Media – do not self-censor – Julie’s message deserves to be heard across New Zealand
Gaza-based New Zealand journalist, Julie-Webb-Pullman, who is visiting New Zealand before returning to Gaza next month, has condemned the hypocrisy of New Zealand government policy towards Palestine/Israel.
Julie says the racist response of the New Zealand government to Israeli political assassinations and the killing of Palestinian civilians – including several children – in the last few days
“rips off the veil so quickly donned after the Christchurch mosque killings to reveal the hypocrisy at the heart of current “even-handed” New Zealand foreign policy and practice towards Palestine”.
Julie’s blog is reprinted below but can be found here on The Daily Blog.
We urge media NOT to self-censor because they fear a backlash from the radical pro-Israeli lobby.
Julie’s message deserves to be heard across New Zealand.
Julie Webb-Pullman – MFAT and Gaza: Once Were (Rainbow) Warriors
The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ tweet condemning rocket fire from Gaza, while failing to condemn the Israeli extrajudicial assassinations and civilian killings that generated Islamic Jihad’s rocket-fire response, rips off the veil so quickly donned after the Christchurch mosque killings to reveal the hypocrisy at the heart of current “even-handed” New Zealand foreign policy and practice towards Palestine.
The message of the MFAT tweet is clear – Palestinian lives do not matter to the current New Zealand government. The Gazan lives lost in the past week are somehow considered separate from the Muslim lives in Christchurch so rightly mourned and condemned throughout the country, and despite the positive PR mileage our Prime Minister garnered from around the world for her principled response to the terrorist attack by an individual.
State terrorism seems to be a different kettle of fish to this NZ government – but it wasn’t always so.
Norman Kirk’s Labour government took on the French government over atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific, not only in the International Court of Justice, but also by sending a navy frigate into the testing zone with a Cabinet Minister on board in 1973. France ceased atmospheric testing the following year.
Such warrior-like behaviour did have repercussions – in an act of state terrorism, the French government blew up Greenpeace protest ship The Rainbow Warrior in Auckland twelve years later, – but again, another New Zealand Labour government stood strong, exerted our right to an independent foreign policy even against some of our closest allies, and held France to account.
Twenty years later it was Israeli muscle most publicly and notably felt when in 2004, two Mossad agents, Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara, were caught attempting to fraudulently obtain New Zealand passports with the aid of a local Jewish man, Tony Resnick (who fled the country).
These more recent gross violations of both New Zealand sovereignty and international law were met with both anger and diplomatic sanctions by then-Prime Minister Helen Clark, and with six-month jail sentences by the courts for the two captured agents.
“Cook the man some fucking eggs”
This week, far greater violations of international law and the right to life in Gaza have instead been met in New Zealand government circles with a response reminiscent of the friends witnessing the scene in Once Were Warriors, where Jake “The Muss” brutally beats Beth, and their intimidated “friends” leave her to her fate.
It is an intimidation that almost every New Zealand broadcasting or media outlet informally reports having been subjected to by the Zionist lobby, in the form of endless vexatious, frivolous or trivial complaints designed to deter coverage of any and every Palestinian issue – let alone the attacks on potential political candidates or politicians supporting Palestinian self-determination, or criticising Israeli government policy or practice.
It is a brutality experienced daily by Palestinians going about their daily lives in the West Bank and Jerusalem, a brutality experienced weekly, if not more often, by every Gazan daring to resist.
And the scenes of terrified children cowering in the face of it are not just excerpts from a movie, but were played out in almost every Gazan home over the last three days.
With that tweet, New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has shown he has egg all over his face.
It is now up to Jacinda to be a Beth.
Show us that donning the hijab after the Christchurch mosque attacks was not just “a senseless and theatrical gimmick.”
New Zealand and the world – but especially Gaza – deserve no less.
Julie Webb-Pullman is a Gaza-based New Zealand journalist visiting New Zealand. She is returning to GAZA in December.
