Asia Pacific Report
A New Zealand journalist today praised Palestinian media workers over their “terrible sacrifice” in the Gaza genocide, a pioneer activist railed against the Israeli “terrorist state”, and a Palestinian advocate whose parents fled the 1948 Nakba paid tribute to his people’s defiance.
They were among speakers in the 162nd consecutive week in Auckland against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and Southern Lebanon.
Janfrie Wakim, a key organiser, spokesperson and former chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), said Israel was a terrorist state “from its inception — even well before . . . ”
- READ MORE: ‘Her hands are as cold as ice’: Gaza families struggle to keep warm
- Other Gaza genocide reports
“’Causing death or serious bodily harm to civilians for the purpose of intimidating a population’ is the very definition of terrorism,” she said.
From the 1930s, Zionist terrorist gangs — the Haganah, Stern, Irgun, and Palmach — had “performed heinous crimes” and those gangs were transformed into the IDF.
“Heartless brutality,” Wakim said as was evident in the movie NAZA (Colateral Damage) recently screened in Auckland and across New Zealand that showed the calculated and systematic killing of masses of civilians in Gaza. This feature film has already been setting audience records with 1.5 million people watching it in just a few weeks.
“And after the Nakba of 1948, lethal acts were carried out both within Palestine and to intimidate the indigenous people. Also terrorist acts were carried out in countries like Iraq, Egypt and Syria to scare Jewish minorities into fleeing to Israel.
“They even targeted the UN — its mediator Count Bernadotte was murdered by the LEHI gang.”
Massacres, atrocities, ethnic cleansing
Wakim said massacres, atrocities, ethnic cleansing and oppression had been recorded on an intentional, systematic scale all within 20th and 21st centuries.
“The Gaza blockade, destruction of 90 percent of the infrastructure and the health system. This was the groundwork for extermination along with deliberate mass starvation and denial of medical supplies, targeted killing of children, access to outside aid on and on and on — West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Lebanon.
“It’s not only a terrorist state, it’s a rogue state masquerading as civilised,” Wakim said.
She has had a long history in the Palestine solidarity movement, having organised monthly Saturday banners on Auckland’s Customs Street for 25 years. She was also involved in the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, supporting global initiatives like the Freedom Flotilla.
Wakim said the latest, and most deadly, Israeli attacks had claimed nearly 78,000 Palestinian lives.
- Of these, nearly 75,00 people had been killed in Gaza, the vast majority of the victims civilians;
- 50 precent were women and children;
- The World Health Organization says 94 percent of Gaza’s hospitals have been destroyed or damaged — healthocide; and
- Known deaths of journalists, humanitarian and health workers, and children were among the highest ever recorded.
“It’s a particular obscenity watching a catastrophe unfolding in Gaza right now,” Wakim said.
‘Underwater’ catastrophe
“It’s underwater. Children are shivering in wet clothes, sleeping standing up because their mattresses and blankets are soaked in floodwater mixed with raw sewage.
“Last weekend, three children and their mother were killed when a sandbank collapsed onto their tent.
“And on Thursday, Israel bombed Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the last major referral hospital still working in southern Gaza.
“Six people were killed, including a child and several patients who were waiting for operations, the surgeon who appeared in a recent doco, American Doctor, and at least 20 were wounded.
“This is a permanent, deliberate designed catastrophe.”
Palestinian activist Adnan Swaid was born in a Syrian refugee camp to parents who fled Palestine in the 1948 Nakba.
While admitting that the current situation for Palestinians was dire, he gave a message of hope, saying how hasbara — the Zionist propaganda used to justify their oppression — was failing, it was no longer being believed.
Journalist and media academic Dr David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report, paid tribute to the courage and dedication of Palestinian journalists in Gaza and their “terrible sacrifice — at least 260 have been killed bringing us the truth of the genocide”.
But their extraordinary effort to record their “daily lived genocide” was mostly ignored by the mainstream media, “especially here in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is shameful.”
However, Dr Robie said there were many journalists who “speak out against the global silence, who speak truth to power”.
One of these is Chris Hedges, a former Pulitzer Prize winner and ex-journalist of The New York Times who rebelled against the establishment media and has been publishing a wide range of independent media, including The Chris Hedges Report.
“Ironically, he is due to speak today in Los Angeles on his new book, Requiem for Gaza. Before I read from his ‘Letter to the children of Gaza’, I will quote from his message after the US midterm elections that gave us a bit of hope for the future. He said:”
“Power doesn’t rest in the Congress. It doesn’t rest in the courts. It doesn’t even rest in the imperial presidency.
“It rests in the hands of Wall Street financiers, Silicon Valley, private equity firms, the fossil fuel industry, the predatory health care and pharmaceutical giants, agribusinesses and, most of all, the war industry.
“No mainstream politician, including Bernie Sanders, dares utter a word against our entrenched militarism. If you do, you end up like Ralph Nader, who was turned into a pariah by a compliant media and our corporate-indentured political parties. Nader spoke the truth. He paid for his honesty.”
Hedges said the world was about to witness the largest increase in war spending in American history with a proposed $1.5 trillion budget.
“The average taxpayer already shells out over $4000 a year to the war industry as consumer and environmental agencies are dismantled, health care and education are defunded and programmes such as Medicaid and food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme) are slashed.”
He said the new Pentagon budget would hand over $58.5 billion to artificial intelligence and military command-and-control centers and see the effective merging of the United States and Israeli military industrial complexes.
- Chris Hedges’ “Letter to the Children of Gaza”
- Palestine Cultural Day, Sunday, November 15, 11am-4pm, Corban Estate Art Centre, 2 Mt Lebanon Way, Henderson.
