AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: An Israeli court has closed an investigation into the death of Walid Ahmad, a 17-year-old from the occupied West Bank who died in an Israeli jail six months after he was arrested, held without charges and accused of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers.

An autopsy showed Ahmad likely starved to death after suffering extreme weight loss, muscle wasting and untreated scabies. Human rights groups say nearly 100 Palestinians have died in Israeli jails since October 2023.

Meanwhile, local and international media outlets report Israeli forces recently tortured a Palestinian toddler in Gaza to coerce a confession from his father.

• READ MORE: Trump talks up deal with Tehran as Iranian missile, drone attacks continue
• Other US-Israeli attacks on Iran, Palestine genocide

According to reports from Palestine TV, Al Jazeera and others, the child’s father, Osama Abu Nassar, was detained near the al-Maghazi refugee camp after he came under fire from Israeli soldiers.

He was forced to approach an Israeli checkpoint, where he was separated from his 18-month-old son, stripped naked and forced to watch as soldiers used a cigarette to burn one of the toddler’s legs while using a nail to puncture the other.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as a new UN report warns Israel is systematically torturing Palestinians on a scale that “suggests collective vengeance and destructive intent”.The report, titled “Torture and Genocide”, was written by Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.

In July, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on her over her report naming dozens of companies she says are profiting from Israeli occupation and genocide in Gaza. Amnesty International blasted the sanctions as a “shameless and transparent attack on the fundamental principles of international justice”. Francesca Albanese’s new book is When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine. She joins us from Geneva, Switzerland.

Francesca, thank you so much for being with us. Why don’t you lay out what you found in your new report, “Torture and Genocide,” that you just presented at the U.N. Human Rights Council?

Torture and Genocide — a new UN report.     Video: Democracy Now!

Transcript

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Thank you. Thank you, Amy and Nermeen.

I’ve been investigating genocide for over two years now. So, five out of eight reports I’ve produced for the United Nations focus on genocide, acts of genocide, the context in which a genocide happens, why the genocide is not stopped, the layers of complicity from states and private companies, which is the reason why also I’m sanctioned by the United States, against which now my 13-year-old daughter, who’s an American citizen, is the only one to take action suing the Trump administration.

But of all the investigations I’ve carried out, this has been absolutely the most excruciating, that led me to say that Israel uses torture in a systematic and widespread fashion, intentionally and sadistically, to break the spirit of the Palestinians, not just as individuals, but as a people, considering the scale and intensity of torture.

And I monitored torture behind bars, collecting hundreds, hundreds of testimonies, directly and from Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, but also analyzing what experts call torturous environment, meaning the cumulative impact of all the practices, of all the crimes that Israel has massively inflicted on the Palestinians — again, beyond the torture, sodomisation, raping in jail, the enforced disappearance, which is touching 4000 people.

This is new. This is a new crime, including for Israel, toward the Palestinians. But also starvation, constant forced displacement, not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and home demolition, the fear of being always threatened with death or other crimes, it creates a torturous environment for the Palestinians, which is an essential element of genocide.

And it is genocide.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Francesca, if you could elaborate on this point that you’ve just made and that you make in the report, namely, that torture has effectively become state policy for Israel since October 2023? So, what are the kinds of transformations you’ve seen, both in terms of Israeli security personnel, as well as settlers, against the Palestinians?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, I have to say that what I’ve investigated is something on which even the United Nations Committee Against Torture and the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on Israel/Palestine had shed light already, the fact that Israel, after October 7, has massively used torture to punish the Palestinians vindictively.

In fact, the concept of torture has become a state policy is something that the Committee Against Torture found out recently.

I have zoomed in: What does it mean, and where does it come from? Surely, one of the main engineers or architects of this, what’s been called — what he has called the “prison revolution,” is Itamar Ben-Gvir, was — immediately after October 7, has declared that the Palestinians in jail will not be afforded luxury treatment or five-star treatment anymore, as if it was a five-star hotel, what the Israeli prison system afforded Palestinians before October 7.

By the way, in 2023, in July 2023, I produced a report showing how widespread and systemic was the arbitrary treatment of Palestinian detainees, so, just to give a context.

