Take action this weekend against complicity with genocide

By
John Minto
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102
1673

It’s over five weeks since the October 7th attack on Israel and the launch of Israel’s genocidal rampage against the Palestinian people of Gaza. But while our political leaders have been vocal in condemning war crimes that led to the killing of Israeli civilians they have not yet breathed a single word of condemnation of Israel for the wholesale slaughter of Palestinians civilians, including over 4,600 Palestinian children.

Israel has now slaughtered the equivalent of all the children in 17 average-sized New Zealand primary schools. According to Save the Children this surpasses the number of children killed in conflict zones around the world each year since 2019.

And for all the talk of going after Hamas, Israel Defence Force spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari says in relation to the bombing of Gaza “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy”.

Genocide indeed.

But, unbelievably, outgoing PM Chris Hipkins and incoming PM Chrisopher Luxon have been deathly silent on this depraved criminal behaviour against Palestinian civilians and the whole range of Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people which include:

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  • Collective punishment of an occupied people
  • Failure to treat Palestinians civilians as “protected persons” under the Fourth Geneva Convention
  • Depriving 2.2 million Palestinians of food, water, fuel, electricity, medical supplies etc
  • Bombing and attacking schools, hospitals, ambulances and civilian infrastructure such as water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants etc
  • Bombing densely populated residential areas murdering Palestinians in their thousands (According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tonnes of explosives on the Gaza Strip since October 7, equivalent to two nuclear bombs)
  • Ethnic cleansing through forcible movement of civilian populations in Gaza
  • Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from towns and rural communities in the Occupied West Bank by heavily armed Israeli militias, supported by the Israeli army – casually killing any Palestinians that get in their way
  • Expanding illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land
  • Applying apartheid laws against all Palestinians across the entire area of historic Palestine
  • Continuing its illegal military occupation of Palestine

These are all war crimes and some, such as genocide and apartheid, are crimes against humanity.

If Russia were doing anything like this in Ukraine or a European community anywhere in the world suffered as Palestinians are suffering now our political leaders would condemn the outrages and apply immediate sanctions and accountabilities as we have done for Russia in Ukraine. Such barbarism as is being displayed by Israel today would be condemned as depraved, racist and genocidal.

But our political leaders are weak and spineless. The best they can do is repeat calls for a “humanitarian pause” (a “tea-break” in Israel’s murderous rampage) and have called on both sides to “protect human lives” – a meaningless piece of drivel in response to genocide happening before our eyes.

Luxon lamely says “we haven’t received any advice to suggest Israel is breaking international law”. Open your eyes Mr Luxon.

Refusal to condemn Israel’s political leaders for their murderous war crimes means Israel’s cowardly attacks on Palestinian civilians will continue. Israel knows its genocidal attacks come at no political cost where New Zealand is concerned. Israel knows that anti-Palestinian racism is alive and well in New Zealand’s political leadership.

Our political leaders have made New Zealand complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.

I’m proud that Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has joined with hundreds of other organisations in backing a complaint of genocide by Israel to the International Criminal Court.

Join your local rallies and marches taking place across the country this weekend. Citizens must step up where governments have failed.

102 COMMENTS

  2. If your premise is the extermination of Israel all bets are off including unfortunately the civilians that support and are supported by you. Think Isis, the Taliban, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
    If you think that’s genocide you have no historical perspective.

  3. Hamas would have been aware of the consequences of their attack .Did the people of Palestine fill the streets with people condemning the initial attack . Israel surely has the right to defend itself and break the back of those that want to see it gone .
    Thousands of civilians were killed in WW2 by bombs but the alternative was defeat by an evil power.

    • Not only was Hamas aware there would be a sharp response they and their Iranian revolutionary guard masters planned and accepted mass Palestinian casualties to drag the useful idiots in the west to do their bidding.
      This support is defacto backing for Hamas who are inextricibly linked to the Palestinians.

      • Couldn’t have said it better. Hamas were working under orders from Iran who in turn are in collusion with Russia. Well done for supporting evil guys! The Arab League do not support Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran in their aims to destroy Israel and destabilize the region. Unfortunately the issue with the PA is not just Hamas, there are many other terrorist groups that outright reject a two state solution. Palestine will be free when Palestinians choose to be free and finally agree to a solution. Sadly this will never happen and they will never form a stable state.