I think it’s pretty obvious that not only do we not have a fair and free media doing independent journalism anymore except in a few cases, but there are also numerous stories that are just plain fake from animal click bait to political propaganda to most articles being advertorials written on behalf of lobby groups.
Aka “Ping Pong the dog digs up baby buried alive” – find it very hard to believe this story especially as the dog in question has apparently only 3 legs but the picture shows four and somehow miraculously rescues the baby before it suffocates and has no harm done! Apparently another ‘world’ story was a Russian man who ate his leg to avoid dying of starvation while trapped in a cave…. also appearing in the MSM a few months ago… these are often just made up content that is so unbelievable, but published as truth, as a story that people click on it…. driving traffic…. longterm though of course nobody believes anything any more written as news.
As for the Palestine issue, it seems that Labour have pretty much sold out on that issue. But they will give out tens of thousands of NZ visas to the refugees and migrants as an ‘identity’ groups, while not actually standing up to prevent what is causing people to be displaced.
Worldwide Indian propaganda network found operating in NZ
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/11/worldwide-indian-propaganda-network-found-operating-in-nz.html
I had my personal email retained, which I gave to an Indian student I employed many years ago for just a few hours a week, show up to promote a petition to get more aged migrant into NZ!
It’s aint just China and Israel running these International propaganda campaigns and capturing data, it’s India too, and they are using data from their nationals gathered in different contexts, in other people’s countries to help run them.
Students are the worst offenders, aka my experience above employing a foreign student temporarily and the Isreali students on working visas, famously caught with multiple NZ passports!
God knows how many fake passports and identities are out there now!
Government asleep at the wheel as usual.
Jacinda found it in herself to confront Mr Jones which was great but can she do it again with Winston? If she does I’ll be loyal to the end and know that there is more to her than just pat words. This post puts the whole thing into brilliant focus. Come on Jacinda. Show us there really is substance to your words!
We have never had “free & fair” journalism in Aotearoa or likely any other place on the planet. That disgusting fact has become a lot more noticeable in the last couple of decades since the net has made it easier to counter the specious bulldust pumped out by the corporate media.
The ability to highlight media lies and distortions hasn’t of itself raised consciousness of the deceit nearly as much as the over the top histrionic reaction from established news outlets to their being challenged.
There is an interesting case in point brewing right now which kiwis should check out if only because it features a new player in the Aotearoa media market, that cess-pit of faux-left, pro- zionist, neoliberal propaganda , The Guardian who are currently seeking to bed down here in Aotearoa cuckoo style to spread their deceitful tosh.
Jonathon Steele, a former chief foreign correspondent for the Guardian who was still being published in the graun until about 12 months ago, has just published an article detailing the fraud perpetrated on the world by the allegedly independent ” Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons” a United Nations NGO which unfortunately for the world is actually an organ of the english foreign office (just as the IMF is an arm of US govt). Steele’s article details the deception which OPCW instigated over the alleged chemical weapons attack on Douma by the Syrian defence forces. A complete crock but the deception led to the usual suspects France, england America et al attacking Syria with missiles. A copy of that story can be found at https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/15/the-opcw-and-douma-chemical-weapons-watchdog-accused-of-evidence-tampering-by-its-own-inspectors/
The guardian which was at the forefront of support for “Assad is a weapons of mass destruction creep”, haven’t yet responded to these revelations by one of their senior journalists of another example of the deceitful manner that paper has been carrying water for zionism, but they will.
Typically it takes them 7-10 days to come up with a nonsense attempt to excuse their lying. That was how long it took the guardian to softshoe around the statement by another former OPCW inspector that his team had concluded that the alleged ‘chlorine bombs’ found at Douma were planted by jihadists.
The newer revelation is more serious since it implicates senior OPCW bureaucrats in deliberate deception, not something which can be dismissed as a ‘difference of opinion’.
Anyway the dreadfully clumsy natz propaganda planted by the NZ Herald pales in comparison to the systemic warmongering deceits perpetrated by the latest member of Aotearoa’s ‘media’.