One minute of your time for Palestine!

ByJohn Minto

Yes, just one minute of your time is needed to protest the outrageous tweet from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 12 November.

What we want you to do right now:

Email the Prime Minister j.ardern@ministers.govt.nz to demand the government remove the racist tweet and condemn the political assassinations carried out by Israel which caused rockets to be launched from GAZA.

(Copy your email to Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters w.peters@ministers.govt.nz and your local member of parliament – no matter what party!)

(Copy your email to your local member of parliament – no matter what party!)

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT YOU COULD SAY:

Kia ora Ms Ardern,

I am requesting you take action to remove the racist, misleading tweet sent from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade on 26 November.

This is a particularly vile and misleading message straight from the Israel propaganda sheet.

Anyone reading the tweet would think the rockets came as an unprovoked attack against the civilian population of Israel. They did not.

The rockets were fired in response to two political assassinations conducted by Israel when it simultaneously attacked the homes of two leaders of Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Syria, killing Bahaa Abu Al Ata and his wife in their house in Gaza, and the son of Akram al-Ajjouri in the al-Ajjouri house in Damascus.

These attacks are part of interim Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s campaign to regain political power.

Whatever one thinks of the policies and actions of Islamic Jihad they are the micro issue. The macro issue is the brutal, racist behaviour of Israel which has terrorised the Palestinian population of Palestine and the wider Middle East for over 70 years.

But your government is ignoring the biggest crime and the biggest criminals and blaming Israel’s victims for the violence in GAZA. So far at least 34 Palestinians have been killed, including several children.

Why is your government condemning the firing of rockets into Israel but giving a nod and a wink when the Israeli government carries out political assassinations and then murders Palestinian children with impunity?

With this tweet you are standing with a brutal, racist oppressor and turning your back on the Palestinian victims.

We expect better from you as leader of our government.

We request you immediately remove the racist tweet and condemn the political assassinations carried out by Israeli and likewise condemn the resulting murder of Palestinian civilians.

Please respond urgently.

NAME

Another Example from Christchurch Teacher John Edmundson to the Prime Minister

Kia ora Ms Ardern,

As a teacher who had to manage a distressed group of school students in lock-down for several hours only a kilometer from the Linwood Mosque shooting, and who lost two longtime friends in the Deans Ave mosque (Haji Daoud Nabi and Junaid Ismail, whom I had known since he was 3 years old) I take the issue of Islamophobic racism very seriously. For this reason I am extremely concerned over the recent MFAT tweet condemning rocket fire into Israel. As has always been the case in the past with this conflict the death toll has been massively disproportionate and in favour of Israel, yet alarmingly, so has this government’s response. In the recent upsurge this week, no Israelis (zero) have died as a result of Palestinian actions but at least 34 Palestinians – women, children and men – have died at the hands of Israeli operatives and their lethal high tech arsenal.  Palestinians who oppose Israeli domination over their lives are meant to feel unsafe anywhere in the world and this threat is backed up with deadly force. So far this year, 98 Palestinians and 10 Israelis have been killed, a ratio of almost 1 to 10, yet it is the actions of Palestinians, an occupied and oppressed people, that is focused on in the tweet. This year’s death toll is by no means atypical. Since 2008 5523 Palestinians (561 women and over 1200 children (989 boys and 245 girls) and 237 Israelis have died.

More Palestinian girls have been killed than the entire total of Israelis. Every single one of these children had a life cut short, leaves a grieving family to try to go on living in the open prison that is Gaza, every day wondering when the next family member will be taken. All these statistics from a United Nations body.

