Sorry Nanaia – your tweet doesn’t cut the mustard

By
John Minto
-
54
2402

Sorry Nanaia – your tweet doesn’t cut the mustard – it addresses the symptoms but not the cause of violence in the Middle East.

After more than six months of silence the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta, yesterday finally tweeted on Israel’s increasing violence towards Palestinians in Jerusalem and Gaza.

It was a tweet which focused on the symptoms rather than the problem which is Israel’s racist, apartheid policies and unbridled brutality against Palestinians.

In the past five days more than 700 Palestinians have been injured (almost 500 needing hospital treatment) and dozens killed in Gaza – including 10 children – as Israel bombs the densely populated area.

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The tweet did call for Israel to cease “demolitions and evictions” (Israel’s ethnic cleansing policies) which is welcomed, but it did not demand Israel abide by international law and United Nations resolutions.”

“Making this demand of Israel should be the top of the government’s agenda”

For example the government must:

•       Demand the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land (UN
Security Council resolution 242)
•       Demand the right of return for Palestinian refugees expelled by
Israeli militias (UN General Assembly resolution 194 – reaffirmed every
year since 1949)
•       Demand the end of the more than 65 laws discriminating against
Palestinian Israelis (illegal under the crime of Apartheid as defined by
the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court)
•       Demand Israel stop building Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian
land (UN Security Council resolution 2334 which was co-sponsored by New
Zealand under John Key’s National government) These settlements are
illegal under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and a
war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The government must back up these demands with sanctions against Israel till it ends its denial of Palestinian human rights.

54 COMMENTS

  1. I think the comment is fine.

    1. This had its beginning in the policy of demolition of property and or eviction of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

    2. And it also calls for not taking actions inconsistent with a two state solution – as you note we went there with 2334 – and this also covers actions against Palestinian businesses in Hebron and the arrest and imprisonment of people protesting theft of Arab village land (such as Ahed Tamimi).

    Expecting them to take a position on right of return and occupation sans a settlement is expecting a little much.

    • I think the uptick in apartheid hate has Trumpian beginnings. The settlement vicious circle is real – and needs to be kick started with international conference (given frozen SC). Why can’t we call for that?

    • Why not. Its their homeland unless you prefer to bow to illegal criminality and murder.
      Palestine has been over run and nearly destroyed by the Israeli war machine. Yemen next then Syria with a go at Iran when it can get enough US support.

      Israel has no credibility after its concerted stealing land and resources while murdering victims trying to defend their homes and families..

  2. ‘Call for’ is the language of do-nothing political cowardice, and is a phrase that has been so overused in recent decades it has no meaning.

    ‘Demand’ is a word with meaning and force. So is ‘require’.

    I’m going to call for my local council to not increase rates by 9%.

    “Sorry, can’t hear you.”

  3. The government should stop talking about a 2-state solution, and instead call a spade a spade. Israel , including Gaza, is one State..a rogue State that defies international laws and resolutions with impunity and should be shunned.

    Is there no ‘red line’?

    Is there any other country that allows its forces to invade a mosque?

    Even more disturbing , is that the mosque being invaded is the 3rd holiest mosque in the world..and it was during the holy month of Ramadan when people were praying.

    Where is our commitment to humanity?

  4. Tangatawhenua of Palestine are being ethnically persecuted in full view of the whole wide world…..
    Minister Mahuta is like “nothing to see here”. I’m disgusted!

  5. I call on our PM to address the underlying cause and substantive issue of illegal occupation,
    and the self-granted exceptionalism from international law by both Israel and its military backer, the US. NOW.

    The neglect by this government, and NZ media, of April’s thoroughly evidenced 213-page report by the
    globally-respected Human Rights Watch is revealing.

    More revealing is why both dysfunctional democracies are in-denial about the apartheid hate that has increased exponentially over Ramadan, but happening all over Israel-Palestine since Trump gave permission
    for its supremacy roots.

    Since Israeli chief archivist Yaacov Lukowicz blew the whistle over the 95 % of 1946-48 archives still suppressed, we know the reasons why Israelis must be in-denial about the full horrors of their foundational history.

    This cannot be megaphoned enough to every world leader. No wonder there is not change possible within the country, from left or right. An ignorant, propagandised population fulfils all the conditions for the defensive, self-exonerating ‘laager’-mentality state that the civilised world finally realised in 1980s could only be awoken from its ignorance and arrogance by sanctions. Educate yourself, Prime minister, then call our foreign minister to action. Call for international conference, land-settlement tribunal, demand US make quid-pro-quo for military aid to ceasing occupation land-grabs. We need to achieve outrage over worsening effects of crime of apartheid NOW.

  6. I watched a Break Through News video on You Tube this morning dated May 11th between the host Rania Khalek and the Israeli investigative journalist David Sheen.
    Obviously the interview took place before the latest attacks but the discussion around the influence of far right political parties on Israelis especially the young was disturbing.
    According to David Sheen hate speech against Palestinians which has been normalised dominates the Israeli community.
    The two state solution has been off the table for literally decades. The 700,000+(and growing) Israeli settlers will never move from their illegal settlements.
    Unfortunately the future for the Palestinians looks bleak while the governments of the world lurch to the right and the US and their allies destabilise countries that wont toe the line using well rehearsed propaganda.

