Attack on life-saving aid boat proves the reach of Israel’s out-of-control genocide through starvation is now global

By
John Minto
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32
514

Israel’s drone attack on the Freedom Flotilla boat ‘Conscience’ shows Israel’s genocide strategy has now gone global, according to PSNA.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa says the attack in international waters is a thoroughly predictable war crime, committed by an out-of-control Israel, intent on violence anywhere to uphold its starvation strategy for Gaza.

The ‘Conscience’ was loaded with life-saving humanitarian aid for Gaza and was attacked and disabled off the coast of Malta.

“It’s another war crime to add to Israel’s blood-soaked reputation” says PSNA Co-National Chair John Minto. “This is a cowardly attack on the best of humanity trying to get aid to more than two million desperate and starving people.”

“Israel has blocked all aid for more than two months in an attempt to starve them to death.”

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“This brazen attack in international waters shows how emboldened Israel has become by the silence of Western governments such as New Zealand.”

Minto is pointing to the UN Panel of Inquiry in 2011 on a similar Israeli attack on the Turkish aid vessel the Mavi Marmara the year before.  It was chaired by former New Zealand Prime Minster Sir Geoffrey Palmer.

Palmer found that Israel used ‘excessive and unreasonable force’ in boarding the vessel and killing ten people on board.

“But Palmer also said that Israel had conducted a ‘legitimate security measure’.  I wonder how Geoffrey Palmer feels about legitimising that action now,” Minto says.

“Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa is calling on the New Zealand government to condemn the aggression on what is an unarmed, civilian vessel in international waters.”

“When Ansar Allah (Houthis) in Yemen did this to Israeli vessels to try to stop the genocide in Gaza, New Zealand involved itself by sending military support to western countries to bomb Yemen.”

“We are not calling on the government to send military support for the bombing of Israel. However, if New Zealand really believes in the freedom of passage of unarmed vessels in international waters, it must condemn Israeli outright for this cowardly attack on the ‘Conscience’.”

 Minto says to maintain any credibility the government is also overdue and obligated to end its months long silence over other Israeli actions.

“Top of the list is Israel’s war crime use of starvation in Gaza as a weapon of war.  But the government must also condemn the Israeli army ethnic cleansing and assisting settler attacks in Occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.”

“Israel is building new illegal settlements there at an unprecedented rate.”

“Israel has also just conducted unprovoked major military assaults on Syria. Our Foreign Minister must surely know about these things, and we are at a loss to know why he says and does nothing.”

John Minto

Co-National Chair

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa

32 COMMENTS

  1. If people go to You Tube, Novara Media they can see Louis Theroux talk to Daniella Weiss and see the total evil of Israeli settlement.
    When young Weiss was a member of Lehi, the Zionist terrorist organisation that massacred Arab villagers, assassinated British officials and United Nations ambassadors. Now she and her supporters assist Jewish settlers to illegally occupy and hold land, attack remaining Arab residents.
    Israeli armed forces allowed her and a group of rabbis to visit Gaza to survey sites for Jewish resettlement in what is surely the most blatant demonstration of exactly why Israel is intent of wholesale destruction of Palestinians there( forget Hamas – Weiss clearly states the idea is to get rid of Arabs full stop).

    • Wow. Thanks for the education @ Stevie. She, or rather it, looks like she’s from the same laboratory that cooked judith collins.
      Fucking go you @ John Minto. What an amazing fellow you are. I see the now limper, limp-dick rnz’s NOT all over this.
      I was watching a beama film last night titled ‘Night Train to Lisbon’ when this statement was mentioned. ” When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty. ” AO/NZ’s own particular iteration of neoliberalism is, in fact, a literal dictatorship. We can’t close the israeli embassy here because those who could make that call are withering under a dictatorship aka neoliberalism.
      That’s quite an exciting revelation actually. Neoliberalism IS a dictatorship.
      We lot are bluntly living under a dictatorship. I like it.

  2. The lack of outcry and punishment for Israel’s illegal brutal regime against Palestine and humanitarian aid trying to reach them is not credible. Unbelievable that they got away with killing 10 people on Mavi Mamarama. Why are they able to get away with this terrorist shit every time. How come they can block humanitarian aid to Palestine and seemingly freely commit genocide through starvation, maiming and killing through execution and bombing civilians.

  3. Every accusation is a confession when it comes to Israel, trying to survive a genocide is terrorism funny how the Warsaw ghetto fighting back was ” heroic” Israel controls the narrative with its lies, 40 beheaded babies? The youngest victims were 2 twelve years olds proven to be killed by the IDF, Women raped? Despite the UN asking for evidence none has been provided. 60,000 children are suffering from starvation with 57 dead so far, there is nothing moral about Zionism.

