David Robie also blogs at Café Pacific
From my Asia Pacific Report:
About 2000 New Zealand protesters marched through the heart of Auckland city today chanting “no justice, no peace” and many other calls as they demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the Israeli atrocities in its brutal war on the besieged Palestinian enclave.
For more than 73 days, Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis with the Strip on the brink of a devastating famine.
Israel’s attacks killed more than 150 and wounded 450 in a day in a new barrage of attacks that aid workers described as “Gaza is bleeding before our eyes”.
- READ MORE: Tory MP admits he ‘got it wrong’ on Israel
- Why the wall of silence on the Gaza genocide is finally starting to crack
- 4 dead children pulled from Gaza’s rubble as Israel kills at least 54
- Other Israeli war on Gaza reports
- More images and videos of the protest
in Auckland, several Palestinian and other speakers spoke of the anguish and distress of the global Gaza community in the face of Western indifference to the suffering in a rally before the march marking the 77th anniversary of the Nakba — the “Palestinian catastrophe”.
“There are cracks opening up all around the world that haven’t been there for 77 years,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto in an inspired speech to the protesters.
“Right through the news media, journalists are up in arms against their editors and bosses all around the world.
“We’ve got politicians in Britain speaking out for the first time. Some conservative politician got standing up the other day saying, ‘I supported Israel right or wrong for 20 years, and I was wrong.’
‘The world is coming right’
“Yet a lot of the world has been wrong for 77 years, but the world is coming right. We are on the right side of history, give us a big round of applause.”
Minto was highly critical of the public broadcasters, Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand, saying they relied too heavily on a narrow range of Western sources whose credibility had been challenged and eroded over the past 19 months.
He also condemned their “proximity” news value, blaming it for news editors’ lapse of judgment on news values because Israelis “spoke English”.
Minto told the crowd that that they should be monitoring Al Jazeera for a more balanced and nuanced coverage of the war on Palestine.
His comments echoed a similar theme of a speech at the Fickling Centre in Three Kings on Thursday night and protesters followed up by picketing the NZ Voyager Media Awards last night with a light show of killed Gazan journalists beamed on the hotel venue.
About 230 Gazan journalists have been killed in the war so far, many of them allegedly targeted by the Israeli forces.
Minto said he could not remember a previous time when a New Zealand government had remained silent in the face of industrial-scale killing of civilians anywhere in the world.
“We have livestreamed genocide happening and we have our government refusing to condemn any of Israel’s war crimes,” he said.
NZ ‘refusing to condemn war crimes’
“Yet we’ve got everybody in the leadership of this government having condemned every act of Palestinian resistance yet refused to condemn the war crimes, refused to condemn the bombing of civilians, and refused to condemn the mass starvation of 2.3 million people.
“What a bunch of depraved bastards run this country. Shame on all of them.”
Palestinian speaker Samer Al Malalha spoke of the 1948 Nakba and the injustices against his people.
“Everything we were told about international law and human rights is bullshit. The only rights you have are the ones you take,” he said.
“So today we won’t stand here to plead, we are here to remind you of what happened to us. We are here to take what is ours. Today, and every day, we fight for a free Palestine.”
Nakba survivor Ghazi Dassouki is now a 90-year-old and he told a harrowing story from his homeland. As a 14-year-old boy, he and his family were driven out of Palestine during the Nakba.
He described “waking up to to the smell of gunpowder” — his home was close to the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, when Zionist militias attacked the village killing 107 people, including women and children.
‘Palestine will be free – and so will we’
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said: “What we stand for is truth, justice, peace and love.
“Palestine will be free and, in turn, so will we.”
She said only six more MPs were needed to have the numbers to have the Greens’ Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill passed in Parliament.
Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis, with the integrated food security agency IPC warning that famine could be declared any time between now and September, reports Al Jazeera.
The head of the UN Children’s Fund, Catherine Russell, said the world should be shocked by the killing of 45 children in Israeli air strikes in just two days.
Instead, the slaughter of children in Gaza is “largely met with indifference”.
“More than 1 million children in Gaza are at risk of starvation. They are deprived of food, water and medicine,” Russell wrote in a post on social media.
“Nowhere is safe for children in Gaza,” she said.
“This horror must stop.”
Famine worst level of hunger
Famine is the worst level of hunger, where people face severe food shortages, widespread malnutrition, and high levels of death due to starvation.
According to the UN’s criteria, famine is declared when:
- At least 20 percent (one-fifth) of households face extreme food shortages;
- More than 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition; and
- At least two out of every 10,000 people or four out of every 10,000 children die each day from starvation or hunger-related causes.
