Asia Pacific Report
A pioneer of Palestine protest in Aotearoa New Zealand today warned against the IDF slaughter “obscenity” becoming accepted as normal in the world.
“It’s a particular obscenity watching a catastrophe unfold in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Lebanon and for the world to get used to it — as our government does … voices, platitudes, and no action,” said Janfrie Wakim of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
“Today we also want to remember those Palestinians who died in Shabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut — a massacre that occurred in September 1982.
“How many people remember?”
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Wakim, along with her late husband David, organised monthly Palestinian banners protests in Customs Street for 25 years and was coordinator and spokesperson for the Palestine Human Rights Campaign (PHRC) and backing “freedom flotilla” missions before PSNA was formally set up.
A former chair of PSNA, she has also long supported the global BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement in opposition to Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestine territories.
Speaking in Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square and acknowledging the protests against settler-colonialism at Takaparawha-Bastion Point in 1982 — “whose chief stands with us behind us” — Wakim gave a rundown on the Shabra and Shatila massacres that killed between 1300 and 3500 Palestinians and Lebanese Shias the same year.
Three months earlier, Israel had launched a massive invasion of Lebanon “spearheaded by the notorious defence minister Ariel Sharon who wanted to destroy the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] based there at the time”.
‘Laid siege in Beirut’
“They laid siege to the part of Beirut where the PLO was headquartered near the Shabra and Shatila camps where Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Nakba [‘the Catastrophe’] lived.
In early September 1982, a ceasefire deal had been negotiated by US President Ronald Reagan’s administration between the Lebanese Phalangist militia and the PLO, which then evacuated from Lebanon to Tunisia.
The PLO had been given written reassurance from the US that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians they were leaving behind would be safe, said Wakim.
“Known for their brutality, they murdered mostly women, children and the elderly — many were raped and mutilated.
“Israel did nothing to stop the massacre, in fact it encouraged it until the Phalangists left on September 18.
‘Truly horrifying’
“This was truly horrifying — and there was condemnation and outrage around the world. Here [in New Zealand] included. That was the time when my husband David and I became involved actively with the local PHRC.”
Wakim said that after 18 years occupying southern Lebanon, leaving 18,000 killed, Israel withdrew its military forces in 2000 but attacked again in 2006 and also in 2024.
“Today we remember that hideous event 44 years ago and the victims,” Wakim said.
“The devastating trauma that each family witnessed and has borne in subsequent decades.
“The killing continues [today] with increasing ferocity mass displacement, destruction of homes and infrastructure and war crimes as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Red Cross have proven.”
Wakim quoted from an article by the Palestinian writer and editor of The Palestine Chronicle, Dr Ramzy Baroud, on the 40th anniversary of the massacre:
“Though Israeli massacres are meant to bring an end to Palestinian resistance, instead they unwittingly fuel it.
“While Israel continues to act with impunity, Palestinians continue to resist.
“This is not just the lesson of Sabra and Shatila, but also the bigger lesson of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”
Lost opportunity for arrest
Wakim also spoke of a “crushing” opportunity lost by New Zealand in 2006 to arrest an alleged Israeli war criminal under universal jurisdiction.
“Former Israeli general and war minister Moshe Ya’alon, who faced charges of war crimes committed in Lebanon, visited New Zealand on a fundraising mission,” she said.
“Acting on a tip-off, in accordance with the principle of universal jurisdiction, and with help from a variety of legal experts, I successfully sought a private prosecution for his arrest and was delighted when a District Court judge agreed to issue a warrant for his arrest.
“Unfortunately, this reaction turned to dismay when the arrest did not proceed because the Attorney-General at the time, Michael Cullen, intervened. He quashed the warrant and allowed Ya’alon to leave the country.
“It was a crushing disappointment.”
The overall death toll of the Gaza genocide by the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) since October 2023 has risen to 73,470, with at least 174,540 wounded, according to the latest available figures.
Since the “ceasefire” last October, at least 1344 people have been killed and 4464 injured while at least 815 bodies have been recovered from the rubble, according to the Health Ministry.
Critical of UK policy
Another speaker at the rally, Barry Lee, a long-time social justice activist since the Vietnam War, condemned the weaknesses of UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s dramatic “blind eye” change in British policy towards Israel last week.
The UK announced what it called “sanctions on illegal West Bank settlements”, noted Lee.
The UK sanctions would ban settlement goods but also act against companies and individuals providing services for settlement expansion.
“Sounds great but we shouldn’t get too excited about this because as Dana Paterson’s letter in yesterday’s Herald stated its ‘too little too late’,” he said.
“But when you look at the fine print you see that this only applies to banning transactions with the so-called ‘illegal settlements’.
“This is a qualification which the Zionists, being highly skilled in devious deception, will most likely circumvent by concealing or manoeuvring so that the area of origin is concealed.”
However, this did not stop Britain from being “one of the greatest arms suppliers’ to Israel.
“And it doesn’t stop UK investment and trade with Israel which helps fuel the Zionist economy.”
Lee did acknowledge a couple of points of the new policy:
• The settlements are illegal under international law, and there has been a rise in violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank by settlers in recent months.
• That “The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists”.
Illegal settlements target
However, Miliband was careful to point out that that “the sanctions regime will target illegal settlements and settlement expansion, not Israel”.
The Foreign Secretary stated that “Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians”.
“This is pathetic. The Zionist regime has done more than ‘turn a blind eye’. Israeli soldiers have protected the so called settlers.
“And leading government figures, including Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, have stated openly that they support the settlements. He has vowed to continue establishing the settlements — illegal under international law.
Lee criticised the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) for recently passed legislation to allow the so called area E1 settlement which will effectively cut the West Bank territory in half and undermine Palestine’s quest for statehood.
“Without this official support the settlements would not happen,” Lee said.
He described the current coalition government as being “completely politically and morally degenerate”.
“Like its Western ‘friends’, it is still waffling about the so-called ‘two-state solution’. There is no two-state solution — the Israelis ruled that out decades ago.
“And it was never a solution. Israel is occupied Palestine. The only solution is a secular one state — where all ethnicities and religions live together in equality.”
Kites for freedom in Gaza
After the downtown rally, a linked Global Sumud Aotearoa Kites for Freedom in Gaza action was staged at Mission Bay Beach.
This annual event honours the 12,000 children who flew kites on the Gaza beach to set a world record for simultaneous kite flying. More children were killed in the first five months of Gaza’s genocide than took part in the record.
On August 25, an official of the US-led so-called “Board of Peace” supervising the “ceasefire” in Gaza said: “All militant activity in Gaza must stop, including the flying of kites.”
Organisers of the Mission Bay event said the Israeli military was trying to deny one of the last fun-making events by “banning” flying kites in the ruins of Gaza.
