Government must speak out on Israeli plans to demolish Palestinian medical clinic

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An Israeli government demand that a medical clinic in the Occupied West Bank be demolished has raised another call from the Palestine Solidarity Network for the New Zealand government to speak out.

Israel has instructed inhabitants of the West Bank town of Zanouta to destroy many of their homes and their medical clinic. This follows an earlier Israel demolition of a Palestinians Covid 19 clinic.

PSNA Spokesperson John Minto says not only is Israel denying Covid-19 vaccines to 4.5 million Palestinians under its occupation and control but is using the pandemic as a cover to increase its rate of destruction of Palestinian houses and structures.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has listed 847 demolitions by Israel of Palestinian homes and structures in 2020, most during the pandemic.

John Minto says Israel is obligated to protect medical facilities and provide medical treatment to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

“Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Protocol is quite clear about this. It states and occupying powers; “must adopt and supply the prophylactic and preventative measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics in cooperation with local authorities.”

“Claims by the Israeli government, and their supporters in New Zealand, that supply of vaccines is the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority doesn’t match the facts on the ground.”

“The Palestinian Authority has no administrative presence in Area C which is two thirds of the West Bank.  Nor does it have responsibility for the Palestinian political prisoners illegally held in Israeli jails and who are also denied vaccinations.”

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“Israel is telling the world how its vaccinating its whole population, without mentioning that its only vaccinating those it allows to be citizens or permanent residents.”

“It is supplying vaccines to its illegal settlers in the Occupied West Bank but denying them to their Palestinian neighbours whose land was taken to build the settlements.”

The government’s refusal to publicly criticise Israel for its refusal to provide vaccinations for Palestinians under its occupation and control is complicity with racism.

John Minto says a United Nations special report last week makes Israel’s responsibilities clear: 

Morally and legally, differential access to necessary health care amid the worst global health crisis in a century is unacceptable…

‘The denial of an equal access to health care, such as on the basis of ethnicity or race, is discriminatory and unlawful”

“The Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta is refusing to speak out publicly, unlike her position on human rights in China.”

“She says New Zealand is monitoring the situation.  That the government knows what is going on and makes no statement is outrageous.”

30 COMMENTS

  1. John, whilst we agree with your sentiments, the fact is we have so many dangerous trends here in NZ we cannot devote time and energy to what’s happening in Palestine or Myanmar or Assam or the Central African Republic or America…all of which are going down diabolical paths.

          • Gaby you continue to be an abusive misinformed slug.
            Go ahead and abuse people who do not support genocide but you are transparently a zionist shill of no consequence.

            • Au contraire, the abuse comes from you antisemites and I sling it right back at ya. I prefer to use my rapier wit, but it’s wasted on idiots. You have to bludgeon them. Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.

              • What a self-serving load of disingenuousness Gaby, but not surprising when you self-importance leads to your claims to speak for all Jewish people. It is also offensive that you consider yourself the arbiter of peoples views on racism as opposed to their political and human rights stances. It now appears you have deluded yourself to the point that it is unlikely you would recognised an antisemite if you fell over one. As for rapier wit, you are seemingly so impressed with your cleverness that you obviously don’t appreciate that it is something most would consider you lack. Clown maybe but wit… never. The thing that really stands out though, is your continued juvenile abusive language.

                It was much less offensive when your forte was presenting unsustainable, racist, propagandist rantings. At least they provide some wry amusement.

              • Anisemites? Gaby you express antisemitic comments regularly.. Arabs are a Semitic group speaking Semitic languages they have continuously for many hundreds of years.
                What language do you speak Gaby.
                Don’t be shy.

    • As human beings we have a responsibility to do all we can to change the appalling things happening to the Palestinians, those in Myanmar, West Papua and the many other countries where there are endless human rights abuses. Just because it seems ‘too much’ doesn’t mean we should stand by and do nothing. Every day I receive a range of emails from AVAAZ and a number of other organisations that carry world wide petitions on issues of human rights. It takes a minute to sign these things and I do every time. Along with petitions on animal abuse, environmental and other issues that we should all be concerned about.

      • Sign as many petitions as you like; get hundreds of thousands, even millions all agreeing: it won’t change a thing on anything that matters because the people that run the show couldn’t give a damn what you or anyone else thinks. Consider the million of so who marched in the streets of Britain in opposition to Tony B Liar’s war. It went ahead anyway, and Tony B Liar made a fortune out of it, as did other members of the ‘gang’.

        The scumbags at the top are there to help themselves to whatever they think they can get away with, and will provoke wars, genocide, ecocide, even omnicide if they think there’s a buck to be made or some political points to be scored.

        The other thing the scumbags who control the system do is promote fake solutions* to the predicaments they have created, and make money out of those fake solutions.

        * I’m not sure we can even use the word solutions, since what they promote are not a solutions. But they are definitely fake.

        The only thing that works is boycotting, hitting the finances. No one buys the crap they offer. No one watches the crap they offer. No one attends the crap they present.

        Sadly, in this dumbed-down amoral society that will never happen.

