and proceeded with the West Bank’s annexation. In other words, Starmer backed recognising a state of Palestine – after Israel has gone ahead with its complete erasure.
Extracting concessions Still, France and Britain’s recognition threat is not simply too late. It serves two other purposes.
Firstly, it provides a new alibi for inaction. There are plenty of far more effective ways for the West to halt Israel’s genocide. Western capitals could embargo arms sales, stop intelligence sharing, impose economic sanctions, sever ties with Israeli institutions, expel Israeli ambassadors, and downgrade diplomatic relations. They are choosing to do none of those things.
And secondly, recognition is designed to extract from the Palestinians “concessions” that will make them even more vulnerable to Israeli violence.
According to France’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Jean-Noel Barrot: “Recognising a State of Palestine today means standing with the Palestinians who have chosen non-violence, who have renounced terrorism, and are prepared to recognise Israel.”
In other words, in the West’s view, the “good Palestinians” are those who recognise and lay down before the state committing genocide against them.
Western leaders have long envisioned a Palestinian state only on condition that it is demilitarised. Recognition this time is premised on Hamas agreeing to disarm and its departure from Gaza, leaving Abbas to take on the enclave and presumably continue the “sacred” mission of “cooperating” with a genocidal Israeli army.
As part of the price for recognition, all 22 members of the Arab League publicly condemned Hamas and demanded its removal from Gaza.
Boot on Gaza’s neck How does all of this fit with Netanyahu’s “ground offensive”? Israel isn’t “taking over” Gaza, as he claims. Its boot has been on the enclave’s neck for decades.
While Western capitals contemplate a two-state solution, Israel is preparing a final mass ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza.
Starmer’s government, for one, knew this was coming. Flight data shows that the UK has been constantly operating surveillance missions over Gaza on Israel’s behalf from the Royal Air Force base Akrotiri on Cyprus. Downing Street has been following the enclave’s erasure step by step.
Netanyahu’s plan is to encircle, besiege and bomb the last remaining populated areas in northern and central Gaza, and drive Palestinians towards a giant holding pen — misnamed a “humanitarian city” — alongside the enclave’s short border with Egypt. Israel will then probably employ the same contractors it has been using elsewhere in Gaza to go street to street to bulldoze or blow up any surviving buildings.
The next stage, given the trajectory of the last two years, is not difficult to predict. Locked up in their dystopian “humanitarian city”, the people of Gaza will continue to be starved and bombed whenever Israel claims it has identified a Hamas fighter in their midst, until Egypt or other Arab states can be persuaded to take them in, as a further “humanitarian” gesture.
Then, the only matter to be settled will be what happens to the real estate: build some version of Trump’s gleaming “Riviera” scheme, or construct another tawdry patchwork of Jewish settlements of the kind envisioned by Netanyahu’s openly fascist allies, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.
There is a well-established template to be drawn on, one that was used in 1948 during Israel’s violent creation. Palestinians were driven from their cities and villages, in what was then called Palestine, across the borders into neighbouring states. The new state of Israel, backed by Western powers, then set about methodically destroying every home in those hundreds of villages.
Over subsequent years, they were landscaped either with forests or exclusive Jewish communities, often engaged in farming, to make Palestinian return impossible and stifle any memory of Israel’s crimes. Generations of Western politicians, intellectuals and cultural figures have celebrated all of this.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Austrian President Heinz Fischer are among those who went to Israel in their youth to work on these farming communities. Most came back as emissaries for a Jewish state built on the ruins of a Palestinian homeland.
An emptied Gaza can be similarly re-landscaped. But it is much harder to imagine that this time the world will forget or forgive the crimes committed by Israel — or those who enabled them.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published Middle East Eye and republished from the author’s blog with permission.
Researcher John Hobbs . . . “So far, our ministers have chosen carefully crafted diplomatic language buried under joint country statements to influence the situation in Gaza.” Image: John Hobbs
So far, our ministers have chosen carefully crafted diplomatic language buried under joint country statements to influence the situation in Gaza, while at the same time protecting relationships with allies, particularly the US.
An example of these was a statement issued last month, in which New Zealand joined a group of 28 “concerned” countries to express horror at the “suffering of civilians in Gaza”, which, it says, “has reached new depths”. The statement calls for the lifting of restrictions on the “flow of aid” and demands “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire.”
Just to be clear, the “flow of aid” is the life-saving food and water that’s needed to prevent the mass starvation of Palestinians as famine driven by Israel deepens.
Demands for a ceasefire have been made on numerous occasions in the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council, to no effect.
Failure to sanction Israel
Yet countries like New Zealand fail to sanction Israel for its non-compliance. Indeed, they do worse. These same countries continue to trade with Israel, and a number of them continue to provide weapons and arms.
According to trade data, New Zealand in 2023 imported goods and services of US$191 million from Israel and exported US$16.4 million the other way.
Most recently, New Zealand joined 14 other countries to “express the willingness or the positive consideration of our countries to recognise the State of Palestine, as an essential step towards the two-State solution.”
The statement is heavily caveated by saying that “positive consideration” is one option — so it’s not clear if all, or indeed any, of the countries will end up recognising Palestinian statehood.
By contrast, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has issued a separate statement, saying the UK would recognise the state of Palestine in September if Israel doesn’t agree to a ceasefire.
Starmer’s concern for the starvation of civilians in Gaza hasn’t stopped the UK from sending military arms to Israel. But this is at least a clearer stance than New Zealand has been able to muster.
More than 147 UN member states out of 193 formally recognise Palestinian statehood now.
Level of solidarity
And while recognition of statehood is largely symbolic, it does signal a level of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Inexplicably, New Zealand has been unwilling to take that step, while calling it a future option under “two-state” diplomacy.
New Zealand has trundled out its support of the two-state solution since at least 1993, reinforced by its co-sponsorship, in 2015-16, of a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion.
That resolution declared settlements in occupied territories illegal under international law and urged member states to distinguish in its dealings between Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.
Since then, Israel has continued to transfer its citizens to the West Bank and Gaza. More than 750,000 Israeli settlers are now living illegally in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — areas where a future Palestinian state would be located.
Meanwhile, New Zealand has failed to take any meaningful action — sanctions or suspension of trade, for example — to implement the requirements of the Security Council resolution. That the government consistently frames its response as supporting a two-state solution beggars belief in light of such inaction.
New Zealand’s refusal to sanction Israel is nothing but shameful.
When foreign affairs minister Winston Peters expressed shock about the “intolerable situation” in Gaza, RNZ asked him whether New Zealand would entertain placing sanctions on Israel. He responded by saying that we are a “long, long way off doing that.”
The genocide in Gaza is happening with the support of countries like New Zealand, through inaction and failure to implement sanctions.
And statements about recognising statehood provide the appearance of supporting an end to the genocide, but change nothing in reality.
John Hobbs has been a career public servant, working in a number of government departments (most recently the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet). He also worked for a number of ministers on secondment from government agencies. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Te Tumu School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, Otago University. This article was first published by E-Tangata and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.
Anas al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza, last Sunday has triggered protests around the world, including journalists in Israel. He left behind a powerful farewell message — his final testament to his people, his family, and the world.
Palestine Chronicle staff
Palestinian journalists Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqea were killed last Sunday in an Israeli bombardment that struck a journalists’ tent near Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.
Cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal also died in the attack, which was carried out by an Israeli drone. The Israeli army admitted targeting al-Sharif shortly after the strike.
Al-Sharif, 28, from Jabaliya refugee camp, was an award-winning journalist who became a leading global voice from Gaza during the war. He inspired thousands.
Protest and vigils have been held around the world from South Africa’s Cape Town to Manila in the Philippines and London in the UK to honour al-Sharif and his colleagues in condemnation of this targeted murder.
Less than two weeks ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists had warned that his life was in “acute” danger due to repeated threats from an Israeli military spokesperson.
Before his death, al-Sharif prepared a farewell message to be shared if he was killed. His family and colleagues posted it to his social media accounts after the news of his death.
Below is the full English translation of that message.
Anas al-Sharif’s final message “This is my will and my final message.
“If my words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.
“First, peace be upon you and God’s mercy and blessings.
“God knows I gave all I had — strength and effort — to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys of Jabaliya refugee camp. My hope was to live long enough to return with my family and loved ones to our original town, Asqalan (al-Majdal), now under occupation.
هذه وصيّتي، ورسالتي الأخيرة.
إن وصلَتكم كلماتي هذه، فاعلموا أن إسرائيل قد نجحت في قتلي وإسكات صوتي.
بداية السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
يعلم الله أنني بذلت كل ما أملك من جهدٍ وقوة، لأكون سندًا وصوتًا لأبناء شعبي، مذ فتحت عيني على الحياة في أزقّة وحارات مخيّم جباليا للاجئين،…
— أنس الشريف Anas Al-Sharif (@AnasAlSharif0) August 10, 2025
“But God’s will came first, and His decree is final.
“I have lived pain in all its details and tasted loss many times. Yet I never stopped telling the truth as it is, without falsification or distortion — so that God may bear witness over those who stayed silent, accepted our killing, and did nothing to stop the massacre our people have endured for more than a year and a half.
“I entrust you with Palestine — the jewel of the Muslim crown and the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people and children, whose pure bodies have been crushed under Israeli bombs and missiles.
Australian journalists protest over the killings. Video: MEAA
“Do not let chains silence you or borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland.