But the conditions have become more and more brutal, and intentionally so. What does it mean? Palestinians have routinely been abducted — I mean, detained without charge or trial. They’ve been arrested, because Palestinians, if they were specific professionals, like journalists and doctors or headed medical personnel, all the more.

Seventeen hundred Palestinian healthcare personnel have been killed. Hundreds remain in jail. And they have been shackled, blindfolded, beaten, humiliated, stripped naked, photographed, filmed, exposed to Israeli civilians, including settlers, coming in to document and to film, to participate into this orgy of depravity, of how a person can be humiliated.

But the most painful, excruciating thing — and I’ve read some of the testimonies — is how Palestinian women and men have been sodomised, have been raped, with bottles, with knives, with metal rods. Even the prisoner who was sodomised through — was raped with a knife, brought to the hospital.

Five Israeli officials were identified and pressed charged against, and now the charges have been dropped. And the person who leaked the video from within the military apparatus is under house arrest on top of it.

So, not only that I’ve documented the vindictiveness toward the Palestinians, the humiliation, the continuous abuses against them in jail, really to break their spirit once and for all as a people, but also the fact that there has been almost something celebratory against the mistreatment of Palestinians in jail among the society.

The legislative power, the Knesset, has been discussing the right to rape Palestinians, and so other members of the executive. The judiciary has not looked into it. And as I said, even those who were found, caught on video, committing this crime were released.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesca, in this last 30 seconds, what are you calling for?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Oh, for justice. Justice. Israel must be stopped, because, Amy, I can’t even use the past tense. As we speak, there are still over 9000 Palestinian hostages, hostages to an unlawful occupation in Israeli jail.

The only thing this — International Court of Justice has spoken. Israel must withdraw the occupation, the troops, the colonies. And the exploitation of Palestinian resources must end.

Meanwhile, the settlers continue to terrorise people. Very few Israelis are engaged against this. So member states must intervene, cut ties and stop weapons transfers to Israel once and for all, and bring the perpetrators to justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesco Albanese, we thank you so much for being with us, UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory. We’ll link to your report, “Torture and Genocide,” and have you back on to talk about your book.

Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

A national pro-Palestinian advocacy group has accused the New Zealand government of providing political cover and rewarding the Israeli genocide by deploying a “liaison officer” to the US-brokered peace plan for the besieged enclave.

“It’s a knee-jerk reaction for New Zealand to send in the troops to the Middle East to back Israel and the US,” said Maher Nazzal, co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

“A liaison officer deployment is political cover to assist and reward Israel for its
genocide in Gaza. The US makes bombs and bullets for Israel to fire.

• READ MORE:  ‘Calm turns to despair’ in Gaza as Israeli strikes shake hope in ceasefire
• Jordan’s forces will not ‘run around Gaza on patrol,’ King Abdullah says on Trump’s plan
• NZ Defence Force deploys liaison officer to Israel
• Other Gaza reports

“It’s a shameful betrayal of Palestine and the Palestinian steadfastness in the face of unbelievable depravity and cruelty,” Nazzal said in a statement.

He said it was ominous that the liaison officer would be based inside a US military office in Israel.

“Instead, we should be working with the United Nations in the region. Trump plans to perpetuate the Israeli occupation under a figleaf of it being multinational. That is what we are supporting.”

“This is more of the same complicity with the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza,” he said.

‘Joined at hip’
Nazzal said that for two years Foreign Minister Winston Peters had joined New Zealand “at the hip” to a country whose Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] was wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

“There have been no sanctions on Israel, but we frequently impose new sanctions on Russia and Iran,” he said.

“The NZDF was there in Iraq and Afghanistan. The government sent the army up to the Red Sea to fight with the Americans early last year to keep Israeli sea lanes open.”

Nazzal said the government should focus on aid, ensuring Palestinians’ rights and representation, and fact-finding.

“There should be a cross-party Parliamentary fact-finding mission assembled urgently, which could get into Gaza safely before Israel ramps up its murderous assault again.”he said.