Famine is not just about hunger; it is the worst humanitarian emergency, indicating a complete collapse of access to food, water and the systems necessary for survival.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), since Israel’s complete blockade began on March 2, at least 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition.
Grand to hear about the movement.
Oh, every ordinary and moral person wants Israel gone.
Yep, that’s how Israel’s shit has worked out. We want you gone.
While our disgusting, useless, greedy, lazy, overpaid scam that pretends to be our governance gives no fucks. national, act, nz first and labour etc are embarrassing us all.
” As of July 2024, the prime minister’s salary is set at NZ$498,300. In addition, like all other ministers and MPs, the prime minister receives annual allowances for travel and lodging, as do the prime minister’s spouse and children. “
You would have to be tone deaf living in a bunker on a private island to be able to plead ignorance of the most inhuman and barbaric war machine on the planet thumbing it’s technologically enhanced nose at the world. No matter how many glitzy shows and sporting spectaculars, fake space trips and celebrity extravaganzas you try to hide behind, the truth is vile.
We should be aware that the “cracks” in the western media’s support for the Gaza genocide do not arise from a slow and belated moral awakening. Rather, the media is preparing to take a new position once the program of genocide is either fully accomplished, or, for one reason or another, is seen to have failed and has to be abandoned.
The media will then seek to point out that it expressed reservations, concerns and even alarm at the atrocities that took place. In other words the media is looking to exculpate itself from a genocide in which it has been knowingly and fully complicit.
Let’s not kid ourselves. The western media is not just slow, mistaken, or overly cautious. It is not just biased. It is as thoroughly evil as those who drop bombs onto hospitals and fire machine guns into schools. The journalists also need to face trial for war crimes.
Gaza disproves Israel AND the West’s regime.
” What a bunch of depraved bastards run this country. Shame on all of them ”
This government is representative of a majority of the population. They are a reflection of the real New Zealander once you get passed all the bullshit myths and propaganda. Sure there are pockets of decency and those who recognize the slaughter and deliberate genocidal crimes being committed against innocent children but that’s where it ends.
Neo liberalism has forever changed a once proud , egalitarian , independent generous people who stood against tyranny right up 1984. Minto to his credit is there to remind all of us just how much we have and been sold out.
The destruction and brainwashing of almost an entire society of people who have lost their humanity to the powers of corporate and personal greed.
Caitlin Johnstone mentioned Biden’s cancer, a commenter said can’t the cancer and him just live in peace.
Yeah, it’s either Israel or Palestine. Always has been really. The Zionists always thought that, but kept it under cover.
We live in the last few days of the species by any logical expectation, but otherwise it’s Palestine over the modern crusaders.
The so-called “cracks” in the genocide front are now revealed to have been carefully coordinated between the western powers as a form of self-exculpation. Jonathon Cook has a better perspective on this.
I’d like to know what is the fucking labour party doing. Where is Hipkins and where is Ardern?
lol, you think narcissist ardern cares about anyone except herself? youre deluded as hell
Actually, on just this point only, I agree with you 100 percent
Actually, also, I agree with you. ‘Kindness’ but not dealing with the neglected over 40 years of her party’s initiated hellscape for anyone below the top 10 %.
fake news, just more bullshit propaganda from minto
why does minto never go to gaza? hamas would do nz a huge favour.
How liberals permit genocide
Paster Neimoller gives us a clue.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out….
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out….
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out….
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out….
Paster Niemoller did not say I did not fight the Nazis
Paster Niemoller simply said, “I did not speak out”
Pater Niemoller tells us that German liberals did not speak out. They kept their silence. This silence was all the permission the Nazis needed to commit the atrociiites they did.
This is how German liberals gave their permission for the Holocaust.
Fast forward to Owen Jones condemns UK government and media silence
….British journalist Owen Jones delivered a blistering condemnation of the UK government and mainstream media, accusing them of complicity in what he described as “genocidal depravity” in Gaza…..
19,877 views May 25, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2KsApsqoxk
@0:03 minutes:
Imagine sitting through 19 months of genocidal depravity, of the worst possible crimes that can be committed against humans….
@30:42 minutes
Imagine sitting through all of that, and taking 19 months to say anything….
@2:01 Minutes:
My esteemed respected colleagues in the British media, I just want to say this to, not those who actively still cheer on this genocide who should just be considered depraved social outcasts, No I’m talking about the people who still remain silent apart from empty platitudes. What is going through your heads right now?
i think you’re becoming increasingly aware that this is one of the great crimes of our age And maybe you just think you could vanish and disappear into the background and no one will notice what you failed to do. But let’s be clear about your silence.
Throughout history every crime, every atrocity, every abomination was made possible by you You are complicit in genocide, because if you have power and influence and your government is facilitating genocide and you remain silent you are complicit in that genocide.