“I entrust you with my family: my beloved daughter Sham; my dear son Salah; my mother, whose prayers were my fortress; and my steadfast wife Bayan (Umm Salah), who carried the responsibility in my absence with strength and faith. Stand by them after God.
Two more journalists, Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qaryaq, have been killed in Gaza. These brilliant young reporters were known for their courage and powerful commitment to the truth.
Israel’s strategy is clear: silence the truth by murdering those who report it. They accuse… pic.twitter.com/G0I3xny1IV
“If I die, I die steadfast in my principles. I bear witness that I am content with God’s decree, certain of our meeting, and convinced that what is with God is better and everlasting.
“O God, accept me among the martyrs, forgive me my sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people. Forgive me if I fell short, and pray for me with mercy, for I have kept my pledge and never changed.
“Do not forget Gaza… and do not forget me in your prayers.”
Anas Jamal al-Sharif
April 6, 2025
Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif with his daughter Sham and his son Salah. Image: via social media
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Global condemnation is mounting over Israel’s assassination of one of the most prominent journalists in Gaza, the Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, along with four of his colleagues at the network and another freelance journalist.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres is calling for an independent investigation after the five Al Jazeera journalists were killed in a targeted Israeli strike outside Al-Shifa Hospital in a tent clearly marked in Gaza City. European Union officials and international press freedom groups have also denounced the assassinations.
The sixth journalist, freelance reporter Mohammed al-Khalidi, was also killed in the same strike. Minutes before the strike, al-Sharif posted to X, “If this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop.”
On Monday, crowds of mourners gathered for a funeral procession for al-Sharif and his colleagues, marching from Al-Shifa to Sheikh Radwan Cemetery in central Gaza, carrying the journalists’ bodies wrapped in white sheets.
A dark blue flak press jacket and a Palestinian flag were placed on al-Sharif’s remains. People embraced as they decried Israel’s relentless targeting of journalists in Gaza.
Meanwhile, at rallies and vigils worldwide, people are demanding accountability for the attack on journalists, including in Tunisia, Belfast, Dublin, Berlin, London, Oslo, Stockholm and Washington, DC.
For more, we go to Geneva, Switzerland, where we’re joined by Irene Khan, UN special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression. She served as secretary-general of Amnesty International from 2001 to 2009.
Irene Khan, welcome back to Democracy Now! In late July, you publicly denounced Israel’s threats against Anas al-Sharif. Can you talk about what you understood at that time, and then this young 28-year-old reporter’s response to your press statement?
IRENE KHAN: Yes, well, Anas actually contacted me, and Al Jazeera contacted me to tell me of this impending threat on his head. They had seen it before. He’s not the first one, as you know.
There are some — anything between 26 to 30 journalists — who have been targeted in this campaign of assassination. And Anas wanted me to go public, he wanted others to go public, to stop what Israel was doing.
But at the same time, he thanked me for my support, and then he said nothing would stop him from speaking the truth. And in a way, he signed his own death warrant by that, because, as you know, he and the others, Al Jazeera’s entire team in northern Gaza, were killed, murdered, just as Israel ramps up its military action on the city, Gaza City.
So, there is a clear pattern here of killing journalists to clear the path, to silence voices, to stop the international, global opinion from being informed of the genocide in Gaza.
Assassination: Israel’s killing of Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif Video: Democracy Now!
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Irene Khan, the number of journalists — so, more than 200 have been killed in Gaza. That’s more than all the journalists killed in World War I, World War II, Korea, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Afghanistan War combined.
Your sense of the Israeli impunity here in being able to basically kill the corps of journalists that are still able to report from Gaza?
IRENE KHAN: Well, you also have to take into account that Israel has refused to give access to international media. So these are all local Gazan journalists who are putting their lives on the line to keep the world informed. Many of them — you named some 200 — many of them, of course, have been killed in the intensity of the battle. Many of them have been killed while asleep in their own apartments. But these cases, the cases of Anas now, and his colleagues, and a number of other cases of targeted killing, is really murder.
It is not killing in the context of war. It is a deliberate strategy to stop independent voices reporting. So it’s as much a threat to independent journalism as it is to the journalists themselves, as well as a blatant attempt by the Israelis to stop the world witnessing what they are doing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And these killings also came as the Israeli government announced they’re unleashing a new operation in the area of Gaza. Who will be left to document this operation now?
IRENE KHAN: Well, absolutely. And that is why Anas got in touch with me, because he realised what was happening. You know, from his message on LinkedIn and from his message that he has sent to me and to others, it was very, very clear.
He has been there on the ground since October 2023. He could see the pattern. He could see what was happening. He knew they were coming for him.
And that is why it is incumbent on all of us now not to just condemn, but actually to act, before independent media is totally obliterated from Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Irene Khan, I want to ask what you’re calling for, and the significance of Netanyahu holding this news conference on Sunday and saying — he has now said that the Israeli military can bring in journalists, but they’re most concerned about protecting their safety.
A few hours later is when Israel assassinated these six journalists. Now, it is the first time, NPR reports, since October 2023 that Israel so quickly took responsibility for their assassination.
You know, compare it to Shireen Abu Akleh, May 11, 2022, when Israel said it was not clear, and then, you know, so many studies were done, but it became very clear. Talk about what you are calling for at this point.
IRENE KHAN: It’s not actually an admission of taking responsibility, because there is no accountability in it. It’s actually a brazen attempt to show the world that the Israeli army can work as it wishes, regardless of international humanitarian law that protects journalists as civilians.
Now, what I’m calling for is, of course, independent investigation, truly independent investigation. But I’m also calling for protection of journalists on the ground and for access to international journalists.
Israel always covers these assassinations and murders with allegations and smear campaigns — the journalists are simply agents of Hamas or members of Hamas — and that kind of gives Israel a veil of impunity.
It’s important for international journalists to be on the ground so they can actually investigate and expose this false story and the string of assassinations that Israel is carrying out.
And I think we need to remember the message that Israel’s action is sending to the rest of the world, because there are other spots, other conflict areas, where also others are learning that you need to be just brazen and go ahead and kill journalists, and you can get away with it.
AMY GOODMAN: Irene Khan, we’re speaking to you in Geneva, Switzerland — Geneva, the Geneva Conventions. Can you talk about how the conventions specifically protect journalists?
IRENE KHAN: Well, the convention gives journalists civilian status, which means that, like all other civilians, they should not be targeted during the war.
The problem is the journalists are not just civilians. They are the kind of civilians that have to go to the frontline and not run away somewhere else. You know, they are not like women and children, who can move and seek shelter elsewhere.
They have to be where the fighting is. And that exposes them. They are much more like humanitarian workers. And journalists need to be recognised as humanitarian workers. There needs to be — I believe there needs to be additional protection given to them, because it shows how vulnerable they are, on the one hand, to attacks, and, on the other hand, how important their work is to the rest of the world, to any peace process, to any attempt to have accountability and justice for the victims.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Last month, the union representing reporters at the French press agency AFP warned that the agency staff were in danger of starving to death, and they issued an open letter condemning what Israel was doing in terms of denying food, not just to the population in general, but also to journalists, as well.
Your response?
IRENE KHAN: Well, absolutely. These journalists are local journalists, as I said, so they have faced all the problems that the population is facing. They’ve had their own families killed. They have to hunt for food, even as they hunt for news.
So, they have been put in a terrible situation. And that’s why Israel has to open the gates, not under military protection, but allow journalists independently to come and investigate. It has to stop the starvation, the blockade. It has to allow humanitarian assistance to come in. And it has to agree to a ceasefire and, of course, stop the genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with the words of Anas al-Sharif himself. Anticipating his own murder by Israeli forces, he wrote a preprepared message that was posted on his X account after his death. Al Jazeera read part of his message on air.
AL JAZEERA REPORTER: “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice, I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification, so that God may bear witness against those who stayed silent and accepted our killing.”
He ends, “Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.”
AMY GOODMAN: The words of Anas al-Sharif, posted after he was killed by the Israeli military along with five other journalists. Five of them were with Al Jazeera.
Irene Khan, I want to thank you so much for being with us, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, speaking to us from Geneva, Switzerland. To see our interview with the managing editor of Al Jazeera, go to democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced with Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Nicole Salazar, Sara Nasser, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Safwat Nazzal. Our executive director is Julie Crosby.
I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, for another edition of Democracy Now!
It was a bit like the old days — the heyday of Aotearoa New Zealand’s nuclear-free movement in the 1980s, leading up to the Rarotonga Treaty for a nuclear free Pacific zone that was signed on 6 August 1985 just weeks after the Rainbow Warrior bombing.
Mike Smith got the packed audience on track, introducing himself.
“I’m a member of a peace group calling ourselves Just Defence,” he said. “We’ve been helping Aro Valley resident Tim Bollinger’s initiative to establish this community event.
“Today we have been invited by Tim to reflect on the anniversary of the destruction of Nagasaki in japan by the second use of a nuclear weapon in this event.
“Our very great thanks are due to Tim for creating this opportunity to reflect on those horrific events 80 years ago. This is all the more crucial because most people are not aware that right now the world is at a moment as dangerous as the 1960s Cuban Missile Crisis.
“The anti-nuclear peace movement has lost its salience in our community.”
Nuclear-free heritage
Smith reminded the audience — if they needed to be — of Aotearoa New Zealand’s nuclear-free heritage.
“We are proudly nuclear-free because nearly 50 years ago we rejected the entry of US warships that would not declare they were nuclear-free.