“MPs should see for themselves, instead of signing off on a soldier whose job it is to ‘implement’ the Trump plan.”

Jordan rejects US plan
The King of Jordan had recently rejected the US proposal to join in patrolling Gaza to implement Trump’s vision.

“Palestinians have no say in the Trump plan. Trump decides who is going to
implement it. He’s picked Tony Blair,” Nazzal said.

“When he was British Prime Minister, Blair, and US President Bush, invaded Iraq to destroy the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. More than a million Iraqis died.

“In Gaza, more than 20,000 children have now been murdered by Israel in
indiscriminate killing across Gaza.”

“The New Zealand people stand with Palestine – the government stands with Israel.”

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that Palestinians in Gaza say they are losing hope in the ceasefire after Israel’s deadliest violation yet killed more than 100 people, mostly women and children, on Wednesday.

Israel’s military carried out another deadly attack in northern Gaza last night, killing two people, despite claiming to resume the fragile ceasefire, which had already been teetering from a wave of deadly bombardment it waged the night before.

US President Donald Trump said the ceasefire was “still strong” while mediator Qatar expressed frustration but said the mediators were looking forward to the next phase of the truce.

A temporary ceasefire and release of some Palestinians in a prisoner exchange is not a “peace agreement” and it is far from what is needed — ending colonisation; freedom for the >10,000 political prisoners still in Israeli gulags (also tortured, nearly 100 have died under torture in the last two years); return of the millions of refugees; and accountability for genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

That is why this global uprising (intifada) will not stop until freedom, justice, and equality are attained.

• READ MORE: Tens of thousands return to shattered Gaza homes after ceasefire
• How Palestine fights ecocide with biodiversity and sustainability resistance

Here are brief answers I gave to questions about the agreement for Gaza:

1. How has life in the West Bank changed for you and your community during the past two years of conflict?
The West Bank has been illegally occupied since 1967 (ICJ ruling) but it was not merely an occupation but intensive colonisation and ethnic cleansing. The attacks on our people accelerated in the last two years with over 60,000 made homeless in the West Bank and denial of freedom of movement (including hundreds of new gates installed in these two years separating the remaining concentration camps/ghettos of the West Bank ).

2. What is your assessment of the new peace deal that brought an end to the fighting in Gaza?
It is not a peace deal. It is an agreement to pause the genocide which will not work because the belligerent occupier — “Israel” — has not respected a single agreement it signed since its founding. Even the agreement to join the United Nations was conditional on respecting the UN Charter and UN resolutions issued before and after 1949.

This continued to even breaking the signed ceasefire agreement of last year. I have 0 percent confidence that this latest agreement would be respected even on the simple aspect of “pausing” the genocide and ethnic cleansing going on since 1948.

3. In your view, why did war drag on for two years despite multiple ceasefire attempts?
Simply put because colonisation can only be done with violence. And the war on our people has gone on not for two years but for 77 years without ending (sustained by Western government support). Israel as a colonisation entity is the active face of colonisation. The USA for example broke similar agreements for “pauses” in colonisation with natives in North America and broke every single one of them.

Israeli military occupation on the environment.        Video: Greenpeace

4. What kind of humanitarian and environmental toll has the conflict taken on Palestinian society?
It is now well documented from UN agencies, human rights groups (like Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, even the Israeli group B’Tselem). In brief it is genocide, ecocide, scholasticide, medicide,
and veriticide. (More at: ongaza.org )

5. Why do you think it took the IDF so long to rescue all the hostages?
The terrorist organisation that deceptively calls itself “IDF” (Israeli Defence Forces) was not interested in rescuing their captives (not “hostages”) and they only got people back via exchange of prisoners (not rescue).

The IGF (Israeli Genocide Forces) actually killed many of their own soldiers and civilians
on 7 October 2023 by activating the Hannibal directive to prevent their capture. The resistance was aiming to capture colonisers (living on stolen Palestinian lands) to exchange for some of the more than 11,000 political prisoners illegally held in Israeli jails. (Again see ongaza.org )

6. How significant was international involvement — particularly from the US — in reaching the final agreement?
This is the first genocide in human history that is not executed by one government. It is executed by a number of governments directly supporting and aiding (participating). This includes the USA, UK, France, Egypt, Germany, Australia etc. Many of these countries have governments dominated or highly influenced by the Zionist agenda.