That some Palestinians then choose to retaliate by firing largely ineffective rockets back into Israel is not the real issue here, yet it is the act that drew this MFAT tweet. In the context of the ongoing conflict in Israel/Palestine, this one-sided response is clearly racist. I find myself compelled to ask, what value does this government put on those Palestinian lives when its official agency takes such a one sided stance? When since 2008, 23 times as many Palestinian have died and our government chooses to express how “deeply concerned” it is over the desperate acts of the oppressed, I truly wonder where our humanity lies and whether we have in fact come to see Israelis as ‘like ourselves’ and Palestinians as ‘other’. It is the equivalent of having singled out an act of resistance by the ANC while remaining quiet about daily aggression by the Apartheid South African regime, a parallel made starkly clear by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Such partisan treatment of the issue of Israel/Palestine, which conforms entirely to Israel (the occupying power)’s agenda can only give succour to Islamophobia in this country and internationally, since New Zealand is seen as a world leader in this area of international relations. The Christchurch shooter will, I am sure, be delighted to learn that our government is presenting interim Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu’s perspective as our own.

Nga mihi,

John Edmundson

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16 Comments

  1. The headlines are so predictable. Everyone one from the herald to TV3 will be like there goes those Palestinians again and no one will be non the wiser. No one will ask if the Isrealis provoked the rocket attacks.

  2. I have written to the PM this is a disgrace. When are we going to have a proper public debate about our (Winstons) foreign policy around this. It is disgraceful that our policy on almost all things mirrors that of the United States. Can’t we think for ourselves, do we just have trade and endless growth as our targets, can’t we make human rights our No. 1 issue!

    1. You’re not a growth foot soldier as well are you? Infrastructure is a human right. Clean, secure drinking water is a human right.

          1. Sam making insulting comments to someone who is on the same side as you is really unhelpful. I have been an activist for 50 years, first marched against the Vietnam war and many many many protests and signing of petitions and even a couple of arrests!

  3. I have also sent an email. The Palestinians have international law on their side even when launching rockets into Israel. Israel is an invading and occupying force. All invaded and occupied people have the right to attempt to repel the invader using measures up to and including force. The remedy for Israel is very simple if the don’t like it. Withdraw the occupying army and settlers.

  4. “In the last two days of airstrikes over the open-air prison that is Gaza, where two million beleaguered people, almost half of them children, are packed and trapped, Israel has killed at least 34 Palestinians and injured more than 111. Many of the victims were children. The dead included eight members of the Sawarkah family – three adults, five kids – killed around midnight as they slept in their modest home without running water or electricity.”

    This posted three days ago in Common Dreams.

    “The retrieved bodies “were torn into pieces, and there was blood everywhere,” he said. “This is Israel targeting children inside their homes.” Then he began picking some children’s school uniforms from the rubble. “This is Mo’ath’s school uniform,” he wailed. “She was still in first grade. What did she do to be killed?”

    “On Thursday, Israel declared a tentative ceasefire. But many critics noted the false equivalence of the term – the murdered are not the murderers, the occupied are not the occupiers – given that, despite Palestinians allegedly firing 450 rockets, no Israelis were killed. And despite Israel massacring eight members of the same family in one cruel blow, if and when the current carnage ends, Palestinians will remain under siege by the same brutal powers that killed their relatives and neighbors and friends.”

    Photos at the linked article.

  5. The election will be dominated by domestic issues as it has for a century. We can not allow these unelected paranoid to scared of lefties, to scared of solo mothers and to scared of activists. We can not allow these scaredy cats to run foreign policy, WINZ ect. Foreign policy requires a greater level of intelligence of knowing the common man.

  6. All the above is sooo much hysterical bullsh-t. If the Palestinian terror organisation that rules Gaza (and remember Israel returned that land to them) were prepared to live in peace with Israel there would no need for bombings, rockets etc. The simple fact is Gaza doesn’t want peace and it happily sacrifices its people because it knows idiots like you lot will start protesting against Israel. That’s the propaganda war that’s being fought right now. Wake up !!

    1. You won’t recruit any converts to your cause by calling anyone idiots, my boy. Just because Isreal no longer assassinates Palastinian leaders does not mean they can kidnap them.

  7. The Israeli government said they acted because of plans to attack them.

    Of course the entirely predictable retaliation to the assassinations meant that the given reason by Israel was facetious.

    In reality the Israeli government risked the lives of their own citizens to strengthen the hand of Likud in coalition negotiations and or in any subsequent elections.

    Yeah the lives of Palestinians in Gaza did not really factor in as a consideration.

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