“That was a bold and courageous decision,” he continued. “But it was only possible because Kiwi citizens the length and breadth of our country declared their communities nuclear-free, town-by-town and city-by-city, due to the work of tireless activists such as Larry Ross.
“Some of their symbols are on display today.”
And then came the pièce de résistance.
Aro Valley Peace Talks musician and event coordinator Tim Bollinger . . . “A lot has been stolen from us over the past decades.” Image: APR
“Today, I would like to offer a dedication, that we who are assembled here now declare Aro Valley ‘nuclear free’.
“Great things can come from small beginnings, and it is once again time that we raise the demand for a world free from the threat of nuclear devastation.”
An eclectic day
And so be it declared, judging by the enthusiastic applause greeting Mike Smith’s remarks.
It was an eclectic day of contributions, but mostly to the already converted.
First speaker on the main programme was activist and peace movement historian Maire Leadbeater who spoke about her recent book The Enemy Within and a century of state surveillance in Aotearoa that had penalised activists for social change.
She was followed by historian and writer Mark Derby, co-editor with the late May Bass of Peacemonger: Owen Wilkes: International Peace Researcher, who outlined the life and multi-talents of one of New Zealand’s most extraordinary peace activists.
Former local council politician Helene Ritchie spoke of the campaign to declare Pōneke Wellington a nuclear weapons-free zone in 1982.
She was followed by former trade unionist Graeme Clark detailing how the union movement played a key role in opposing nuclear ship visits and its influence on the anti-nuclear policies of the NZ Labour Party.
Posters from the nuclear-free exhibition at the Aro Community Centre. Image: APR
Pacific coverage
The afternoon session kicked off with a “conversation” between journalists and activists Jeremy Rose, formerly of RNZ and who now writes a substack blog Towards Democracy, and David Robie, retired media academic who now publishes Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific. They discussed issues raised in David’s new book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, and the weak Pacific coverage in mainstream media.
Doctor and activist Karl Geiringer spoke about his documentary on the role of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War’s bid to have nuclear weapons ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice, and the contribution of his peace activist father Dr Erich Geiringer.
Glenn Colquhoun and Inshirah Mahal offered inspiring poems.
Peace activist Valerie Morse gave an overview of 25 years of Peace Action and Sonya Smith, an activist and spokesperson for the Wairoa-based group Rocket Lab Monitor, gave an update on their campaign.
An important day but short on plans for the future. As at least one participant noted: “Our talks have been mainly about success of the past – but what about our action plans for the present and future?”
More posters from the nuclear-free exhibition. Image: APR
‘Working for peace’
A flyer for Just Defence, with the slogan “Work for peace — not war” with a call to action saying what is needed in New Zealand is:
A genuinely independent foreign policy for Aotearoa New Zealand;
Defence that is just — not for aggression against other people or nations;
A smart, well-paid defence force designed for our real needs — patrolling our waters, carrying out UN peacekeeping missions, responding to civil defence emergencies here and in our Pacific neighbourhood;
Affirmation of our nuclear-free status and our support for a nucear-free Pacific; and
Building our reputation for promoting peace through dialogue.
And the flyer flagged a reality check: “China is not our enemy.”
A couple of days after the event, coordinator Tim Bollinger emailed all participants promising some important developments, including deciding on a draft Nagasaki Day resolution.
“The time has never been more important for the exchange of ideas and experiences with those whose land and planet we share — to counter apathy and ignorance with the rich legacy of learning and ideas we each have to give,” Bollinger said.
“A lot has been stolen from us over the past decades . . .
“The victories of the past have been deliberately underplayed, undervalued, undermined and clawed back by those who never believed in them in the first place.”
Bollinger promised a community pushback and the resolution would be a first step. Along with a batch of audio and video recordings from the weekend as an action resource.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister says the war in Gaza is “utterly appalling” and Israeil Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “lost the plot”.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s comments came on a tense day in Parliament today, where the Green Party’s co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was “named” for refusing to leave the House following a heated debate on the government’s plan to consider recognising Palestinian statehood.
Speaking to media, Luxon said Netanyahu had “gone too far”.
“I think he has lost the plot and I think that what we’re seeing overnight — the attack on Gaza City — is utterly, utterly unacceptable,” he said.
Luxon said Israel had consistently ignored pleas from the international community for humanitarian aid to be delivered “unfettered” and the situation was driving more human catastrophe across Gaza.
“We are a small country a long way away, with very limited trade with Israel. We have very little connection with the country, but we have stood up for values, and we keep articulating them very consistently, and what you have seen is Israel not listening to the global community at all,” Luxon said.
“We have said a forcible displacement of people and an annexation of Gaza would be a breach of international law. We have called these things out consistently time and time again.
“You’ve seen New Zealand join many of our friends and partners around the world to make these statements, and he’s just not listening,” the Prime Minister said.
Considering statehood
The government is considering whether it will join other countries like France, Canada and Australia in recognising Palestinian statehood at a UN Leader’s Meeting next month.
Luxon said recent attacks could “extinguish a pathway” to a two-state solution.
“I’m telling you what my personal view is, as a human being, looking at the situation, that’s how I feel about,” he said.
“She’s used the words ‘unfolding genocide’, and yes, I do agree with that. That’s a good description of the situation at the moment.”
Hipkins said calling it an “unfolding genocide” meant that New Zealand was not “appointing ourselves judge and jury” because there was still a case to be heard before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
“Recognising that there is an unfolding genocide in Gaza is an important part of the world community standing up and saying, we’re not going to tolerate it.
“We should recognise that there is now a growing acknowledgement around the world that there is an unfolding genocide in Gaza, and I think we should call that for what it is, and the world community needs to react to that to prevent it from happening,” Hipkins said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Australia’s Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance has condemned the continued targeted killing of media workers in Gaza and the baseless smearing of working journalists as “terrorists”, following the deaths of five Al Jazeera staff over the weekend.
Al Jazeera journalists Anas Al Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and assistant Moamen Aliwa were killed on Sunday when Israel bombed a tent housing journalists in Gaza City, near Al-Shifa Hospital.
Shockingly, the Israeli military confirmed the targeted killing on social media, with a post to X accompanied by a target emoji.
The latest deaths come after Israel had conducted a long smear campaign of unsubstantiated allegations against Al Sharif and other journalists, labelling them “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists”, which the International Federation of Journalists has condemned.
As Al Jazeera has said, this was a “dangerous attempt to justify the targeting of journalists in the field”.
“The targeting of journalists is a blatant attack on press freedom, and it is also a war crime.
“It must stop.”
Call for ‘unfettered coverage’
MEAA also said the Israeli ban preventing the world’s media from accessing the region and providing unfettered coverage of the worsening humanitarian crisis must stop.
The silencing of Palestinian journalists via a rising death toll that the Gaza Media Office puts at 242 must also stop, the union said.
“In his final words, Al-Sharif said he never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is — without distortion or falsification,” said MEAA
“His reports brought to the world the reality of the horrors being inflicted by the Israeli government on the civilians in Gaza.
“He asked the world to not forget Gaza and to not forget him.”
MEAA said it stood up against attacks on press freedom around the world.
Pacific Media Watch says there has been no equivalent condemnation by New Zealand journalists, who have mostly remained silent during the 22 months of Israel’s war on Gaza.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
President Trump secretly signed a directive approving the Pentagon’s use of military force on foreign soil to target Latin American drug cartels, according to a New York Times report. The order gives the Pentagon authority to direct military operations at sea and on foreign soil against cartels designated by the Trump administration to be terrorist organizations. “I think it’s directed mostly in Venezuela,” says Alexander Aviña, associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University. The U.S. “has used the war on drugs as another way to advance the U.S. imperial geopolitical designs in the Western Hemisphere.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
President Trump secretly signed a directive approving the Pentagon’s use of military force on foreign soil to target Latin American drug cartels, according to a New York Times report. The order gives the Pentagon authority to direct military operations at sea and on foreign soil against cartels designated by the Trump administration to be terrorist organizations. “I think it’s directed mostly in Venezuela,” says Alexander Aviña, associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University. The U.S. “has used the war on drugs as another way to advance the U.S. imperial geopolitical designs in the Western Hemisphere.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
New Zealand Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has been ejected from Parliament’s debating chamber and told to leave for the rest of the week after a fiery speech about the war in Gaza.
As Swarbrick came to the end of her contribution, she challenged coalition MPs to back her member’s bill allowing New Zealand to apply sanctions on Israel “for its war crimes”.
Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick asked to leave Parliament after Gaza speech Video: Parliament TV
“If we find six of 68 government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history,” Swarbrick said.
Almost immediately, Speaker Gerry Brownlee condemned the remark as “completely unacceptable” and demanded she “withdraw it and apologise”.
Swarbrick shot back a curt — “no” — prompting Brownlee to order her out of the chamber for the remainder of the week.
“Happily,” Swarbrick said, as she rose to leave.
Green Party whip Ricardo Menéndez March later stood to question the severity of punishment, saying Parliament’s rules suggested Swarbrick should be barred for no more than a day.
Brownlee later clarified that Swarbrick could come back to the debating chamber on Wednesday, but only if she agreed to withdraw and apologise.
“If she doesn’t, then she’ll be leaving the House again,” he said.
“I’m not going to sit in this chair and tolerate a member standing on her feet . . . and saying that other members of this House are spineless.”
‘What the hell is the point?’ — Swarbrick Speaking outside the debating chamber, Swarbrick described the ruling as “ridiculous” and the punishment excessive.
