Protesters at the Aotearoa New Zealand’s weekly “free Palestine” rallies today gave a tribute to poet Mahmoud Darwish — the “liberation voice of Palestine” — and marked the sixth anniversary of the Christchurch mosque massacre when a lone terrorist gunned down 51 people at Friday prayers.

Organisers thanked the crowd for attending the rally in what has become known as “Palestine Corner” in the downtown Komititanga Square in the heart of Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau in the 75th week of protests.

This was one of more than 20 Palestinian solidarity events happening across the motu this weekend.

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The organisers, of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), said the rallies would continue until there was a “permanent ceasefire through Palestine” — Gaza, East Jerusalem and occupied West Bank and for a just political outcome for a sovereign Palestinian state.

The poet, writer and activist Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was born on 15 March 1941 in the small Palestinian Arab and Christian village of al-Birwa, east of Acre, in what is now western Galilee in the state of Israel after the attacks by Israeli militia during the Nakba.

He published his first book of poetry, Asafir Bila Ajniha (“Birds Without Wings”), at the age of 19. Over his writing career, he published more than 30 volumes of poetry and eight books of prose.

By 1981, at the age of 40, he was editor of Al-Jadid, Al Fajir, Shu’un Filisiniyya and Al-Karmel.

He won many awards and his work about the “loss of Palestine” has been translated and published in 20 languages.

Darwish is credited with helping forge a “Palestinian consciousness” and resistance to Israeli military rule after the 1967 Six-Day War.

Several speakers read poetry by Darwish or their own poems dedicated to Palestine, including Kaaka Tarau (“Identity Card”), Chris Sullivan (“To My Mother”), Jax Taylor (own poem), Besma (own poem), Audrey (“I am There”), Achmat Eesau (“I Love You More”), and Veih Taylor (“Rita and the Rifle”).

Journalist David Robie provided a short introduction to Darwish’s life and works, and he also spoke about the arrest of former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte this week who is now in a cell in The Hague awaiting trial on International Criminal Court (ICC) charges of crimes against humanity over the extrajudicial killings of Filipinos during the so-called “war against drugs”.

“This arrest is really significant as it gives us hope,” he said.

“Although the wheels of justice might seem to move slowly, the arrest of Duterte gives us hope that one day the ICC arrest warrants issued last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant will eventually be served, and they will be detained and face trials in The Hague.”

South African-born teacher and activist Achmat Eesau reminded the crowd of the significance of the date — March 15, the sixth anniversary of the Christchurch massacre when a lone Australian terrorist shocked the nation by killing 51 people at Friday prayers in two mosques with scores injured, or wounded by gunfire.

The gunman pleaded guilty at his trial and is serving a life sentence without parole — the first such sentence imposed in New Zealand.

Esau shared a poem that he had written to honour those killed and wounded:

Memory, by Achmat Esau
51 …
the victims
49 …
the injured
15 …
the day
1 …
the terror
2 …
the masjids
5 million …
the impact
Hate …
the reason
Murder …
the aim
Love …
the response
Hope …
the result
Justice …
the call
51 …
the Martyrs!

The MC, Kerry Sorensen-Tyrer, praised the “creative people” and called on them to “keep creating and processing their feelings into something beautiful and external to honour the people of Palestine”.

Organisers were Kathy Ross and Del Abcede.

Christchurch, New Zealand’s third-largest city, today became the first local government in the country to sanction Israel by voting to halt business with organisations involved in illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

It passed a resolution to amend its procurement policy to exclude companies building and maintaining illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

It was a largely symbolic gesture in that Christchurch (pop. 408,000) currently has no business dealings with any of the companies listed by the United Nations as being active in the illegal settlements.

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However, the vote — 10 in favour, two against and three abstentions — also rules out any future business dealings by the city council with such companies.

The sanctions vote came after passionate pleas to the council by John Minto, president of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), and University of Canterbury postcolonial studies lecturer Dr Josephine Varghese.

“We’re delighted the council has taken a stand against Israel’s ongoing theft of Palestinian land,” said Minto in a statement welcoming the vote.

He had urged the council to take a stand against companies identified by the UN Human Rights Council as complicit in the construction and maintenance of the illegal settlements.

‘Failure of Western governments’
“It has been the failure of Western governments to hold Israel to account which means Israel has a 76-year history of oppression and brutal abuse of Palestinians.

“Today Israel is running riot across the Middle East because it has never been held to account for 76 years of flagrant breaches of international law,” Minto said.

“The motion passed by Christchurch City today helps to end Israeli impunity for war crimes.” (Building settlements on occupied land belonging to others is a war crime under international law)

“The motion is a small but significant step in sanctioning Israel. Many more steps must follow”.

The council’s vote to support the UN policy was met with cheers from a packed public gallery. Before the vote, gallery members displayed a “Stop the genocide” banner.

Minto described the decision as a significant step towards aligning with international law and supporting Palestinian rights.

