Back South Africa over genocide case, ‘don’t yield to pressure’, Hania tells NZ
David Robie also blogs at Café Pacific
A Palestinian advocate has appealed to the New Zealand government to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to back the South African genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
“A sovereign state like New Zealand that has historically stood for what is morally correct must not bend to foreign pressure, and must reject policies aligned with the United Kingdom of Israel and the United States of Israel which blindly endorse and support the apartheid regime,” said Billy Hania of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
He was speaking at the pro-Palestinian rally and march in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau on Sunday as the Gaza death toll rose above 25,000 dead, mostly women and children.
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Belgium is among the latest of 61 countries — and the first European nation — to support the genocide case and a growing number of other lawsuits are also being brought against Israel.
Chile and Mexico have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate crimes against civilians in the war and Indonesia has filed a new lawsuit in the ICJ against Israel for its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.
Swiss prosecutors have also confirmed that a “crimes against humanity” case has been filed against Israeli President Isaac Herzog during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. No further details were given.
“The Zionist project is failing in Palestine — the apartheid entity with 75 years of colonial terror has achieved nothing for the Jewish people, oppressing and killing Palestinians through a violent settler colonial approach,” Hania said.
“Mass killing of Palestinians will achieve nothing for the Jewish people. Without respect for Palestinian rights and respect for life in Palestine, there will be no peace period.”
‘One holocaust not enough?’
Constrasting the shrinking support for Israel with massive citizen protests “in their millions” taking place around the world, Hania criticised Germany’s intervention in the genocide case supporting Tel Aviv while also planning to provide 10,000 tank munitions to “the apartheid regime with which to massacre Palestinians — as if one holocaust was not enough”.
“We are calling on the New Zealand government to support the South African ICJ case in addition to supporting the recent Chile-Mexico ICC war crimes initiative. This initiative is technically important with Israel being a signatory to the ICC,” Hania said.
He also thanked Indonesia for its legal initiative.
“More than 100 days of targeting Palestinian civilians and civilian infrastructure to exterminate Palestinian life is committing genocide, the crime of all crimes and with total impunity,” Hania said.
“More than 60,000 tons of explosives dropped over Gaza in 100 days equals three nuclear bombs, more than the infamous nuclear tragedy on Japan that led to its immediate surrender. It’s fundamentally different for Gaza as surrendering does not exist in Palestine vocabulary.”
He said the more than 100 Israel hostages would remain in Gaza until the “thousands of Palestinian hostages are freed”.
“The Gaza siege must end, West Bank Israeli settler extremist violence must end, there must be respect for worshippers and Muslim religious sites attacks by Israeli extremists is well documented and must end.”
24 massacres cited
Hania stressed that the current war did not start on October 7 with the deadly Hamas resistance movement attack on southern Israel as claimed by the Israeli government.
He cited a list of 24 massacres of Palestinians by Zionist militia that began at Haifa in 1937 and Jerusalem the same year, including the Nakba – “the Catastrophe” — in 1948 when 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes and lands with the destruction of towns and villages.
Hania also referred to a recent New York Times article that warned Israel was in a strategic bind over its failed military policies, saying Israel’s objectives were “mutually incompatible”.
“Israel’s limited progress in dismantling Hamas has raised doubts within the military’s high command about the near-term feasibility of achieving the country’s principal wartime objectives: eradicating Hamas and also liberating the Israeli hostages still in Gaza,” wrote the authors Ronen Bergman and Patrick Kingsley.
Israel had established control over a smaller part of Gaza at this stage of the war than originally envisaged in battle plans from the start of the invasion, which were reviewed by The Times.
Citing Dr Andreas Krieg, a war analyst at King’s College London, from the article, Hania quoted:
“It’s not an environment where you can free hostages.
“It is an unwinnable war.
“Most of the time when you are in an unwinnable war, you realise that at some point — and you withdraw.
“And they didn’t.”
Republished from Asia Pacific Report.