“As far as the robust debate goes in that place, I think that was pretty mild in the context of the war crimes that are currently unfolding.”
She drew a comparison with comments made by former prime minister Sir John Key in 2015 when he challenged the opposition to “get some guts”.
Swarbrick said she was tired and angry at the massacre of human beings.
“What the hell is the point of everything that we do if the people in my place, in my job don’t do their job?” she said.
“If we allow other human beings to be just mercilessly slaughtered, to be shot while waiting for food aid, what hope is there for humanity?”
Swarbrick was not the only MP to run afoul of the Speaker during today’s debate.
Earlier, Labour MP Damien O’Connor was told to either exit the chamber or apologise after interjecting while Foreign Minister Winston Peters was speaking. O’Connor stood and left.
Brownlee also demanded ACT MP Simon Court say sorry — which he did — after Court accused Swarbrick of “hallucinating outrage”.
Government urges caution, opposition demands action In his speech, Court said any recognition of a Palestinian state must be conditional on all Israeli hostages being returned and Hamas being disarmed and dismantled.
“Security must come before politics,” he said.
No National MPs spoke during the urgent debate.
Peters — who is also NZ First leader — told MPs the matter of Palestinian statehood was not a straightforward or clear-cut issue.
“There are strong opinions on both sides,” he said. “That is why we are approaching this issue carefully, judiciously and calmly.”
Peters also took umbrage with the opposition’s complaints, pointing out Labour never moved on the matter when it was in government.
In a 10 minute speech, Labour foreign affairs spokesperson Peeni Henare said New Zealand was being left behind as the coalition walked into a “sunset of denial”.
“How many more people will suffer and how many more people will die?”
‘Despicable’ justifications
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told MPs it was “despicable” to hear the justifications for another month’s delay.
“What will be left? Rubble? Martyred spirits? What is that you want to have left in a month’s time?” she said. “I have never been more ashamed to be in the House than I am today.”
In her speech, Swarbrick told MPs libraries of evidence demonstrated that the events unfolding in Palestine were “ethnic cleansing… apartheid [and]… genocide”.
“We are a laggard, we are an outlier,” she said. “We are one of the very few countries in the world who so far refuse to acknowledge the absolute bare minimum.”
Earlier, during Parliament’s Question Time, ACT leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour objected to Swarbrick having a Palestinian scarf, or keffiyeh, draped across her seat.
“I invite you to consider what this House might look like if everybody who had an interest in a global conflict started adorning their seats with symbols of one side or another of a conflict,” he said.
“I think that would bring the House into disrepute and no member should be allowed to do such a thing.”
Brownlee said Seymour raised a good point, only for Swarbrick to then wrap the scarf around her neck.
“Oh, here we go,” he said. “Well, stay warm. We’ll move on now.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A leading advocacy group supporting Palerstine has called on the government to follow Germany’s lead and suspend New Zealand military support for Israel to continue its mass killing and mass starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
Germany and New Zealand were two of the countries to sign a letter yesterday condemning Israel’s plans to extend its war to Gaza City, displacing another million Palestinians.
However, one of the other signatories, Australia, announced that it would go a step further by moving to recognise a state of Palestine at the UN General Assembly next month.
“I have said it publicly and I said it directly to Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu: the situation in Gaza has gone beyond the world’s worst fears,” he said.
“Far too many innocent lives have been lost. The Israeli government continues to defy international law and deny sufficient aid, food and water to desperate people, including children.”
The decision rides on a condition that the Palestinian resistance group Hamas plays no role in its future governance.
Letter condemns Israel
New Zealand joined Australia, United Kingdom, Germany and Italy in signing a letter that said:
“The plans that the government of Israel has announced risk violating international humanitarian law. Any attempts at annexation or of settlement extension violate international law.
It will aggravate the catastrophic humanitarian situation, endanger the lives of the hostages, and further risk the mass displacement of civilians.”
PSNA co-chair John Minto said in a statement that Israel had a long history of ignoring outside opinion because they never included accountabilities.
“However, Germany has followed its condemnation with action. New Zealand needs to do the same,” he said.
Minto says New Zealand should:
• End approval for Rakon to export crystal oscillators to the US which are used in guided bombs sent to Israel for bombing Gaza;
• Ban all Rocket Lab launches from Mahia which are used for Israel reconnaissance in Gaza; and
• Launch an investigation by the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence into the sharing of intelligence with the US and Israel which can be used for targeting Palestinians.
“New Zealanders expect our government to end its empty condemnations of Israel and act to sanction this rogue, genocidal state,” Minto said.
Another truth-teller targeted and killed in Gaza. I wish the journalists — some of whom I taught to master the skills of journalism, would look at this travesty and call it what it is: a genocide.
I wish they would remember that journalists have a code of ethics, I wish they would remember to serve the people and not despotic governments.
Good journalists are truth seekers and truth tellers.
Like this man, Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif, targeted, murdered for revealing the truth that tens of thousands of children, women, and men are regarded as the enemy by a country that wants to take their land and expand.
His Al Jazeera crew of five were wiped out yesterday.
In 1982, I asked an Israeli what he thought of the (then) invasion into Lebanon. He replled that if the government in Tel Aviv had its way and some Israelis were not against invasion, the army would have invaded Turkey. Look at what has happened now.
Massacre after massacre
Far more Palestinians were killed in the year leading up to October 7, 2023, than Israelis killed on that day. Palestinians have faced massacre after massacre ever since the Nakba in 1948.
They experience apartheid, they experience exile, they are not allowed to call Palestine their homeland, but it is their homeland.
Britain swooped into that country and appropriated a religious myth that dated back thousands of years, but being anti anti semitism means ensuring that people are comfortable in their own land, it does not mean booting one people out to make a home for yourself.
Settler colonisation continues to perpetuate the worst injustice. It just dealt another blow. Starving children and a good man, a truth teller, killed in cold blood.
Saige England is an Aotearoa New Zealand journalist, author, and poet, member of the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This commentary was first published on England’s social media.
LIVE: Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City. https://t.co/f5TlGRMjIH
The Committee to Protect Journalists has made a statement today that it is appalled to learn of the killing of an Al Jazeera media crew of five, including journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa by Israeli forces in Gaza.
The journalists were killed in an attack on a tent used by media near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City during a targeted Israeli bombardment, according to Al Jazeera which has described the killings as “murders”.
In a statement announcing the killing of Al-Sharif, Israel’s military accused the journalist of heading a Hamas cell and of “advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and [Israeli] troops”.
Israel has a longstanding, documented pattern of accusing journalists of being terrorists without providing any credible proof.
“Israel’s pattern of labeling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,” said CPJ regional director Sara Qudah.
“Journalists are civilians and must never be targeted. Those responsible for these killings must be held accountable.”
Al-Sharif had been one of Al Jazeera’s best-known reporters in Gaza since the start of the war and one of several journalists whom Israel had previously alleged were members of Hamas without providing evidence.
Reported on starvation
Most recently, Al-Sharif had reported on the starvation that he and his colleagues were experiencing because of Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient food aid into Gaza.
In a July 24 video, Avichay Adraee, an Israel Defence Forces spokesperson, accused Al-Sharif of having been a member of Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam, since 2013 and working during the war “for the most criminal and offensive channel”, apparently referring to Al Jazeera Arabic.
LIVE: Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City. https://t.co/f5TlGRMjIH
Al-Sharif told CPJ in July: “Adraee’s campaign is not only a media threat or an image destruction — it is a real-life threat.”
He said: “All of this is happening because my coverage of the crimes of the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip harms them and damages their image in the world.
“They accuse me of being a terrorist because the occupation wants to assassinate me morally.”
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Irene Khan, said she was “deeply alarmed by repeated threats and accusations of the Israeli army” against al-Sharif.
Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war on October 7, 2023, CPJ has documented 186 journalists having been killed. At least 178 of those journalists are Palestinians killed by Israel.
Pacific affairs and media commentator Dr David Robie reflected on the 1985 Rainbow Warrior mission to Rongelap atoll to help US nuclear refugees and the bombing of the Greenpeace campaign ship by French secret agents in a kōrero hosted by the NZ Fabian Society.
His analysis is that far from the sabotage being an isolated incident, it was part of a cynical and sordid colonial policy that impacts on the Pacific until today.
He also spoke on wide-ranging issues ranging from decolonisation in Kanaky New Zealand and Palestine to climate crisis and opposition to AUKUS in the livestreamed event on Friday evening.
The Fabian Society and Just Defence spokeperson Mike Smith introducing journalist and author David Robie at the kōrero on Friday.
Former professor David Robie has a passion for the Asia-Pacific region and he founded the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology in 2007 which ran until 2020 when he retired from academic life.
A journalist for more than 60 years, David has reported on postcolonial coups, indigenous struggles for independence and environmental and developmental issues in the Asia-Pacific.
On Saturday, he participated in the Nagasaki Day / Aro Valley Peace Talks where he and former RNZ journalist Jeremy Rose were in conversation analysing Pacific geopolitics and media coverage and challenges of the future.
Journalist and author Dr David Robie speaking to the Fabian Society about environmental activism, decolonisation and Pacific geopolitics. Image: Del Abcede.APR
The words and pictures documenting the famine in the Gaza strip are horrifying.
The coverage has led to acrimonious and often misguided debates about whether there is famine, and who is to blame for it — most recently exemplified by the controversy surrounding a picture published by The New York Times of an emaciated child who is also suffering from a preexisting health condition.
While pictures and words may mislead, numbers usually don’t.