“In relation to the council adopting a policy lined up with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, this resolution was co-sponsored by the New Zealand government back in 2016,” Minto said, referencing the UN resolution that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories “had no legal validity and constituted a flagrant violation under international law”.

‘Red herrings and obfuscations’
In his statement, Minto said: “We are particularly pleased the council rejected the red herrings and obfuscations of New Zealand Jewish Council spokesperson Ben Kepes who urged councillors to reject the motion”

“Mr Kepes presentation was a repetition of the tired, old arguments used by white South Africans to avoid accountability for their apartheid policies last century – policies which are mirrored in Israel today.”

Dr Varghese said more than 42,000 Palestininians — at least 15,000 of them children — had been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza.

“Boycotting products and services which support and benefit from colonisation and apartheid is the long standing peaceful means of protest adopted by freedom fighters across the world, not only by black South Africans against apartheid, but also in the Indian independent struggle By the lights of Gandhi,” she said.

“This is a rare opportunity for us to follow in the footsteps of these greats and make a historic move, not only for Christchurch City, but also for Aotearoa New Zealand.

“On March 15, 2019 [the date of NZ’s mosque massacre killing 51 people], we made headlines for all the wrong reasons, and today could be an opportunity where we make headlines global globally for the right reasons,” Dr Varghese said.

As our research has previously revealed, the man who attacked two mosques in Christchurch on 15 March 2019, killing 51 people, posted publicly online for five years before his terrorist atrocity.

Here we provide further information about Brenton Tarrant’s posting. This article has two main goals.

First, by placing his online posting against his other online and offline activities, we gain a far more complete picture of the path to his attack.

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Second, we want to show how his online community played a role in his radicalisation. This is important, as the same can happen to others immersed in that community.

In combining his online and offline activity here we do not seek to attribute blame to those who might have been expected to detect this behaviour. It is exceptionally difficult to identify terrorists online.

And yet, history is full of difficult problems that have been overcome. We use the benefit of hindsight to provide greater understanding of Tarrant’s pathway than has previously been available.

The aim is to prevent similar attacks by better understanding how such people act and how they might be detected.

Words and deeds
In the timeline below, we focus on Tarrant’s activity in 2018, following his first visit to Dunedin’s Bruce Rifle Club on December 14 2017, until his final overseas trip in October. It is for this period that we have the most comprehensive online posting history.

In 2024, we have both the benefit of hindsight and the accumulation of information relating to the attack. However, this triangulation of online and offline activities illustrates the ways those contemplating terrorist violence might act.

We can now see, for example, that Tarrant bought high-powered firearms on three occasions over a six-week period in March and April 2018. And he posted publicly twice on the online imageboard 4chan about his plans for racially motivated violence, and his veneration of a perpetrator of a similar attack.

Tarrant therefore not only “leaked” his plans for violence, he did so at the very moment he was buying weapons for it.

Over 20 days in July and August, Tarrant presented to hospital with gunshot wounds, and began selling weapons online under the username Mannerheim (the name of a Finnish nationalist leader revered for defeating the communists in the country’s civil war).

He also posted publicly about his anger at the presence of mosques in South Island cities (claiming one had replaced a church). He wrote “soon” when another poster suggested setting fire to these places of worship.

A month later he attempted to sell weapons on online marketplace TradeMe, using a prominent white nationalist slogan — “14 Words” — in his username. (Strangely, this clear red flag was mentioned only once in the royal commission report on the attacks.)

TradeMe removed one of these advertisements for violating its terms of use. That caused Tarrant to move to another forum — NZ Hunting and Shooting Forums — to complain.

Extremist community
Our study has also revealed how important the 4chan community is to the radicalisation of individuals like Tarrant. In contrast to the fleeting human interaction he had with others as he travelled the world, 4chan was Tarrant’s community.

4chan’s /pol/ (politically incorrect) board became his home. Here he interacted with others over long periods, imagining he was speaking to the same people over months and years, and assuming many of them had become his friends.

We have found that, while creating a sense of belonging and community, /pol/ also works to create extremists in both direct and indirect ways.

Its anonymous nature (users are assigned a unique ID number for each thread, rather than a username) has two effects. One is well known, the other identified in our study.

First, anonymity encourages behaviour that would be absent if the poster’s identity was known. Second, anonymity is frustrating for those who wish to “be someone”, who crave respect and notoriety.

We have documented the way Tarrant (and others) strive to gain status in a discussion, only to have to start again when they move to a new thread and are given a new ID. This lack of ongoing recognition is agonising for some individuals, who go to lengths to obtain respect.

Anonymity and peer respect
And just like a real-world fascist movement, /pol/ venerates violent action as necessary for the vitality and regeneration of the community.

When a terrorist attack, school shooting or other violent event occurs, users celebrate these events in so-called “happening” threads. These threads are longer, more emotional and excited than any other discussions. Participants often claim the individual at the centre of the event is “/ourguy/” (a reference to the /pol/ board).