Under the influence of a growing popular protest against the genocide around the world, some of those countries are trying to wiggle out from pressure in an effort to save
“Israel” from growing global isolation. Trump was blackmailed via videos/files collected by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghiseline Maxwell (Mossad agents). He is simply a narcissistic collaborator with genocide!

7. What concrete steps do you think are necessary now to turn this peace deal into a sustainable, lasting solution?
Again not a “peace deal”. What needs to be done is apply boycotts, divestments, sanctions (BDS) on this rogue state that violates the international conventions (Geneva Convention, Conventions against Apartheid and Genocide). BDS was used against apartheid South Africa and needs to be applied here also. (For more: bdsmovement.net )

8. How do you see the Palestine Museum of Natural History contributing to rebuilding and healing efforts in the aftermath of war?
Our institute (PIBS, palestinenature.org) which includes museums, a botanic garden, and many other sections is focused on “sustainable human and natural communities” Our motto is respect: for ourselves (empowerment), for others (regardless of religious or other background), and for nature.

Conflict, colonisations, oppression are obviously areas we challenge and work on in JOINT struggle with all people of various background.

9. Looking ahead, what gives you optimism—or concern—about the future relationship between Palestinians and Israelis?
What gives me optimism first and foremost is the heroic resilience and resistance (together making sumud) of our Palestinian people everywhere and the millions of other people mobilising for human rights and for justice (including the right of refugees to return and also environmental justice).

What gives me concern is the depth of depravity that greedy individuals in power go to destroying our planet and our people and profiting from colonisation and genocide.

About 8.5 million Palestinians are refugees and displaced people thanks to Zionism and Western collusion with it. A collusion intent on transforming Palestine from multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multireligious, and multilingual society to a racist Jewish state (monolithic).

Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Bedouin in cyberspace; a villager at home; professor, founder and (volunteer) director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University, Occupied Palestine.

Notes:
World Court Findings on Israeli Apartheid a Wake-Up Call: International Court of Justice Makes Clear Call for Reparations

The 7 October 2023 reminded us of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

7 October 1944! Prisoner Revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize as before was not given to the any of the hundreds of deserving nominees but given instead to rightwing pro-genocide María Corina Machado. She dedicated her prize to Donald Trump and had previously aligned with the worst rightwing parties throughout Latin America as well as the genocidal regime of Netanyahu (and even asked them for help to topple her own elected government).

The Palestinian-Israeli film No Other Land won an Oscar for best documentary feature at Sunday’s Academy Awards.

The film — recently screened in New Zealand at the Rialto and other cinemas — follows the struggles of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank community of Masafer Yatta to stay on their land amid home demolitions by the Israeli military and violent attacks by Jewish settlers aimed at expelling them.

The film was made by a team of Palestinian-Israeli filmmakers, including the Palestinian journalist Basel Adra, who lives in Masafer Yatta, and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, both of whom are prominently featured in the film.

AMY GOODMAN: And the Oscars were held Sunday evening. History was made in the best documentary category.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON: And the Oscar goes to ‘No Other Land’.

AMY GOODMAN: The Palestinian-Israeli film No Other Land won for best documentary. The film follows the struggles of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank community of Masafer Yatta to stay on their land amidst violent attacks by Israeli settlers aimed at expelling them. The film was made by a team of Palestinian-Israeli filmmakers, including the Palestinian journalist Basel Adra, who lives in Masafer Yatta, and the Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham. 

Both filmmakers — Palestinian activist and journalist Basel Adra, who lives in Masafer Yatta, and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham — spoke at the ceremony. Adra became the first Palestinian filmmaker to win an Oscar.

BASEL ADRA: Thank you to the Academy for the award. It’s such a big honor for the four of us and everybody who supported us for this documentary.