The Nobel prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen observed some decades ago that famines are always political and economic events, and that the most direct way to analyse them is to look at food quantities and prices.
This has led to decades of research on past famines. One observation is that dramatic increases in food prices always mean there is a famine, even though not every famine is accompanied by rising food costs.
The price increases we have seen in Gaza are unprecedented.
The economic historian Yannai Spitzer observed in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that staple food prices during the Irish Potato Famine showed a three- to five-fold increase, while there was a ten-fold rise during the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. In the North Korean famine of the 1990s, the price of rice rose by a factor of 12.
At least a million people died of hunger in each of these events.
Now, The New York Times has reported the price of flour in Gaza has increased by a factor of 30 and potatoes cost 50 times more.
Israel’s food blockade As was the case for the UK government in Ireland in the 1840s and Bengal in the 1940s, Israel is responsible for this famine because it controls almost all the Gaza strip and its borders. But Israel has also created the conditions for the famine.
Following a deliberate policy in March of stopping food from coming in, it resumed deliveries of food in May through a very limited set of “stations” it established through a new US-backed organisation (the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation), in a system that seemed designed to fail.
Before Israel’s decision in March to stop food from coming in, the price of flour in Gaza was roughly back to its prewar levels (having previously peaked in 2024 in another round of border closures). Since March, food prices have gone up by an annualised inflation rate of more than 5000 percent.
The excuse the Israeli government gives for its starvation policy is that Hamas controls the population by restricting food supplies. It blames Hamas for any shortage of food.
However, if you want to disarm an enemy of its ability to wield food supplies as a weapon by rationing them, the obvious way to do so is the opposite: you would increase the food supply dramatically and hence lower its price.
Restricting supplies and increasing their value is primarily immoral and criminal, but it is also counterproductive for Israel’s stated aims. Indeed, flooding Gaza with food would have achieved much more in weakening Hamas than the starvation policy the Israeli government has chosen.
The UN’s top humanitarian aid official has described Israel’s decision to halt humanitarian assistance to put pressure on Hamas as “cruel collective punishment” — something forbidden under international humanitarian law.
The long-term aftermath of famines Cormac Ó Gráda, the Irish economic historian of famines, quotes a Kashmiri proverb which says “famine goes, but the stains remain”.
The current famine in Gaza will leave long-lasting pain for Gazans and an enduring moral stain on Israel — for many generations.
Ó Gráda points out two main ways in which the consequences of famines endure. Most obvious is the persistent memory of it; second are the direct effects on the long-term wellbeing of exposed populations and their descendants.
The Irish and the Indians have not forgotten the famines that affected them. They still resent the British government for its actions. The memory of these famines still influences relations between Ireland, India and the UK, just as Ukraine’s famine of the early 1930s is still a background to the Ukraine-Russia war.
The generational impact is also significant. Several studies in China find children conceived during China’s Great Leap Forward famine of 1959–1960 (which also killed millions) are less healthy, face more mental health challenges and have lower cognitive abilities than those conceived either before or after the famine.
Other researchers found similar evidence from famines in Ireland and the Netherlands, supporting what is known as the “foetal origins” hypothesis, which proposes that the period of gestation has significant impacts on health in adulthood. Even more worryingly, recent research shows these harmful effects can be transmitted to later generations through epigenetic channels.
Each day without available and accessible food supplies means more serious ongoing effects for the people of Gaza and the Israeli civilian hostages still held by Hamas — as well as later generations. Failure to prevent the famine will persist in collective memory as a moral stain on the international community, but primarily on Israel. Only immediate flooding of the strip with food aid can help now.
Former Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls joins us for one of his first interviews since he returned to the United States after he was beaten, arrested and detained by the Israeli military for attempting to bring aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza. Smalls calls Israel’s assault and starvation of Gaza a “working-class issue,” and was the only Black member of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s latest attempt to break Israel’s near-total blockade of Gaza. He describes his assault by Israeli soldiers, who “attacked me out of the 21 volunteers because of the color of my skin.” Smalls was later one of the last to be released from Israel’s Givon Prison, where he contracted scabies. “I can tell you right now, from my own experience, that Palestinians and people of color are not safe amongst the Israeli government,” he says.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
The world’s most important hostage — must be released. The powerful Western countries have signalled that in the face of the genocide they may recognise the state of Palestine.
States need leaders. That’s why Marwan Barghouti – often dubbed the Palestinian Mandela — must be freed.
A former head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Ephraim Halevy, agrees with calls by leaders from across the Middle East for Barghouti’s release: “Barghouti is popular with his people, he has a clear position, he speaks Hebrew well and can negotiate; all of which qualifies him to lead a new path.
“We have to be creative in dealing with the future in the West Bank as well and the rest of the territories, as there are millions of Palestinians, and transferring two million Palestinians from Gaza is unrealistic,” Halevy told Middle East Monitor.
States need leaders The UK, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a baker’s dozen of Western-aligned states have signalled they may finally join humanity and recognise the right of Palestine to exist as a state.
They are doing so at a moment when the physical existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine is in peril due to the US-Israeli genocide.
If this is not simply another hollow, performative gesture, real things must happen: first and foremost the lifting of the siege and the ending of the man-made famine.
Simultaneously, Palestine needs a credible leadership to negotiate its future. Why call for recognition of a state when hundreds of the top leadership of that future state are held in cruel captivity?
These hostages seldom receive any attention — in contrast to the remaining 20 or so living hostages held by Hamas and other groups.
Who decides who represents Palestine? In typical Western fashion the announcement of potentially recognising the Palestinian state comes with a swag of conditions — foremost that Hamas, the most popular movement in Palestine, the winner of the last free and fair elections in both the West Bank and Gaza, must not be part of any government.
OK, so, if the Palestinians bow to that condition, who will be the leaders of this state? Who has the standing with all the factions of the Palestinian polity?
Marwan Barghouti could be such a man. The geriatric and thoroughly discredited Mahmoud Abbas, unelected leader of the Palestinian Authority, is largely seen as a tool of the US and Israel.
More than 90 percent of Palestinians want him gone. In contrast, Barghouti is a revered figure, respected by all Palestinian organisations. He consistently polls as the most popular leader.
The Israelis have murdered many of the Palestinian leaders (along with targeted assassinations of hundreds of writers, professors, lawyers, doctors and other people crucial to state-building). They even killed the lead negotiator in the hostage release process.
It is vital that the West ensures Barghouti is protected from further mistreatment. It is also worth dismissing the lie that Israel has no Palestinian partner to negotiate with; Barghouti has the will and the attributes.
The blockage is actually Western complicity in ethnic cleansing, land stealing and the overall Greater Israel Project.
Barghouti: the most important political prisoner During the past 23 years in Israeli prisons Barghouti has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken, as documented by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian — a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation.
As I wrote in 2024:
“Barghouti, the terrorist, rotting in jail. Barghouti, the indomitable leader who has not given up on peace. Barghouti, loved by ordinary people as ‘a man of the street’. Barghouti, supporter of the Oslo Accords. Barghouti, the 15 year-old youth leader standing beside Yasser Arafat.
“Barghouti, once a member of parliament and Fatah secretary-general. Barghouti, leader of Tanzim, a PLO military wing, choosing militancy after the betrayal of the Oslo promise by the Americans and Israelis became fully clear.
“Barghouti, a leader of the intifada that restored hope to a broken people. Barghouti, the scholar and thinker. Barghouti, the political strategist and unifier.”
Marwan is the most famous Palestinian prisoner but it should never be forgotten that the entire Palestinian people have been held in bondage for generations.
The West should force the Israelis to release Barghouti — and thousands of other hostages held by Israel. To do so publicly and successfully would be a powerful statement of future intentions.
The release of one man cannot, however, change the world: it will take a genuine course correction by the West to use their collective power to force the Israelis to abandon the endless killings, starvation, land thieving and other lawlessness in the Palestinian lands.
The West must stop posturing and start acting If the Western states fail to quickly move to change facts on the ground, it will suggest that the whole exercise was only intended to achieve political cover for the pro-genocidal forces of the US and the other enablers like Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Netanyahu is driving both the Palestinians and Israel to destruction.
Ironically, the Palestinian Marwan Barghouti could save Israel from moral death and, simultaneously, the Palestinians from further physical destruction. He is a leader that the West and the Israelis, if they chose, could negotiate with.
As Alon Liel, formerly Israel’s most senior diplomat, said a couple of years ago: Barghouti is “the ultimate leader of the Palestinian people,” and “he is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in.”
One final point: negotiating with ‘terrorists’ The West has made it clear they believe Hamas are too monstrous, too terroristic to be involved in a peace process.
But the West is entirely comfortable with the racist, fascist, genocidal leaders of Israel remaining at the helm of their country. There is a reason for this and one the West needs to front up to: racism and contempt for the Palestinians as a people.
Barghouti and hundrds of other leaders have endured torture and worse without our side raising even an eyebrow. The recent skite videos posted by IDF soldiers committing rape-murder inside Sde Temein prison says it all — they rightly assumed their depraved criminality would be sanctioned by the state and silently tolerated by the West.
War crimes are fine and no barrier to leadership if these crimes are committed by regimes that we are deeply committed to. After all, as our leaders repeatedly tell us: we share values with the Israelis.
I’ll give the last word to Marwan Barghouti.
“Resistance is a holy right for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli occupation. Nobody should forget that the Palestinian people negotiated for 10 years and accepted difficult and humiliating agreements, and in the end didn’t get anything except authority over the people, and no authority over land, or sovereignty.”
