The ugly face of Israeli apartheid and Silver Ferns collaboration

Silver Ferns – please take note:

Israeli brutality, alongside its apartheid policies against Palestinians, continued through 2020 with Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reporting:

• The demolition of 273 Palestinian homes displacing 1,006 Palestinians – including 509 children.
• The demolition of “456 structures for non-residential purposes, including vital humanitarian facilities and installations such as water and electricity networks.”
• Israeli occupation forces killed 27 Palestinians in 2020, including seven children. The human rights group investigated 16 cases of killing Palestinians in the [occupied] West Bank, and it was found that “at least 11 of them were killed without any justification, as none of them posed a threat to the lives of security force members or others, whether at the time of shooting at them or in general.”
• 248 attacks on indigenous Palestinians by racist Israeli settlers living in illegal settlements on Palestinian land including 80 incidents of destroying trees or other crops (3000 trees destroyed)
• Israeli occupation forces raided Palestinian villages and cities “at least 3,000 times and stormed no less than 2,480 homes.”
• During 2020 ” Israeli security forces set up no less than 3,524 sudden checkpoints in addition to fixed ones” in the occupied West Bank.

These statistics reveal the race hatred of Palestinians which is at the core of Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian land and this has been reflected in the views of every Israeli Prime Minster from Ben Gurion to Netanyahu.

It’s important all of us concerned for justice and human rights for Palestinians make 2021 the year the tide begins to turn in earnest in the Middle East. It didn’t happy by itself in apartheid South Africa and it won’t happy by itself in Palestine – international solidarity will be a critical factor and we can all play our part here in New Zealand.

The Silver Ferns have an important role to play – as a start by getting that immoral PUMA logo off their uniforms.