About two months ago, I became a father. And my hope to my daughter, that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing — always — always fearing settlers’ violence, home demolitions and forceful displacements that my community, Masafer Yatta, is living and facing every day under the Israeli occupation.

‘No Other Land’ reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: We made this — we made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger.

We see each other — the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end; the Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of October 7th, which must be freed.

When I look at Basel, I see my brother. But we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control.

There is a different path: a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people. And I have to say, as I am here: The foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path.

And, you know, why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined, that my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe? There is another way.

It’s not too late for life, for the living. There is no other way. Thank you.

Israeli and Palestinian documentary ‘No Other Land’ wins Oscar. Video: Democracy Now!

Transcript of the February 18 interview with the film makers before their Oscar success:

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the occupied West Bank, where Israel is reportedly planning to build nearly a thousand new settler homes in the Efrat settlement near Jerusalem. The Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

The group Shalom Achshav, Peace Now, condemned the move, saying the Netanyahu government is trying “to establish facts on the ground that will destroy the chance for peace and compromise”.

This comes as Israel’s ongoing military operations in the West Bank have displaced at least 45,000 Palestinians — the most since the ’67 War.

Today, the Oscar-nominated Palestinian director Basel Adra shared video from the occupied West Bank of Israeli forces storming and demolishing four houses in Masafer Yatta.

Earlier this month, Basel Adra himself filmed armed and masked Israeli settlers attacking his community of Masafer Yatta. The settlers threw stones, smashed vehicles, slashed tires, punctured a water tank.

Israeli soldiers on the scene did not intervene to halt the crimes.

Basel Adra’s Oscar-nominated documentary No Other Land is about Israel’s mass expulsion of Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta.

In another post last week, Basel wrote: “Anyone who cared about No Other Land should care about what is actually happening on the ground: Today our water tanks, 9 homes and 3 ancient caves were destroyed. Masafer Yatta is disappearing in front of my eyes.

Only one name for these actions: ethnic cleansing,” he said.

In a minute, Basel Adra will join us for an update. But first, we want to play the trailer from his Oscar-nominated documentary, No Other Land.

No Other Land trailer.   Video: Watermelon Films

BASEL ADRA: [translated] You think they’ll come to our home?

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 1: [translated] Is the army down there?

NEWS ANCHOR: A thousand Palestinians face one of the single biggest expulsion decisions since the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories began.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] Basel, come here! Come fast!

BASEL ADRA: [translated] This is a story about power.

My name is Basel. I grew up in a small community called Masafer Yatta. I started to film when we started to end.

They have bulldozers?

I’m filming you.

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 2: [translated] I need air. Oh my God!

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 3: [translated] Don’t worry.

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 2: [translated] I don’t want them to take our home.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] You’re Basel?

BASEL ADRA: [translated] Yes.

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 4: [translated] You are Palestinian?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] No, I’m Jewish.

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 5: [translated] He’s a journalist.

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 4: [translated] You’re Israeli?

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 5: [translated] Seriously?

BASEL ADRA: [translated] We have to raise our voices, not being silent as if — as if no human beings live here.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] What? The army is here?

BASEL ADRA: This is what’s happening in my village now. Soldiers are everywhere.

IDF SOLDIER: [translated] Who do you think you’re filming, you son of a whore?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] It would be so nice with stability one day. Then you’ll come visit me, not always me visiting you. Right?

BASEL ADRA: [translated] Maybe. What do you think? If you were in my place, what would you do?

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the trailer for the Oscar-nominated documentary No Other Land, co-directed by the Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and our next guest, Basel Adra, Palestinian activist and journalist who writes for +972 Magazine, his most recent piece headlined “Our film is going to the Oscars. But here in Masafer Yatta, we’re still being erased.”

Basel has spent years documenting Israeli efforts to evict Palestinians living in his community, Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron.

Basel, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can talk about your film and also what’s happening right now? This is not a film about history. It’s on the ground now. You recently were barricaded in your house filming what was going on, what the Israeli settlers were doing.

Palestinian film maker Basel Adra talks to Democracy Now!   Video: Democracy Now!

BASEL ADRA: Thank you for having me.

