The Government’s announcement that it has designated the political wing of Hamas as a terrorist organisation right in the middle of a devastating war, has shown a lack of humanity towards thousands of Palestinians facing genocide and starvation.
Instead of any sort of recognition of the pain and terror Palestinians are experiencing, or of the views of most people who are horrified by what they are seeing in Gaza, the Government has given us all a slap across the face.
Following the recent provisional rulings by the International Court of Justice New Zealand should have been promoting peace and doing everything diplomatically and politically to prevent the genocide and the mass murder of the population in Gaza. Not joining a hypocritical western coalition that is bombing Yemen while offering no sanctions or condemnation against Israel.
Instead, they have offered the tokenistic banning a few settlers from travelling to New Zealand – something settlers would not even do – without even detailing how many. If recent announcements from Australia and the UK are anything to go by it will be four, a ridiculous platitude that has no meaning or relevance.
If you go after Hamas, you need to go after Israel’s political and military wings also. The banning of a handful of settlers does not change the humanitarian crisis, stop the settlements, or balance the legislative ruling against the administrative wing of Hamas. It does not provide any hint of integrity or leadership and has eroded an already decaying trust within the community.
This coalition is too busy running eagerly behind the bloody coat tails of the US, the UK and Israel, rather than forming its own independent and balanced foreign policy.
Citing Israeli sources over Palestinian sources, the government has throughout this crisis conflated and confused international law and left out vital pieces of information and historical context, such as the decades long illegal occupation, apartheid, civilian massacres, Israel’s role in killing its own civilians on October 7th. Instead, it has peddled out misleading statements such as “Israel has the right to self-defence” over a territory that it occupies and has laid siege since 2005.
Erica Stanford has made it clear to the Palestinian community that her decision to deny special visas and save lives during a time when third party states are obliged to do so, is not based on international humanitarian law, but on politics. In other words, she does not want to. This can only be read as racist and prejudice.
There has been no mention about the prolonged illegal military occupation of Palestine, and the pervasive violations of international humanitarian law in occupied Palestine. Nor have we heard about the genocide itself, the mass killing and targeting of civilians, hospitals, churches and schools, the use of white phosphorus, the decimation of over 60% of housing and infrastructure, the sexual abuse of Palestinian girls and women, the torture and illegal kidnapping of Palestinians including children who are thrown in Israeli military prisons without trial and experience inhumane violations contrary to international law. Israeli hostages seem to matter more.
According to Save the Children, Gaza faces a mass killing of children. Ninety percent of children are suffering infectious disease in Gaza and the situation is getting worse. UN agencies have said that 1 in 4 people are on the brink of famine – around 600,000 Palestinians. But to our Government, banning Hamas and appeasing the US and Israel is the only objective.
Only ninety-eight aid trucks per day can currently get into Gaza, and then only to the south. Before the so-called war it was 500, half the amount Palestinians needed but Israel would not let them in. Children are starving to death. Six have died from starvation in the last few hours alone.
What is needed is not a terrorist designation, but a ceasefire to save lives.
Instead of worrying about Hamas, the government should have been focusing its efforts working towards a lasting peace, and sending a clear message to a country that is violating international law, that is massacring thousands of civilians in a war that has been labelled a ‘war against children’ that ITS crimes are considered worthy of the designation of terrorism.
Words, actions, and narratives matter, because they shape the way the public perceives a group of people not only living overseas but those that live on your back doorstep. The Government’s inability to equally attribute human rights laws and international law fairly to both Israel and Palestine, their lack of sanctions and accountability levelled at Israel has seen a huge rise in Anti-Arab sentiment, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian and anti-indigenous racism.
They are aware of these concerns of a rise in violence and hate speech the community is experiencing. They are aware of Palestinians’ concerns for national security and social cohesion. So, in the wake of this designation, they would be aware of the dangerous attribution of the word “terrorist” to all Palestinians. This is a term that has been used by Israel to de-humanise Palestinians for decades, the term has a long history of prejudice and racism and has just been legitimized by this designation.