The threads are also highly anticipatory: many users believe this event will finally push society into violent chaos and race war.

These dynamics are closely connected. For those who seek recognition and status on the bulletin board, such as Tarrant, the excited attention and adoration given to those who perpetrate high-profile violence is the clearest path to the peer respect that the anonymity of the board otherwise denies them.

As harrowing as this finding is, we contend that gaining respect from their online community is in itself a crucial motivation for some perpetrators of far-right terrorism.

The nature of this extreme but easily accessible corner of the internet means any hope Tarrant was a one-off — and that this won’t happen again — is misguided.

The authors acknowledge the expert contribution of tactical and forensic linguist and independent researcher Julia Kupper. More information about our study will be released at heiaglobal.com. Our research was approved by the University of Auckland Human Participant Ethics Committee. A paper based on this study has been submitted for peer review and publication.

Chris Wilson, co-founder and director of Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa (HEIA) and director, Master of Conflict and Terrorism Studies, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Ethan Renner, researcher, Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Jack Smylie, research analyst, Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau, and Michal Dziwulski, researcher, Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The image of Amna Ali telling her five-year-old son that his father is in heaven will forever be etched in my memory.

Mohammad was six months old when his dad Syed Jahandad Ali was killed at Al-Noor mosque.

As Amna sat there bravely telling me her story, a little voice said “Mama”.

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Her son had been upstairs playing with his granddad while his mother talked to the strange lady who he’d never met before.

Clearly, his patience had run out.

She wanted to tell him to be quiet, but I asked her to bring her son down instead.

I had never met Syed, but had seen pictures of him.

Spitting image
Mohammad is a spitting image of his father.

He sat in Amna’s lap as she explained to him she was telling me about his “Baba”.

And then she told him is Baba is in heaven, “he’s in the best place” she told him to repeat.

Since Syed’s death Amna has completed two diplomas, travelled alone with her three children and is planning to start an IT career.

Ironically, her graduation ceremony is on March 15, and she planned to receive her diploma in person.

Even as she looked back at the most painful years of her life she didn’t shed a single tear.

On the other hand, I found it hard to fight the lump in my throat.

He was a foodie
After the interview, she had an elaborate morning tea on the kitchen counter — I was surprised how this mum of three young children found the time to prepare so much beautiful food.

Syed was a foodie she told me, he loved her cooking.

Just hours earlier I had left Auckland, like every other year it was time to do a story about the mosque attacks.

But this anniversary was going to be different I told myself. I had planned to meet survivors and families and talk about their achievements.

I had no idea their resilience and strength would be so overwhelming.

Most of the people in the mosques on the day of the attacks came from countries where terrorism isn’t rare.

Over the past five years many people have asked me, with no malice at all, why the Christchurch attacks left such a deep impact on the survivors and families.

Best answer?
Perhaps, survivor Faisal Abbas has the best answer.

He was in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2014 when terrorists gunned down hundreds of teachers and students at the Army Public School massacre.

It was his school and he wanted to send his children there.

The principal who died saving her students had been his teacher.

To him, it was a final nail in the coffin. He told me he did not want to be where even his school wasn’t safe, so he picked the safest country he could find and moved to New Zealand.

For Faisal, he says, it’s his first hand experience of terrorism and choosing to get away from it that made the Christchurch attacks even harder to process.

‘Going with the flow’
Before the attacks, he said, he meticulously planned everything, but now he prefers to “go with the flow”.

He trusts in Allah’s plan and he knows whatever will happen is for the best.

And then he repeated a verse from the Quran where God tells Prophet Mohammad “Verily with hardship comes ease”.

I share the same religion as the survivors, but I pray my faith in God becomes as strong as theirs.

One of the toughest thing as a journalist is to decide what makes the final cut.

Farid Ahmed made headlines around the world for choosing to forgive the attacker who killed his wife.

When I interviewed him for my story on this trip he was in hospital fighting an infection — a detail that I didn’t put in the story.

Message of love, forgiveness
Being in a wheelchair hasn’t stopped him from spreading the message of love and forgiveness.

I told him perhaps now would be a good time to slow down and rest. He just smiled and said there was no time, otherwise it would be a disservice to his wife who died saving others.

One of my favourite parts of the trip was visiting Temel Atacocugu. Despite nine bullets and some 30 surgeries, his sense of humour is intact.

He has three pet goldfish all of whom he’s given Turkish names. Pakize — the pure one, Serafettin — the good boy and Abuziddin, Temel says that’s just a traditional name.

I didn’t imagine I would come back feeling so moved.

Five years ago, the survivors and families I met told me they would rebuild their lives. Every year they inched closer to that goal.

This time they seemed to have delivered on that promise.

I can only marvel at the miracle of their strength and resilience which is beyond my understanding.

And the only words that help me make any sense of it all are: “Verily with hardship comes ease”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.