  4. Maybe wheel out quitter Ardern to give expert political advice on the Gaza cleansing? There is the equivalent of 200 Christchurch-call atrocities here. Or better still, anoint the war criminals Blair and Cameron as Middle East peace brokers?

  5. The emotional use of genocide and apartheid against Israel when it’s clearly not the case really exposes your willful ignorance Minto. It’s fooling noone with any intelect. Both genocide and apartheid are practiced by Hammas and their Palestinian supporters, which includes yourself. Many jews in West Bank and Gaza? Oh and how many Arabs in Israel? Exactly.

  6. Message to the many non posting readers on TDB:
    Please ignore the nasty usual suspects here supporting the IDF butchers and attend a local Palestine solidarity action, support BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) of the Apartheid state, encourage workers to implement trade bans on movement of all Israeli product, don’t buy Sodastream (instead try https://ohbubbles.co.nz/) or Israeli humus/olives etc., tell retailers you will be going elsewhere if they stock Israeli product, email your MP calling for cutting of diplomatic ties with Israel and the expulsion of their Ambassador.

      • Look up “administrative detention.”
        Israel needs to release their hostage first, and stop kidnapping them.
        THen, of course admit they are a racist settler colonial mistake; do that and we can finally move forward with 1 or 2 states.

  7. Our leaders like all Western leaders dance to the US government’s tune, who in turn, dance to big-money and corporate interests. In short, the entire western political world is captured/corrupted by big-money and corporate interests. And yet most of us inherently believe our politicians anyway, doubly so under ‘special’ circumstances. And yet we believe then anyway…granted a lot of this belief is driven by an equally corrupt mainstream (corporate) media.

    Will we learn, will we learn from this or are we all just treading water until the very same corporate-big-money driven political class turns its callous/corrupted gaze our way!

    This stark tragedy vividly displays both how easily led our politicians are therefore how callous they can easily be towards humanity!

    Learn from this.

  8. Peace activism goes both ways, and neither side seem interested in a ceasefire right now.

    Hamas is effectively using Palestinian civilians, who elected them, as human shields. After many years in “power” in Gaza, and I presume many years of planning for October 7th, Hamas have had plenty of time prepare for this and separate its militant activity from densely populated civilian areas in other places in Gaza, surely knowing that Israel’s response to their attack would be ruthless. That doesnt excuse Isreal from killing any civilians, but basing militant activity from highly populated civilian areas is a cynical and cowardly tactic that only says to me they don’t really care about the welfare of their own people who they see as cheap pawns to sacrifice towards a wider end game.

    Also the only way forward to convince Israel to adopt a ceasefire I can tell is if Hamas releases all Isreali hostages. We should all be advocating for that.

    To be clear I am not “pro Israel”. The whole situation is fucked. Just trying to demonstrate the complexity and human suffering that is brought on by both sides.

    • Israel bombs indiscriminately. As such, the term human shield has no meaning here other than to help justify Israel’s indiscriminate carnage. As for hostages, the whole point of taking hostages was to trade hostage for hostage (Israel has over 5000 Palestinian hostages rotting in their jails). Unfortunately for Hamas, this has backfired on them as holding hostages like the notion of human shields, have been turned into pretexts that allows Israel to inflict carnage upon Palestine with little, if any condemnation from the international world. And as we can see, clearly these pretexts work. Furthermore, Hamas has released hostages and offered to release more, 50 hostages in exchange for fuel supplies, an offer that Israel refused.

      Bottom line here being, these pretexts are really, really serving Israeli interests well. Talk about complexity, i reckon we are all barely scratching the surface here….

      • Look if the IDF wanted to commit genocide they could literally wipe out the Palestinians overnight with their vast military superiority. They are selectively targeting Hamas but this is made more difficult when Hamas are sheltering behind civilians which is a breach of the GRC.

        • Its genocide mate, pure and simple and I’ve provided links a little further up that points to this. You can argue the point by providing evidence to the contrary, but your opinion alone in the face of this evidence is meaningless. You have made a claim here that Hamas is breaching the GRC. Here’s an opportunity for you to prove your own point or for this point to be – hot air. Up to you.