So, the question that the Government has failed to answer, is what was the point of the designation? How is it in the country’s national interest, how does it support its foreign policy, or most importantly help the plight of Palestinians. One thing that is clear, this is a breach of New Zealand’s international obligations to support self-determination and prevent genocide. Blood is on this country’s hands.
Katrina is a Palestinian New Zealander and Activist
The terrorists are right here in NZ running the country on a path of self destruction .Wake up NZ you voted in a government of hate
If you are confusing a democratically elected sovereign government with a bunch of terrorists you need help.
Yes, Hamas are a democratically elected government, the zionist puppet Luxon is a terrorist who works for a foreign power.
Exactly far right white supremacist are running the country that dont give a damn about anything other than raising money for corporate landlords and the 1% and bowing down before the ATLAS network and zionists interests.
Yes, Gordon this is a vindicative shallow nasty, we know best government. Our PM is weak, and his Ministers are already showing they actually don’t give a fuck about us and after listening to Melissa Lee she actually does not care about people losing their jobs it’s like water of a ducks back.
Well, goodbye that little country that stood aside when the US clicked it’s fingers. That at least gave pause before simping for the big dog. But then again, NaCT -NZ don’t even seem to give a crap about hungry children here….
Hungry children in New Zealand is legacy Labour Government.
Since 1984 and thanks to the traitor douglas, Labour has been National Lite. So actually it was, and still is,a national party ‘legacy’ to leave behind it a trail of hungry, broken hearted and despairing kids not to mention the stain that’s undeserved wealth sequestered by a few true blue cronies who take our money then give it to themselves.
For the last forty years it’s been National all the way. There was never a Labour party, only national wearing labours skin. So that makes you either grossly mistaken bob or a liar. I’d go with liar. Are you a liar bob? If you’re a liar, bob, you should find someone clever enough to carry it off because that’s not you Bob.
Bob? Are you there? Bob?
Thanks for your clear article giving a true description of the situation. I felt sick when I heard the news that NZ had designated all of Hamas a terrorist organisation although it did not surprise me. Then the simpletons in power have the gall to claim that banning a few settlers is equivalent to the ban while ignoring the wholesale destruction in Gaza and the unnecessary murder of over 30000 people. As I’m writing this I hear some lowlife from the Israel lobby saying how good the government is, I felt like throwing the radio out the window.
I can remember how, in 2006 Jimmy Carter said that Hamas won a free and fair election. Carter wrote Peace not Apartheid I read it at the time but we don’t have that book now.
But we do have Chomsky’s 2016 book Who Rules the World?, which I have been rereading.
He wrote that Israel and the US have been determined since the 2006 election to punish the people of Gaza for voting the wrong way.
“The crime of the Palestinians in January 2006 was punished at once”
A useful article is at
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/why-the-u-s-must-engage-hamas-politically/
So which war with Hamas was started by Israel, Lois? Delusional as ever, rooting for the jihadist genocidists.
the cruel strangling siege imposed in 2007
You mean the legal blockade, Lois, to stop genocidal Hamas acquiring weapons from their terrorist sponsors, Iran? The blockade supported by Egypt who currently refuse to take any Palestinian refugees…for obvious reasons.
There’s something delicious in bathing in the impotent tears of Gaby and his ilk, forever Genocide apologists. To get a measure of a person you must first listen to what they say but more importantly what they don’t say and then you can determine what category they fit in its usually intelligent, informed and empathetic or as I like to call it TAPS short for Thick As Pig Shite.
If you deny the true facts, finngrinn, as you do, you are indeed thick as pig shit. Provide facts to contradict me instead of burbling nonsense and slinging excrement.
In the current context the decision to designate the Hamas political wing as a terrorist organization is the Realm of New Zealand’s way of tacitly indicating that it does not stand for a political solution to the conflict in Palestine, that it opposes the formation of a Palestinian state, and endorses the Gaza genocide. It knows that the United States of America and the State of Israel will hear that message loud and clear, while hoping that the people of Aotearoa will not.