It is time to change that and to stand with humanity. Free Marwan Barghouti!
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
Three times this year the world has been close to nuclear catastrophe of one form or another — the India–Pakistan conflict, the ongoing Ukraine–Russia war and more recently the Israel/US–Iran “12 day war”. Here is one of the speeches at the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima Day in Sydney before the “March for Humanity” on Sydney Harbour Bridge.
COMMENTARY:By Peter Murphy
I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation as the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we are gathered and pay respect to their Elders past and present. I also acknowledge the Pitjantjatjara and other peoples of the APY lands who suffered the direct impact of nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and nearby in the 1950s and early 1960s.
I am standing in here for Michael Wright, the national secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, who was unable to take up our invitation to be here today.
The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has a very solid record for opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons, and really campaigned hard on this issue against Peter Dutton and the Coalition in the May federal elections.
The ETU campaigned in Dutton’s seat of Dickson and he lost his seat to Labor’s Ali France. You have to conclude that among the many reasons that Australian voters deserted the Coalition and Dutton, the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy was a big one.
Since the election, the Coalition has continued to entertain the idea of a nuclear-powered Australia, showing that they just refuse to listen to the Australian people. But they are only too happy to listen to and take the money of the fossil fuel corporations and the nuclear power companies like Westinghouse, who are the ones who benefit from government policies to foster nuclear power.
They are determined to delay the transition to renewable energy as long as possible, whatever the cost to all of us in runaway climate disasters.
The ETU’s official policy against the nuclear industry dates back to the 1950s, resulting from the shared experiences of ETU members who returned from Japan after the Second World War. In the decades since, the ETU has regularly revisited this policy to learn more about the nuclear fuel cycle, changes and advances to technologies, technical interaction with the network and economic viability.
Opposed nuclear industry
Let’s honour those long-gone ETU members who recognised the crimes that took place at Nagasaki and Hiroshima 80 years ago by vigorously opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons today. And let’s remember some other Australians who were there then — Tom Uren saw the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki from the copper mine where he was working as a prisoner of war; and Wilfred Burchett, the journalist, who first told the world from Hiroshima about radiation sickness.
Nuclear power stations generate radioactive waste such as spent reactor fuel, reprocessing effluents, and contaminated tools and work clothing. These materials can remain radioactive and hazardous to human health for tens of thousands of years.
And this is the kind of waste that comes from nuclear-powered submarines, during regular maintenance, and at the end of their life — 30 years we have been told for the AUKUS submarine nuclear reactors.
This waste will need to be trucked across the country on public roads to be disposed of in a nuclear waste facility.
But, Australia does not have a dedicated national radioactive waste facility. And the Albanese government is refusing to say where they plan to put that waste.
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those at the nuclear tests sites in Nevada, the Marianas, French Polynesia, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Fields, Maralinga in Australia have been living with these nuclear wastes in their environment for up to 80 years.
We don’t want this to go any further in Australia or anywhere else in the world.
Democratic failure over AUKUS
How dare the Albanese government commit future generations to somehow keep that deadly nuclear waste safe for tens of thousands of years.
The ETU stood up at the August 2023 ALP National Conference and opposed the AUKUS project, spelling out these concerns and also the democratic failure of Labor to consult the public and the Parliament before committing to the AUKUS deal.
The Albanese leadership tried very hard to make sure that AUKUS was not debated at that ALP National Conference. So it was a victory first of all to have the debate and openly discuss the big problems with AUKUS.
The pro-AUKUS case was so weak that the Defence Industry Minister at the time, Pat Conroy, defended it by accusing the critics of being like the appeasers of the Nazis in the 1930s. In doing so he was saying that China is a fascist state and it is the enemy we have to fight with these hopeless submarines.
The grotesque comparison of us and of China to Nazis is ironically more appropriate for Trump and the USA, who are right now purging people of colour from the streets and workplaces of the United States and supporting a genocide in Gaza.
AUKUS is one building block in the US plan to wage war on China to remove its capacity to challenge US primacy in this region and world-wide. A conga line of US military commanders and cabinet secretaries have made this clear.
It is imperial madness writ large.
The deeper reason
And this is the deeper reason why we must oppose AUKUS, because we have to stop this deadly drive for a war between nuclear-armed superpowers. Such a war would almost certainly go nuclear, the world would go into nuclear winter, there would be no winners and huge huge casualties.
Japan, the Philippines, and Australia would be very early targets in such a war.
We remember that 200,000 people, almost all civilians, men women and children of all ages, were killed by those two nuclear bombs 80 years ago, and endless suffering has continued down to this day.
So we recommit to opposing nuclear weapons and the nuclear industry which produces them. We commit to getting Australia’s signature on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.
We commit to stopping AUKUS. We commit to stopping the active US and Australian plan for a war with China.
This is edited from Peter Murphy’s speech at the 80th anniversary Horoshima Day rally for the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition and Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition on 3 August 2025.
While the Israeli government claims it is backing “clans” in Gaza to counter the resistance movement Hamas, the groups it supports more closely resemble criminal gangs, says a British-based security specialist.
Dr Rob Geist Pinfold, international security lecturer at King’s College London, says: “These are criminal gangs. Many were in prison before October 7 for drug offences, not for being political dissidents.
“They rob Palestinians on the streets. They feed off and contribute to the chaos and disorder,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Many of these people, like Yasser Abu Shabab, are outcasts from their clans. Israel has basically chosen the least popular people in Gaza to arm and equip.
“It’s not trying to create a viable political alternative to Hamas, it’s identifying people who thrive off chaos and encouraging them to further that chaos.”
Dr Pinfold said Israel appeared to be intentionally sowing chaos in Gaza to make the territory “unlivable”.
“It used to look like this chaos in Gaza was the product of Israel not having a day-after plan,” he said. “But I think it is now evident that this chaos is . . . part of the day-after plan, which is a grander strategy to make Gaza unlivable in the long term.”
Arming criminal gangs
To accomplish this, Israel is arming the criminal gangs that “thrive off chaos” and funnelling the little aid coming in through the dysfunctional and violence-ridden GHF [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] system.
From Israel’s perspective, “I actually think this is working very well”, he said, “because its undeclared aims are to create chaos and ensure Gaza becomes unlivable”.
“Unfortunately, so far, that is proving to be a very successful strategy.”
Earlier this week it was announced that the death toll had topped 60,430 people (not including the tens of thousands buried under the rubble, or missing and believed dead). This number of dead included more than 18,000 children.
Also, 148,722 wounded were wounded.
Already there have been 162 deaths from starvation in Gaza, 92 of them children and the predictions are dire.
Also, more than 1300 Palestinians have been killed near the GHF aid depots.
A former senior UN aid official has condemned the bloodshed at the notorious US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid food depots, describing the distribition system as having turned into a “catastrophe”.
The number of aid seekers killed continues to climb daily beyond 1000.
Martin Griffiths, director of Mediation Group International and the former Under Secretary General of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office, said: “I think when many of us saw the first plans of the GHF to launch this operation in Gaza, we were immediately appalled by the way they were proposing to manage it.”
“It was clearly militarised. They’d have their own security contractors,” he told Al Jazeera.
“They’d have [Israeli military] camps placed right beside them. We know now that they are, in fact, under instructions by [the Israeli military].
“All of this is a crime. All of this is a deep betrayal of humanitarian values.
“But what I at least did not sufficiently anticipate was the killing and was the absolutely critical result of this operation, this sole humanitarian operation allowed by Israel in Gaza,” Griffiths added.
“The 1000 killed are an incredible statistic. I had no idea it would go that high and it’s going on daily. It’s not stopping.
“I think it’s a catastrophe more than a disappointment,” he said. “I think it’s a great sin. I think it’s a great crime.”
Humanitarian aid advocate Martin Griffiths . . . We know now that [GHF] are, in fact, under instructions by [the Israeli military]. All of this is a crime.” Image: WikipediaCommenting about US envoy Steve Witkoff and US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee’s planned visit to GHF-run aid distribution sites in Gaza, he said this was “likely to be choreographed”.
However, he acknowledged it was still an “important form of witness”.
“I’m glad that they’re going,” Griffiths said.
“Maybe they will see things that are unexpected. I can’t imagine because we’ve seen so much. But I don’t see it leading to a major change.
“If I was one of the two million Gazans starving to death, this is a day I would like to go to an aid distribution point,” Griffiths added.
“There’s slightly less risk probably than any other day.”
New Caledonia’s oldest pro-independence party, the Union Calédonienne (UC), has officially rejected a political agreement on the Pacific territory’s political future signed in Paris last month.
The text, bearing the signatures of all of New Caledonia’s political parties represented in the local Congress — a total of 18 leaders, both pro-France and pro-independence — is described as a “project” for an agreement that would shape politics.
Since it was signed in the city of Bougival, west of Paris, on July 12, after 10 days of intense negotiations, it has been dubbed a “bet on trust” and has been described by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls as a commitment from all signing parties to report to their respective bases and explain its contents.
The Bougival document involves a series of measures and recognition by France of New Caledonia as a “State” which could become empowered with its own international relations and foreign affairs, provided they do not contradict France’s key interests.
It also envisages dual citizenship — French and New Caledonian — provided future New Caledonian citizens are French nationals in the first place.
It also describes a future devolution of stronger powers for each of the three provinces (North, South and Loyalty Islands), especially in terms of tax collection.