    • Tom it was never about the hostages it is and was always about Israels final solution for the Palestinians.
      They want every single one dead.
      Hell Israel even executes its own people.

    • What the 9k languishing in inraeli jails often without trial? Lets have a serious conversation about the ” grave of numbers” where Israel holds the bodies of Palestinians for leverage. Fuck Israel….

    • The families of hostages want Netanyahu to stop the war and allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza .They know everytime Isael bombs Gaza thier is more changes of Hostages being bombed .Or starving to dealth as people are so despearate they are now eating flours with worms in it and the last remaining hospital in North Gaza has been bombed ie a Christian Hospital linked to the Anglican Church so no med supplies .Netanyahu dosent care about the hostages . He wants a never Ending war to Save his currupt Butt from being sententenced on curruption charges by the Israeli Supreme court .By the way my late mother in law was half jewish and wifes father was betrayed to the Gestopo and deported to Aushwitz dealth Camp for being jewish Not all people with Family members of Jewish descent are genocidal white supreamacist Land Sterling fanatics

      • Peter M’s comment is worth more than a put-down. Some good points there and a bit thoughtful unlike your bleat or bark, whichever you are white noise

  7. No evidence whatsoever that Israel was involved but if Israel was, I have to say not quite up there with the pagers but still brilliant.

  8. Perspective is wonderful… In 1945, the British and Americans dropped 3,900 tons of bombs on Dresden, Germany.

    The most recent estimates are that Israel has now dropped 85,000 tons of American bombs on Gaza.

    QED

    • So aside from those who the IDF have killed in close quarters combat and that number is anyone’s guess, but lets say for arguments sake around 10,000, what you are saying is that Israel has killed around 40,000 people with 85,000 tons of American bombs – ergo, two tons of bombs to kill each individual? And in some cases whole families have been supposedly wiped out in one missile strike some we could more accurately guess that it take about twenty tons of bombs to kill one Gazan. One could say that’s a long shot.

  9. America’s fingerprints are all over this one.

    After the defeat of the German and Italian imperialists in North Africa in 1943, the British Enpire was the dominant imperialist power in North Africa and the Middle East
    The thing to know about Israel, is that Israel was founded as a US backed Settler Colonial state, as a stalking horse to surplant the British Empire in the Middle East.
    The US Displaced Persons camps in the US zone of occupied Europe were opened up to Zionist recruiters. Entry into the preferred destination of most of the DPs the US, was made out of bounds. The British Empire getting wind of the plan, decided to prevent the settlers recruited by the Zionists getting to Palestine. The British imperialists interned the Zionist settlers, in prison camps in the then British colony of Cypress.
    The last gasp of the British Empire in the Middle East was the Suez Crisis, where Arab nationalists with US backing kicked the British out. The fledgling Israeli state perceiving a power vacuume invaded northern Egypt and Gaza.

    Since then the messianic Israeli state and US strategic interests in the Middle East have remained closely aligned.
    Known as the Abraham Accords, the American and Israeli project to tighten US imperialist hold of the Middle East, was about to be signed and sealed. The normalising of relations between the US backed petro states and Israel. was on track, when on October 7 Hamas attacked, and derailed the whole project.

    An appalled US and outraged Israel have been in lockstep in exterminating the Palestinian people, who are the fly in the ointment preventing their plan for aligning the Arab petro states to Israel.

    The Arab-Israeli agreements have largely survived the war, but their future will depend on broader dynamics in the Middle East and beyond.
    by Alexandre Kateb, Carnegie Middle East Center
    Published on April 25, 2025
    https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/04/the-abraham-accords-after-gaza-a-change-of-context?

    ….From the United States’ perspective, the Abraham Accords served a dual purpose of solidifying the U.S. role as regional security guarantor while bypassing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By presenting itself as a patron and guarantor of these accords, Washington also sought to counterbalance China’s rising regional influence, particularly in advanced technologies. The Joe Biden administration endorsed and tried to carry over the accords, with Saudi Arabia emerging as the focus of its expanded normalization efforts. However, this process came to a standstill after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023,….

    The close relationship between the US global empire and Israel, is shown in the attack on the aid ship Conscience. The Conscience sailing under the flag of Palau was deflagged just 7 hours before the Israeli attack.
    To deflag a ship on the open sea is unheard of, negating as it does a ship’s insurance. Palau was a US colony that on gaining its independence from the US, wrote a constitution declaring themselves to be a nuclear free country, becoming the first country in the world declare a nuclear free zone. Unfortunately for Palau huge US pressure was applied to Palau by the US to subvert the Palauan constitution and turned Palau into a huge military base for the US nuclear navy, ruled by pro-US governments.
    The Yanks call the shots in Palau.