          As for Hamas and so-called ‘selective targeting’, these are excuses that allows Israel to bomb indiscriminately and get away with it (for now). Thankfully for Israel, most of us in the West buy these excuses,aka propaganda, hook, line and sinker, then we double down on this chicanery by burying our heads in the sand to the utter destruction that every now and then, our mainstream media does actually show for a change.

          10’000+ killed already, food, supplies, utilities, water, cut off to drip-fed in. Millions being forced to flee, these are the realities verse Hamas, hostages, and human shielding. It takes one heck of a human to put the three H’s above the grim realities taking place before our eyes. Whew.

    • Google says that there are 6507 people/Sq Km in Gaze, which is about 153.7 m2 per person, by the time you take roads, agricultural land & any other land that is unavailable away there is not actually much choice for where things happen. It seems obvious that Israel has decided to destroy anything even remotely associated with Hamas basically just because they can & are using the human shield excuse to justify their actions.
      NZ has just under 20 people/Sq Km (51203 m2/person) if you want a comparison.

  9. During World War II Jewish people in Germany who were unable to flee were rounded up and murdered by the Nazis in what became known as the Holocaust. In 1948 many Palestinians were driven from their villages into neighbouring states by Zionist gangs. Those who resisted were killed. This was known as the Nakba. You do not have to research very far to find that many Israelis want another “Nakba” to completely dispossess Palestinians of their lands and to drive them out of the country or to kill them and this explains why Israelis condone the mass killings of civilians, including thousands of children, by their armed forces. But the rest of the world should not tolerate the deliberate bombing of hospitals and civilian targets, or the imposition of a cruel and inhumane siege which deprives people of essentials such as food, water, medicines and energy. International condemnation should be followed by immediate action against Israel. New Zealand should not use coalition talks as an excuse but should act now, starting with the expulsion of Israeli diplomats.

  10. The tragedy of the situation in Gaza is horrific and this is all the fault of Hamas they knew and wanted this to happen. It’s hard to have sympathy for some in Gaza when they show gleeful barbarity as dead bodies are paraded!! Hamas has stated that they will not stop until all the Jews in the WORLD are killed. What is Israel supposed to do this being the case when your neighbours have stated this. If Hamas laid down their weapons Israel wouldn’t do anything however if Israel lay down there weapons Hamas would cross through into Israel and murder the entire population of the country so I feel you’ve gotta be pretty intellectually dishonest to support these archaic barbarians.

  11. Who could have predicted cutting through the border fence and indiscriminately massacring Israeli civilians would have led to the IDF launching an invasion of Gaza?
    Hama’s did in the hope that it would inflame amongst others the woke idiots in the West who don’t know any better . . well done looks like a lot of you have taken the bait.

  12. No doubt there are economic threats at a diplomatic level preventing our leaders from saying what they really think.
    Is it just me or has propaganda gone into overdrive in the last few years? I was particularly impressed by the clip of Israeli soldiers delivering (empty?) cardboard boxes with ‘medical supplies’ printed on A4 paper stuck to the sides, they didn’t even bother printing them the right way up, a complete farce.

  13. Luxon always says only ever says it is Israel that has a right to self-defence. Never once has he ever admitted that the militarily Occupied people of Palestine have a right, as they do under international law, to defend themselves. Israeli forces in the West Bank seize and abduct minors and, when unable to capture one person in particular, take prisoner a close relative to hold as hostage. Jewish-only settlements are imposed on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank and the Israeli Army, as well as settler terrorists, have been sabotaging and plundering the Palestinian olive harvest. Population-control in the West Bank is severe.

    It is more than 50 years since the UN ordered Israeli Occupation forces to withdraw from the West Bank but Israel has not just defied UNSC Resolution 242, adopted on 22 November 1967, it has incrementally been stealing more and more Palestinian land. Zionism is working towards an eventual single state for itself. Since 2018, the United States has been contributing more than US$3.8bn a year to Israeli military forces, which are among the most powerful in the world. Israeli and US officials describe the aid as an example of the “unbreakable bond” between the two nations. The US support for Israel continues, in total disregard of the Security Council Resolution referred to above as well as Israel’s violations of countless UN human rights provisions.

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