On 5 June 1967, Israel launched its Six-Day War for territorial expansion and population-control in what was left of Palestine following the Nakba and the Zionist State’s unilateral ‘declaration of independence’. The result has been 50 years of belligerent military Occupation – the longest in modern history.
The Spanish Inquisition, claiming to combat heresy, was a brutal political device for consolidating the power of the monarchy, leading up to and following the Christian reconquest of Andalucia. Previously, the region’s Jewish population had been among the largest in Europe, growing both in numbers and professional status.
Yesterday, 15 May, marks 69 years of the Palestinian Nakba, the catastrophe imposed upon the Palestinian people by the Zionist enterprise. On this day, in particular, the Palestinian people remember the massacres of Deir Yassin and Abu Shusha, among the many crimes against humanity perpetrated in order to found the Zionist state.
Ever since the announcement of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, successive British governments have stood imperiously by it, regardless of its irrational and discriminatory purpose. They have, at different times, been either complicit in or turned a blind eye towards Zionist human rights abuses, atrocities and violations of international law.
Israel contrives apparent justification of its persecution of Palestinian children by ensuring near-100% guilty verdicts. A non-governmental organisation, Military Court Watch, monitored the treatment of more than 450 Palestinian minors held captive by the Israeli military between 2013 and 2016. The data collected revealed that 94% of those taken prisoner in 2013 and 2016 reported being painfully handcuffed. In an even more needless and terrorising abuse, 82% were blindfolded. Verbal violence was experienced by 46%.
In a Press Release on 12 April, the New Zealand First Leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, described as a…
For Jewish-only colonists in the Palestinian West Bank there are, of course, no water shortages. The average Israeli uses around 300 litres of water per person per day and settlers enjoy up to six times the amount of water than that allowed for nearby Palestinian communities.
The New Zealand Jewish Council (NZJC) has declared its opposition to the idea of new hate-crime legislation. NZJC President, Stephen Goodman, explained the Council’s position, commenting that: “Freedom of speech is much too important to restrict, unless there is also a threat of violence involved”.
“In war, truth is the first casualty”, so wrote the Greek dramatist Aeschylus around 500 BC. Experience has shown us that lies precede wars in order to facilitate them. As war rages, misleading propaganda accompanies the slaughter to render it tolerable and after, when war is won, lost or in abeyance, there are fresh lies to cover the criminal acts of the perpetrators.
While issuing statements affirming the unacceptability of Israeli settlement expansion, it has become fashionable for governments and UN institutions to also condemn what they describe as Palestinian ‘incitement’.