Since it was published, the document, bearing a commitment to defend the text “as is”, was hailed as “innovative” and “historic”.
New Caledonia’s leaders have started to hold regular meetings — sometimes daily — and sessions with their respective supporters and militants, mostly to explain the contents of what they have signed.
The meetings were held by most pro-France parties and within the pro-independence camp, the two main moderate parties, UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie) and PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party).
Over the past two weeks, all of these parties have strived to defend the agreement, which is sometimes described as a Memorandum of Agreement or a roadmap for future changes in New Caledonia.
Most of the leaders who have inked the text have also held lengthy interviews with local media.
Parties who have unreservedly pledged their support to and signed the Bougival document are:
Pro-France side: Les Loyalistes, Rassemblement-LR, Wallisian-based Eveil Océanien and Calédonie Ensemble
Pro-independence: UNI-FLNKS (which comprises UPM and PALIKA).
But one of the main components of the pro-independence movement, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) — as its main pillar — the Union Calédonienne, has held a series of meetings indicating their resentment at their negotiators for having signed the contested document.
UC held its executive committee on July 21, its steering committee on July 26, and FLNKS convened its political bureau on July 23.
A ‘lure of sovereignty’ All of these meetings concluded with an increasingly clear rejection of the Bougival document.
Speaking at a news conference in Nouméa yesterday, UC leaders made it clear that they “formally reject” the agreement because they regard it as a “lure of sovereignty” and does not guarantee either real sovereignty or political balance.
FLNKS chief negotiator Emmanuel Tjibaou, who is also UC’s chair, told local reporters he understood his signature on the document meant a commitment to return to New Caledonia, explain the text and obtain the approval of the political base.
“I didn’t have a mandate to sign a political agreement, my mandate was to register the talks and bring them back to our people so that a decision can be made . . . it didn’t mean an acceptance on our part,” he said, mentioning it was a “temporary” document subject to further discussions.
Tjibaou said some amendments his delegation had put on the table in Bougival “went missing” in the final text.
Union Calédonienne chair and chief FLNKS negotiator Emmanuel Tjibaou . .. some amendments that his delegation had put on the table in Bougival “went missing” in the final text. Image: RNZ Pacific
‘Bougival, it’s over’ “As far as we’re concerned, Bougival, it’s over”, UC vice-president Mickaël Forrest said.
He said it was now time to move onto a “post-Bougival phase”.
Meanwhile, the FLNKS also consulted its own “constitutionalists” to obtain legal advice and interpretation of the document.
In a release about yesterday’s media conference, UC stated that the Bougival text could not be regarded as a balance between two “visions” for Kanaky New Caledonia, but rather a way of “maintaining New Caledonia as French”.
The text, UC said, had led the political dialogue into a “new impasse” and it left several questions unanswered.
“With the denomination of a ‘State’, a fundamental law (a de facto Constitution), the capacity to self-organise, and international recognition, this document is perceived as a project for an agreement to integrate (New Caledonia) into France under the guise of a decolonisation”.
“The FLNKS has never accepted a status of autonomy within France, but an external decolonisation by means of accession to full sovereignty [which] grants us the right to choose our inter-dependencies,” the media release stated.
The pro-independence party also criticised plans to enlarge the list of people entitled to vote at New Caledonia’s local elections — the very issue that triggered deadly and destructive riots in May 2024.
It is also critical of a proposed mechanism that would require a vote at the Congress with a minimum majority of 64 percent (two thirds) before any future powers can be requested for transfer from France to New Caledonia.
Assuming that current population trends and a fresh system of representation at the Congress will allow more representatives from the Southern province (about three quarters of New Caledonia’s population), UC said “in other words, it would be the non-independence [camp] who will have the power to authorise us — or not — to ask for our sovereignty”.
They party confirmed that it had “formally rejected the Bougival project of agreement as it stands” following a decision made by its steering committee on July 26 “since the fundamentals of our struggle and the principles of decolonisation are not there”.
Negotiators no longer mandated The decision also means that every member of its negotiating team who signed the document on July 12 is now de facto demoted and no longer mandated by the party until a new negotiating team is appointed, if required.
“Union Calédonienne remains mobilised to arrive at a political agreement that takes into account the achievement of a trajectory towards full sovereignty”.
On Tuesday, FLNKS president Christian Téin, as an invited guest of Corsica’s “Nazione” pro-independence movement, told French media he declared himself “individually against” the Bougival document, adding this was “far from being akin to full sovereignty”.
Téin said that during the days that led to the signing of the document in Bougival “the pressure” exerted on negotiators was “terrible”.
He said the result was that due to “excessive force” applied by “France’s representatives”, the final text’s content “looks like it is the French State and right-wing people who will decide the (indigenous) Kanak people’s future”.
Facing crime-related charges, Téin is awaiting his trial, but was released from jail, under the condition that he does not return to New Caledonia.
The leader of a CCAT (field action coordinating cell) created by Union Calédonienne late in 2023 to protest against a proposed French Constitutional amendment to alter voters’ rules of eligibility at local elections, was jailed for one year in mainland France. However, he was elected president of FLNKS in absentia in late August 2024.
CCAT, meanwhile, was admitted as one of the new components of FLNKS.
In a de facto split, the two main moderate pillars of FLNKS, UPM and PALIKA, at the same time, distanced themselves from the pro-independence UC-dominated platform, opening a rift within the pro-independence umbrella.
The FLNKS is scheduled to hold an extraordinary meeting on August 9 (it was initially scheduled to be held on August 2), to “highlight the prospects of the pursuit of dialogue through a repositioning of the pro-independence movement’s political orientations”.
French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls (centre) shows signatures on the last page of New Caledonia’s new Bougival agreement earlier this month . . . “If tomorrow there was to be no agreement, it would mean the future, hope, would be put into question” Image: FB/RNZ Pacific
Valls: ‘I’m not giving up’ Reacting to the latest UC statements, Valls told French media he called on UC to have “a great sense of responsibility”.
“If tomorrow there was to be no agreement, it would mean the future, hope, would be put into question. Investment, including for the nickel mining industry, would no longer be possible.”
“I’m not giving up. Union Calédonienne has chosen to reject, as it stands, the Bougival accord project. I take note of this, but I profoundly regret this position.
“An institutional void would be a disaster for [New Caledonia]. It would be a prolonged uncertainty, the risk of further instability, the return of violence,” he said.
“But my door is not closed and I remain available for dialogue at all times. Impasse is not an option.”
Valls said the Bougival document was “‘neither someone’s victory on another one, nor an imposed text: it was built day after day with partners around the table following months of long discussions.”
In a recent letter specifically sent to Union Calédonienne, the French former Prime Minister suggested the creation of an editorial committee to start drafting future-shaping documents for New Caledonia, such as its “fundamental law”, akin to a Constitution for New Caledonia.
Valls also stressed France’s financial assistance to New Caledonia, which last year totalled around 3 billion euros because of the costs associated to the May 2024 riots.
The riots caused 14 dead, hundreds of injured and an estimated financial cost of more than 2 billion euros (NZ$5.8 billion) in damage.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
But, speaking to RNZ Midday Report, Clark said New Zealand needed to come on board.
“We are watching a catastrophe unfold in Gaza. We’re watching starvation. We’re watching famine conditions for many. Many are using the word genocide,” she said.
“If New Zealand can’t act in these circumstances, when can it act?”
Elders call for recognition
“The Elders, a group of world leaders of which Clark is a part, last month issued a call for countries to recognise the state of Palestine, calling it the “beginning, not the end of a political pathway towards lasting peace”.
Clark said the government seemed to be trying avoid the ire of the United States by waiting until the peace process was well underway or nearing its end.
“That is no longer tenable,” she said.
“New Zealand really is lagging behind.”
Even before the recent commitments from France, Canada and the UK, 147 of the UN’s 193 member states had recognised the Palestinian state.
Clark said the hope was that the series of recognitions from major Western states would first shift the US position and then Israel’s.
“When the US moves, Israel eventually jumps because it owes so much to the United States for the support, financial, military and otherwise,” she said.
“At some point, Israel has to smell the coffee.”
Surprised over Peters
Clark said she was “a little surprised” that Foreign Minister Winston Peters had not been more forward-leaning given he historically had strongly advocated New Zealand’s even-handed position.
On Wednesday, New Zealand signed a joint statement with 14 other countries expressing a willingness to recognise the State of Palestine as a necessary step towards a two-state solution.
However, later speaking in Parliament, Peters said that was conditional on first seeing progress from Palestine, including representative governance, commitment to non-violence, and security guarantees for Israel.
“If we are to recognise the state of Palestine, New Zealand wants to know that what we are recognising is a legitimate, representative, viable, political entity,” Peters told MPs.
Peters also agreed with a contribution from ACT’s Simon Court that recognising the state of Palestine could be viewed as “a reward [to Hamas] for acts of terrorism” if it was done before Hamas had returned hostages or laid down arms.
Luxon earlier told RNZ New Zealand had long supported the eventual recognition of Palestinian statehood, but that the immediate focus should be on getting aid into Gaza rather than “fragmenting and talking about all sorts of other things that are distractions”.
“We need to put the pressure on Israel to get humanitarian assistance unfettered, at scale, at volume, into Gaza,” he told RNZ.
“You can talk about a whole bunch of other things, but for right now, the world needs to focus.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
As we’ve watched from afar the tragedy unfolding in Gaza over the past 22 months, it’s worth remembering the part New Zealand troops played in setting in motion the cycle of violence that continues today in Palestine and Israel.