The South African Government that is accusing Israel of genocide in the International Court of Justice is indeed the same government that since the 1990s has betrayed the mass struggle against Apartheid that inspired people around the world in the decades before 1994. But that is not in itself an argument against its case, which has to be judged on its own merits.
A close study of the proceedings in the Hague, which are readily available on YouTube or elsewhere on the internet, can be very educational. Read South Africa’s 84-page application, listen to the addresses of its advocates Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, Adila Hassim and Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh. But also pay attention to Israel’s defence case, presented by Malcolm Shaw, Tal Becker and Galit Raguan.
In my opinion any objective evaluation of this material will conclude that South Africa’s case is spurious.
Terry Coggan talks about betrayal of “the mass struggle against Apartheid that inspired people around the world in the decades before 1994” but omits to mention that the State of Israel was an exception. Israel gave extensive military support to South African apartheid regime, even to the extent of helping it develop a nuclear bomb, while the apartheid regime assisted Israel in testing its own nuclear weapons. “The military leadership of both countries was convinced that both nations faced a fundamentally similar predicament, fighting for their survival against the common enemy of the PLO and the ANC. Within less than a decade, South Africa would be one of Israel’s closest military and economic allies, whilst Israel would occupy the position of South Africa’s closest military ally, and Israel had become the most important foreign arms supplier to the South African Defence Force.” The apartheid leader Hendrik Verwoerd approvingly declared “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state”. Given the cynical criminal association between the State of Israel and the apartheid regime in South Africa it is disingenuous of Terry Coggan, as an apologist for the system of Jewish racial supremacy in Israel, to accuse the new non-racial government of South Africa of having “betrayed the mass struggle against Apartheid”.
Good to see Winston Peters pull back from New Zealand’s fulsome support of Netanyahu.
However, it’s time New Zealand stopped playing the game of a ‘two-state solution’, and recognised that with 700,000 Zionist settlers now living in the West Bank, the only possible solution is a unitary state of Palestine-Israel from the River to the Sea, with equal rights for all its inhabitants.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/peace-needed-now-more-than-ever-winston-peters-speaks-out-at-remarks-by-israeli-prime-minister/CJIDTEJIJFAP3PXL4UJQDVR2UA/
Well, fuck me. I withdraw that cautious praise, Winston.
New Zealand has acceded to US pressure and is sending a token handful of militars to help bomb the Houthis. It has joined the usual Anglophone lackeys of US imperialism, Britain, Australia, and Canada. The Infamous Five.
‘Speaking at today’s post-Cabinet media conference, Defence Minister Judith Collins said NZDF personnel would help with “precision attacks”. “Our personnel will support coalition forces in carrying out precision attacks on identified military targets. They will be at operational headquarters in the wider Middle East region and elsewhere,” she said. “They’ll be there to provide precision targeting. They’re not there to be involved in combat.”‘
As far as the Houthis are concerned New Zealand will now be the enemy, part of the US war machine, and by extension, an ally of Israel in its war on the Palestinians in Gaza (and less obviously, its war of attrition against the Palestinians in the West Bank).
How disappointing. How dishonourable.
The Houthis have been clear that their actions against shipping in the Red Sea are a response to Israel’s murderous adventure in Gaza. Hamas has offered to return all hostages if Israel ceases hostilities, withdraws from Gaza, and returns to the political status quo ante. After killing 25,000 Palestinians, and more every day, Israel refuses to stop, and says its war will continue for months.
New Zealand’s clear duty is to demand Israel cease hostilities, withdraw from Gaza, and end its illegal occupation of the West Bank and encirclement of Gaza. That would end the Houthis’ actions in the Red Sea.
Instead, New Zealand has joined the ranks of the defenders of Zionist colonialism, thereby making itself a target for the Houthis, and all others who seek justice for the Palestinians.
Israel will use its nuclear weapons before submitting to that solution.
Confirming theirs (and your) racist genocidal intent.
Hopefully before Iran uses theirs.