  2. On case was in Area C – which Israel has designs on – to annex.

    With Zanouta near Hebron and the Shamaa settlement has been built beside it. When this happens the Arab village has been targeted for elimination (probably part of a plan to surround Hebron with such settlements and then take Hebron itself). It usually begins with the stealing of village farmland and arresting all the youth who protest this. Depopulating the village of youth. The active destruction of Arab village property – especially its medical facility is particulalrly direct and is indicative of a play for Hebron itself.

    The open ambition for the all of the land without any of the people, is not just an exporession of contempt for the Palestinians, but for the rest of the world as well.

  3. Here is the truth. The building was illegal and was not being used for anything except personal use. More Palestinian pathetic propaganda.

    “The Office for Coordination of Government Activity in the Territories said, “Contrary to the false claims made, this is not a compound for coronavirus testing or any other kind of clinic. This is a complete lie. This is the foundation of a building and an awning that were built illegally by a scofflaw for personal needs. That’s what the developer doing the construction told officials in the Civil Administration.”

  4. Extraordinary that with our own good fortune with regard to covd, we can not offer at least verbal support for Palestine. It is impossible tobe taken seriously criticizing China but offering only deafening silence for Palestine where the humanitarian abuses are orders of magnitude greater and obvious and documented for all to see. Given this latest atrocity through neglect one can only assume that the tactic from Israel is to ethnically cleanse their whole domain including the occupied territories. It takes no time or effort for Nania to issue a statement condemning this abhorrent attempt to use a pandemic to advance an agenda of ethnic cleansing. In conjuction with all the other racist Israeli policies, this is the only conclusion that can be made. We wouldn’t tolerate ethnic cleansing by any other state, let alone buy defense equipment made and tested to further a goal of ethnic cleansing, by any other state so why do we accept it from Israel? Do we have no moral backbone? The answer would appear to be yes.

  5. Once again Gaby, you are quick with ad hominem abuse (see earlier comment) but not so smart at substantiating any of your claims with evidence!

    Here are a couple of links to two sources you have relied upon in the past to support your propagandist meanderings:
    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-demolish-palestinian-coronavirus-test-centre-hebron
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-demolishes-building-palestinians-say-was-meant-to-be-covid-19-testing-canter-1.9014111

    Of course, the information you now provide and attribute to The Office for Coordination of Government Activity in the Territories is very predictable, but your comprehension skills are once again lacking as you appear to not see the hole you have fallen into. Since the IDF agency you quote will not give consents to Palestinian construction, the ‘building’ doesn’t exist in their version of the story.

    It would be interesting to see when, or if you provide your link, as searches based on your text do not evidence your quote.

    • You can nitpick all you want, atom ant, but you’ll never alter one iota the fact that you and your fellow Israel bashers on this site are died in the wool antisemites who pretend to care about an equally fake bunch of Arabs, and you will go the same way as all those who have tried to destroy the Jewish people, into a big void of ineffectual nothingness, the dustbin of history.
      “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.”

  6. Just listened to Stephen Sackur interviewing the WHO Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan. The concern over the inequities around vaccine availability and distribution between rich countries and developing countries was the focus of the interview. After making the point that the UK had vaccinated 15% of it’s citizens Stephen Sackur then stated how Israel had vaccinated 33% of it’s citizens. With the condemnation from the UN and the WTO Sackurs silence is troubling. To achieve herd immunity all peoples and that includes the Palestinians who live in the Israeli controlled West Bank and Gaza must be inoculated. This is surely a matter of medical science coupled with Israel’s obligation under Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

  7. Despite what I wrote earlier, I cannot not be interested in the criminal behaviour of Israel and the US, even if there is nothing I can do about either.

    ‘Why Always Israel? Only One Country Matters to Congress and the Media

    Philip Giraldi

    February 4, 2021

    Pandering to Israel as part of the political process in the United States has become part of the DNA of both major parties.

    The job of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations must have some kind of curse on it as it seems to attract a type of woman who seeks to prove her suitability by running up a tally of how many wars she can start and how many people she can kill. One recalls fondly Bill Clinton’s monstrous Madeleine Albright, who famously declared the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children as “worth it” due to the sanctions that Washington had imposed and enforced. And then there was Barack Obama’s darling Samantha Power, who was the spokesperson for the completely unnecessary slaughter of Syrians and Libyans to bring them democracy. And, most recently, we have had Nikki Haley, who didn’t start her own war but kept the ones ongoing during her watch on the boil while also taking on the task of being the most strident defender of Israel’s war crimes.

    And now we have Honest Joe Biden’s nominee to be the U.N. ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. She is predictably black and is a career diplomat who ended up as head of the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs. Upon retirement in 2017, she took a position, predictably, with the Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington. The Albright in the name comes from Madeleine and the Group is where many Democratic Party establishment foreign policy types wind up. Thomas-Greenfield might not be a drama queen like Nikki Haley or evil incarnate like Albright or Samantha Power, but she demonstrated in her confirmation hearing before the Senate that she knows the lines she has to speak as well as anyone in Washington.

    Thomas-Greenfield dutifully spouted the usual cant relating to the Palestinians, which means that she did not mention them at all and is completely indifferent to the gross violations of their human rights by Israel…… ‘

    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/02/04/why-always-israel-only-one-country-matters-to-congress-and-the-media/

  8. I know exactly how you feel Afewknowthetruth. Thank you for the Philip Giraldi piece, much appreciated. Kia kaha.

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