New Zealand’s political and military support for the Gaza genocide is a natural consequence of having successfully maintained a colonialist regime from the time when a New Zealand Premier, Sir Julius Vogel, openly contemplated his own war of extermination against Maori. Genocide is in the very bones of the regime. Atrocity lies at its evil heart. The regime itself must be exterminated.
You know as well as I do that you cannot do that under the Palestinian flag. You cannot do it while you identify as “European New Zealander” or “Palestinian New Zealander”. You can only do it when you come to identify as tangata motu, and if you are to have any flag it is only under the flags of Rangatiratanga and te Whakaminenga that you will be able to overthrow the genocidal colonialist system.
There is something to be said in favour of Hamas. Unlike the New Zealand government, it has the fortitude to take a stand against an occupying power. It has the courage to face overwhelming odds, to fight and die for its own people. It has also served them well in the administration of civil society. The contrast with our own colonialist rulers could not be more stark. They cower before the military and economic power of the United States of America. They bully smaller nations on the orders of their imperial masters. They have set up a corrupt narco-state ruled by tobacco and liquor companies. They have traded their peoples birthright for a mess of pottage. They are now committing genocide against the people of Palestine whose only defender is Hamas. Who are the terrorists here, and who are the corrupt of the earth?
“served them well”…what planet are you on? Hundreds of them are dead, others starving, and Gaza is rubble as a result of Hamas’s vile terrorism. Surreal.
In Gaby’s surreal world, Hamas destroyed half of Gaza, killed 30,000 with aerial bombardment and shelling from the land and sea, cut off supplies of food and medicine to the population and drove them into a small pocket of land where the final solution is to be effected. In a surreal world, the Jews were responsible for the Holocaust.
In GF’s surreal world, Hamas are infantilised and cleared of any responsibility for starting the war with their sadistic pogrom and now suffering the consequences. Look up ’cause and effect’, GF.
I don’t know if Hamas considered consequences when planning the October attack. It is possible that they did not. In certain situations, such as that facing Hamas and the people of Gaza prior to 7 October, it is sometimes the case that the most rational behavior is to act regardless of the possible consequences. It is also true that consequences are often at odds with everyone’s expectations. In war and in politics, cause and effect, actions and consequences are not so simple and direct as the pro-Israel lobby pretend or would like to believe. People often (almost half the time) lose wars that they expected to win, and occasionally people win when they and every objective observer fully expected a resounding defeat.
Has the State of Israel thought through the consequences of the Gaza genocide? Unlike Hamas in the case of the October attack, they would say that they have, but their problem is that they have let their generals do the thinking rather than their philosophers. They fail to see the counter-intuitive truth that it would be better for Israel to lose its war against Hamas, because if Israel achieves its war aims through the extermination of the people of Gaza the State of Israel itself will be doomed.
For better or worse, Hamas should accept that they cannot win militarily and if not defeated already, they soon will be. They should surrender, lay down their weapons, and release all remaining hostages so that Gaza is no longer a war zone and aid can be safely provided without endangering civilians.
Their struggle can continue in some other form but they should accept defeat to save innocent lives.
History clearly shows non resistance to an occupying power is futile, History also shows the Worlds first documented case of terrorism was by the Israelite’s against the Romans as evidenced in the Bible and Torah. How much longer are the Palestinians expected to sit by while the clearly racist state of Israel humiliates them and steals land for their future state promised to them by the West? Reality and logic dictate that what Israel has been slowly doing for the last 75 years is ethnic cleansing by stealth clearly documented by past statements from Israeli prime ministers since as early as 1947.
Non resistance to an occupying power is futile. Golly, are we about to see the indigenous people of southern Cyprus take up arms against the Turk invaders?
The problem for Hamas is that if they surrender Israel will still want to remove the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, and that will be through a combination of killing and starvation. Unlike Maori, who were offered a peace which allowed them to retain a small proportion of their lands and a degree of protection under the law, the Palestinians are being offered nothing but settler death squads. So surrender is not an option for Hamas.