  8. The grip that bankers have on western governments prevents their moral outrage being expressed. Who own the banks and news outlets.
    Same crowd that has pumps out pro israeli propaganda in many films and TV shows.
    Why shouldn’t the chosen people rule the West and the rest.
    The sick inhuman rhetoric spewed out from israel has deeply infected the people of that rogue state.
    Muslim Mosque is set of fire and thousands wearing yamagas cheer and dance.
    Mentally sick people. Mass hysteria based on irrational hate and fear of others as many cowards are.
    The psychological damage now widely evident in israel is not found in many places in the world where israeli money and power do not translate into group hatred.

    When a Jewish place of worship caught fire a while back Arabs who could not help watched with sympathy. These people just naturally showed what humanity is.

  9. Personally i will never condemn Israel or Jews taking care of their own, we all have very short memories

    • What, you mean because the holocaust happened as much of the world watched on, it is okay for Jews – from all around the world – to descend on to someone else’s land. What is that about. Do we still believe this is okay. There are 20 million Jews in the world. Are you suggesting that these people are not cared for by their communities in the many countries that they live in.

      The holocaust was appalling, no one should have to go through such things, remember the disabled and homosexuals were a part of what the Nazis did also.

      So because your people were persecuted you then in some sort of weird revenge over many years you persecute another group of people

      OUTRAGEOUS!

    • And who would condemn Palestinians taking care of their own? They were not responsible for the holocaust, never consented to lines drawn on paper in England and never agreed to being deprived of their property or basic human rights!

  11. Some of the media have described the Israelis as Palestinian ‘neighbours’ rather than their armed prison guards, while also suggesting the Palestinians somehow had it coming for using children as ‘human shields’. Surely war crimes here, at the least.

  12. For many years anyone going into the occupied territories came out saying they’d seen apartheid– separate roads for Jews and Palestinians, crippling checkpoints for Palestinians, township areas to which Palestinians were confined and moved. “Apartheid on steroids,” the former chancellor of Brown University said in 2011. “Worse” than apartheid South Africa, a South African told me in 2006.

    Now Human Rights Watch has joined the chorus with a bombshell 213-page deeply-documented report alleging the crimes of “apartheid and persecution” that has excited the rage of the rightwing Israel lobby and of course no substantive rebuttal.

    But it’s been known on the left so long, why now? The answer is essentially political. For years, Human Rights Watch bent over backwards to give Israel the benefit of the doubt: that it intended to get out of the persecution business. But stark political events in the last few years, the disavowal of a Palestinian state by Israeli leaders, and the passage of the racist Nation State law in 2018, cast the die. HRW began compiling this report in the months after that law was passed, granting Jews the exclusive right of self-determination in the “land of Israel” and derogating Palestinian land and language rights.

    The report’s author Omar Shakir told Arno Rosenfeld of the Forward that the key element of the finding was not showing the many inhumane acts against Palestinians, or the systematic oppression of Palestinians — but the Israeli government’s “intent to dominate” Palestinians.

    While many of the abuses go back many years, there was long a debate about whether Israeli leaders had the intent to dominate Palestinians… In the 1990s and in the 2000s there was hope and a sense among many that maybe there would be a political resolution to this situation that would lead to and end to the systematic repression that takes place… Israeli government officials would publicly say… this is temporary. That’s how they justified settlements in the [Israeli] Supreme Court.

    What’s changed in the last four or five years…. Israeli officials now openly proclaim their intent to rule over the West Bank in perpetuity and treat Palestinians there as subjects.

    Secondly we have seen the massive expansion of settlements and the connection of settlements with Israel proper.

    Third, we saw the passage of the Nation State Law, which… codified as a constitutional value the idea that one group of people on the ground had rights denied to the other.

    When we put all those things together, it became impossible to say that there was not a clear intent to dominate.

    https://mondoweiss.net/2021/05/israel-cast-its-fate-apartheid-with-nation-state-law-and-dismissal-of-palestinian-state-says-human-rights-watch/

  13. To Nedina Hohaia, I agree with your comment. We cannot stay silent while Israel once again commits genocide against unarmed civilians in Gaza – which is essentially the Worlds largest open air prison. The prisoners are rebelling against half a century of injustice, deprivation of human rights, harrassment and humiliation, so once again their solution is to simply carpet bomb the prison. In full sight of the entire World. I can’t understand how they keep repeatedly getting away with such blatant war crimes with impunity. It is time for the whole world to stand together and demand that their governments take immediate action. Israeli embassies should be closed down all around the World. And the Boycott, Divest and Sanction campaign implemented fully until Netanyahu and the Israeli government stops this appalling behaviour.

  14. So Sam is a dead Jew eh? You really are a master of the language aren’t you Gaby dear, or is it dare?

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