HISTORY:By Scott Hamilton
The man in the photo walks down the deserted street, over rubble. On both sides of the street buildings have lost their roofs and walls. A pockmarked minaret totters over the wrecked townscape. The photo is captioned “Ruins of Gaza at the Time of the Great Attack”.
The photo I’m describing wasn’t taken in 2025, but in 1917. Today Gaza is being destroyed by the armies of Israel and Hamas. In 1917 the British and Ottoman empires wrecked the city. New Zealanders played an important role in the destruction.
In 1917 most Gazans lived in village-suburbs interspersed with gardens and orchards. Their houses were made with mud bricks. The highest building in their town was the Great Mosque, whose foundations dated from the 7th century.
The Ottomans had made Gaza into a fortress, and had connected it by rail and road to a series of redoubts further east. These guarded the southern border of the province of Palestine, and were manned by German and Austrian as well as Ottoman troops.
Britain’s new prime minister David Lloyd George was desperate to capture Palestine, in the hope a victory there would shift public attention from the disaster on the western front, where tens of thousands of Britons had died fighting over mud.
The Egyptian Expeditionary Force, which crossed the Sinai desert to attack Gaza and Palestine, was made up of British, Anzacs, South Africans, West Indians, a volunteer Jewish Legion and Indians.
The Anzac Mounted Division was an essential part of the EEF. Its men rode to battles but fought on foot. Many of them had learned to ride on the farms of their homelands. Some were survivors of Gallipoli, where they had battled without their horses; others had arrived in Egypt after that catastrophe.
Farmland confiscated
Gaza’s suffering began before the British attack. Its defenders confiscated farmland for trenches, and demolished houses to give artillerymen better sight lines. The Great Mosque was seized and turned into an ammunition dump.
Captioned “Gaza Beauty Show”, this photo was likely taken by New Zealander Private Robert Kerr of the Anzac Mounted Rifle Division. Image: NZ Army Museum
It took the British empire three battles to capture Gaza. A photo taken before the second assault shows New Zealanders trying on gas masks. It is captioned “Gaza Beauty Show”. The attackers fired 4000 canisters of asphyxiating gas towards the city. No Gazan had a gas mask.
Before the final assault the city was bombarded for four days by naval guns, artillery and planes. When they finally captured Gaza, the New Zealanders found it empty. Almost the entire population had fled the bombardment; the Ottomans had followed them.
On the day its troops entered Gaza the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, which committed it to establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In 1917, though, Jews made up less than a tenth of Palestine’s population.
And Britain had made contradictory promises to Arabs, promising them independence if they rose up against Ottoman rule, and funding an Arab army that had advanced to the edge of Palestine.
There was still another group that wanted Palestine. When the Auckland Mounted Rifles had passed the stone pillar that marked the border between Sinai and Palestine, Henry Mackesy had stopped his men, and prayed to thank god for delivering the “Holy Land” to Britain.
Like New Zealand’s wartime prime minister William Massey, Mackesy was a British Israelite, who believed that Anglo-Saxons were a lost tribe of Israel, and that the British empire was god’s kingdom on earth. For Mackesy and many other Anzacs, Palestine belonged rightfully to Britons, not Jews or Arabs.
Conquerors warned
So many Anzacs wanted to settle in Palestine that Kia ora Coo-ee, their official magazine, had to run an article warning them that conquerors could not legally take locals’ land.
For most Anzacs, the inhabitants of Palestine — the Arabs of the villages and towns, the nomadic Bedouin of the deserts, the small and ancient Jewish communities in towns like Jerusalem — were at best an inconvenience, and at worst a reminder of the decadence and evil condemned in the Old Testament.
New Zealander Alexander McNeur summed up a widespread feeling when he wrote “no wonder the old inhabitants of Palestine had to be destroyed . . . many a chap is disgusted by the people”. (The only Palestinians the Anzacs really liked were the settlers in Zionist colonies, who looked, spoke and acted like Europeans.)
The Anzacs complained about the dirtiness and dishonesty of Palestinians. Many complained they had been cheated by Arab or Jewish traders; others said that Bedouins dug up soldiers’ graves and plundered them.
But the Anzacs themselves had a reputation for taking whatever they could from Palestinians, as well as from Ottoman soldiers. In 1988, Australian veteran Ted O’Brien gave an interview in which he confessed to killing a wounded Ottoman so that he could steal the man’s possessions. Robbing the dead was routine, O’Brien said.
O’Brien added that he and his comrades would immediately kill any Bedouins they found in the desert. Edwin McKay, a member of the Otago section of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles, said that theft was a “two-way thing”, with Anzacs and Palestinians preying on each other.
After its defeat of Gaza the Ottoman army began to disintegrate, but as the EEF advanced through Palestine and into Jordan and Syria, it did not always bring peace. Arabs who fought alongside the British imperial forces, hoping for independence, became possessive about the areas they had captured.
Pushed off land
Ottoman deserters became bandits. Bedouins who had been pushed off their land by war raided EEF camps in search of loot. The Jewish Legion clashed with Arabs so often that the EEF commander General Allenby asked the War Office not to send him any more Jews.
The Anzacs’ contempt towards Arabs grew even greater after a calamitous attempt to capture Amman near the end of the war. Rain, cold and tougher-than-expected Ottoman resistance sent the mounted riflemen away with heavy losses.
As they rode towards safety, the Wellington Mounted Rifles entered Ain es Sir, a small village set amid hills and ravines. Villagers opened fire from houses and from nearby ledges, and seven Wellingtonians died. The Anzacs counterattacked Ain es Sir ferociously, shelling the village and killing 38 of its inhabitants. They took no prisoners.
Two members of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles – their exact identities haven’t been established – are flogging Egyptians charged with rioting. Egyptian police are holding the victim down, and other Egyptians are waiting, often in states of undress. 1919. Image: NZ Army Museum
The attack on Amman had made been made in partnership with an Arab force, and the Anzacs seem to have believed that the ambush at Ain es Sir was an act of treachery by their supposed allies.
They do not seem to have known, or cared, that Ain es Sir was not an Arab village. Its inhabitants were Circassians, a Caucasian group that migrated to the Middle East centuries ago.
On the night of December 10, more than a month after the end of the war, the Anzacs’ hatred of Arabs erupted. Hundreds of them were camped outside a village named Surafend, waiting impatiently for a ship to take them home. On the night of December 9 a man entered the tent of a New Zealand soldier named Leslie Lowry. Lowry had been using his kitbag as a pillow. The intruder grabbed it and fled.
Lowry chased the thief across the dunes that separated the Anzac camp from Surafend. The thief turned and fired a pistol. Lowry died three hours later. The next morning Anzacs found Lowry’s blood in the sand. Footprints led from the stain towards Surafend.
Surafend attacked
On December 10, up to 200 Anzacs and a few Scots smashed through the fence that surrounded Surafend. They beat and stabbed scores of male inhabitants of the village, leaving between 40 and 120 dead and many more wounded, then set fire to the Arabs’ homes.
A nearby Bedouin encampment was also set ablaze. Ted O’Brien was one of the raiders. He and his comrades had “done their blocks”. They “all went for” the Arabs with “the bayonet”. “It was a godawful thing,” O’Brien remembered.
New Zealander Ted Andrews explained that the massacre was not just about Lowry’s murder. “The treacherous ambush at Ain es Sir was still fresh in the minds of New Zealand troops,” he wrote, ignoring the fact that the men of Surafend had nothing to do with that village.
Andrews said that victims at Surafend were castrated. Some historians have dismissed this claim, but American scholar Edward Woodfin has shown that castration and humiliation of the dead were being practised in 1918 by the Indian members of the Egypt Expeditionary Force, with whom the Anzacs were friendly.
Most historians say that children, women and old men were removed from Surafend before the slaughter, but they ignore the testimony of Australian John Doran, who was at the Anzacs’ medical station the night of the massacre. Doran said that women and children appeared there with burns and bullet wounds.
The Jewish soldier Roman Freulich said that Australians had fired a machine gun at the Bedouin encampment on the night of December 10. Freulich also reported that the members of the Jewish Legion were excited by the massacre — they hated Arabs even more than the Anzacs — and that they used what he called “the Australian method” on a group of Bedouin civilians shortly after. Freulich said that he and his comrades sealed off a Bedouin camp and stabbed the men with bayonets.
Caption reads “ruins of Gaza at the time of the Great Attack”. Image: Library of Congress
No one prosecuted
Although the Anzacs’ commander General Allenby condemned the attackers, calling them “cowards and murderers”, no one was ever prosecuted for the massacre at Surafend. In 2009, the New Zealand television programme Sunday ran a story on the massacre.
Sunday’s team visited the site of Surafend, which has now been covered by an Israeli town, interviewed an old man who remembered the massacre, and asked why New Zealand had never apologised for the crime. The question is just as pertinent now.
When we look back from 2025 to the destruction of Gaza and the rest of the Palestine campaign, we can see that New Zealand troops played a part in setting in motion the cycle of violence that continues today in Palestine and Israel.
Scott Hamilton is the author of two great modern works of sociology and place, Ghost South Road (Titus Books, 2018), and Searching for Ata’a (Bridget Williams, 2017). He writes the blog Reading the Maps and is currently working on a book about sorcery and sorcery-related violence in Melanesia as part of his ongoing exploration of Pasifika arts and colonial Pākehā histories. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished with the author’s permission.
LIVE: Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City. 