    There can be little doubt that the US was coordinating with Israel to launch this attack, before and after. First by leaning on Palau to remove the ‘Conscience’s’ insurance cover 7 hours before the attack – and after, leaning on Malta to deny the stricken Conscience entry into Malta.

    From YouTube:

    @0:35 minutes
    …..The story doesn’t begin with what happened. [last night]
    It began way earlier.
    ….We were notified yesterday, at around 3 p.m, that we have been deflagged.
    Our vessel was traveling with the Palau flag, however they withdrew their flag due to pressure from other governments.
    Us being deflagged, we do not know why.
    All we know is that some governments had pressured Palau to take away its flag from us, and that this happened while we were in international waters. This is very unusual, and it it is not the legal way to do it. Because when you deflag a vessel while they are on a voyage in international waters, and you have an accident, none of the members on board will be insured. This is very unique.
    No reasons have been given to us.
    Seven hours later after we have been deflagged, basically two attacks on the vessel
    ….the boat had a hole in the front and now it’s catching water and the lower deck is filling up with water, so it is basically a sinking ship right now.
    The ship is still in international waters, trying toget into Malta, but there is a push back.
    ….The Maltese Coast Guard is not letting them in right now. Our vessels are not coming in, the Maltese authorities are pushing them back into international waters.
    The ship is uh at sinking mode and we are trying to understand if the Maltese government is complicit….

    Cutting the insurance on a vessel at sea and denying assistance to a stricken vessel are both illegal acts under maritime law.

    Whether or not the Maltese government are more directly complicit in this attack, the US sure is. And we as allies of the US in our silence are as well.

    Meanwhile, not that far away, the NZ Frigate Te Kaha is currently operating in the Red sea at the New Zealand tax payers expense, obstensibly to combat piracy. But this act of piracy on the high seas. and other illegal acts by the US, Israel, Palau and Malta are ignored.

    NZDF Extends Missions Around the World
    May 30, 2024

    https://www.kiwikidsnews.co.nz/new-zealand-defence-force-extends-missions-to-help-around-the-world/

    In October, there was a big conflict between Israel and Gaza. Many people were affected, and the NZDF is helping to maintain peace in the region. In Sudan, a war has created a large crisis, and many people need help.
    Defence Minister Judith Collins said that these missions show New Zealand’s commitment to making the world a safer place. Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters added that keeping peace in other parts of the world also helps keep New Zealand safe.
    The NZDF will also continue to help keep the seas safe. They will work with the Combined Maritime Forces in Bahrain until June 2026. This team fights against smuggling, piracy, and terrorism to keep trading lanes safe. Two New Zealand ships, HMNZS Te Kaha and HMNZS Te Mana, will be part of this mission for two months. A special team will also help with mine countermeasures between May 2025 and June 2026

  11. I see Israel plan a takeover of all of Gaza, this is needed and a good move by them.
    Why let Hamas regroup and attack Israel again.
    Clear the whole area, safety of Israel is their right.

  12. Kiwis at the top of the political pole are ignorant and ‘going’ feral as are most country leaders these days. In Israel, like us, they carry out the pretence of giving citizens a place and say in directing the country, through a vote. But it’s all a dance, with the steps carefully worked out. Left foot forward, then right, then trip over a fuse wire that sets the lights flashing for the winner. The dance might be accompanied by jazzy music, but the Israeli version is Jazi.

  14. According to Haaretz, completing the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza is more important to the IDF than rescuing the hostages.

    Israeli Army Places Returning Hostages at Bottom of Its Gaza War Goals, Despite Promises to Families
    Operational orders given to commanders listed defeating Hamas as the top priority in Gaza, with returning the hostages last – contradicting statements by the chief of staff and military spokesperson. Defense sources say the priorities were set by political leaders

    Yaniv Kubovich, May 8, 2025 12:30 am IDT

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-08/ty-article/.premium/israeli-army-places-returning-the-hostages-at-the-bottom-of-its-gaza-campaign-goals/00000196-ac14-dce0-abfe-ff7c57670000

    ….Despite promises made to the public and the hostage families by Israeli army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir that the return of the hostages is the top priority of the planned Gaza expansion campaign, the operational orders presented to commanders on Tuesday put that goal at the bottom of the list….

  15. Israel is over. Zero material opposition to it but it’s over. Reason and morality spews it up like the whale with Jonah.

    Taking the disgusting 1980-on plutocracy that did nothing to stop them down with it.

    Don’t bust a brain vessel over the vileness. We can’t stop the Gaza Holocaust tomorrow but it may be as soon as the next day. Hollowness bursts.

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