Yeah, our movie, we worked on it for the last five years. We are four people — two Israelis and two Palestinians, me, myself, Yuval and Rachel and Hamdan, who’s my friend and living in Masafer Yatta. We’re just activists and journalists.

And me and my friend Hamdan spent years in the field, running after bulldozers, soldiers and settlers, and in our communities and communities around us, filming the destruction, the home destructions, the school destructions, the cutting of our water pipes and the bulldozing of our roads and our own schools, and trying to raise awareness from the international community on what’s going on, to get political impact to try to stop this from happening and to protect our community.

And five years ago, Yuval and Rachel joined, as Israeli journalists, to write about what’s happening. And then we decided together that we will start working on No Other Land as a documentary that showed the whole political story through personal, individual stories of people who lost their life and homes and school and properties on this, like in the last years and also in the decades of the occupation.

We released the movie in the Berlinale 2024, last year, at the festival. And so far, we’ve been, like, screening and showing, like, in many festivals around the world.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Basel, your film has received an Oscar nomination, but you haven’t been able to find a distributor in the US What do you know about this refusal of any company to pick up your film to distribute it? And also, can it be seen in the West Bank or in Israel itself?

BASEL ADRA: It’s sad that we haven’t found a US distributor. Our goal from making this documentary, it’s not the award. It’s not the awards itself, but the people and the audience and to get to the people’s hearts, because we want people to see the reality, to see what’s going on in my community, Masafer Yatta, but in all the West Bank, to the Palestinians and how the life, the daily life under this brutal occupation.

People should be aware of this, because they are — somehow, they have a responsibility. In the US, it’s the tax money that the people are paying there. It has something to do with the home destruction that we are facing, the settlers’ violence, the building of the settlements on our land that does not stop every day.

And we, as a collective, made this movie. We faced so many risks in the field, on the ground. Like, my home was invaded, and the cameras were confiscated from my home by Israeli soldiers.

I was physically attacked in the field when I’m going around and filming these crimes, I mean, to show to the people and to let the people know about what’s going on.

But it’s sad that the distributors in the US so far do not want to take a little bit of risk, political risk, and to show this documentary to the audience. I am really sad about it, that there is no big distributors taking No Other Land and showing it to the American people.

It’s very important to reach to the Americans, I believe. And so far, we are doing it independently on the cinemas.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And your co-director is Israeli. Have you come under criticism for working with Israelis on the film?

BASEL ADRA: So far, I’m not receiving any criticism for working with Israelis. Like, working together is because we share somehow the same values, that we reject the injustice and the occupation and the apartheid and what’s going on, and we want to work pro-solution and pro-justice and to end these, like, settlements and for a better future.

AMY GOODMAN: Basel, the Oscars are soon, in a few weeks. Can you get a visa to come into the United States? Will you attend the Oscars?

BASEL ADRA: So, I have a visa because I’ve been in the US participating in festivals for our movie. But my family and the other Palestinian co-director doesn’t have one yet, and they will try to apply soon.

And hopefully, they will get it, and they will be able to join us at the Oscars.

AMY GOODMAN: So, since it’s so difficult to see your film here in the United States, I want to go to another clip of No Other Land. Again, this is our guest, Basel Adra, and his co-director, Yuval Abraham, filming the eviction of a Palestinian family.

BASEL ADRA: [translated] A lot of army is here.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] They plan a big demolition?

BASEL ADRA: [translated] We don’t know. They’re driving towards one of my neighbors.

Now the soldiers arrived here.

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 1: [translated] Aren’t you ashamed to do this? Aren’t you afraid of God?

ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] Go back! Move back now! Get back! I’ll push you all the way back!

YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] I speak Hebrew. Don’t shout.

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 2: [translated] I hope that bulldozer falls on your head. Why are you taking our homes?

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 3: [translated] Why destroy the bathroom?

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Israeli bulldozers destroying a bathroom. This is another clip from No Other Land, in which you, Basel, are attacked by Israeli forces even as you try to show them you have media credentials.

BASEL ADRA: [translated] I’m filming you. I’m filming you! You’re just like criminals.

ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] If he gets closer, arrest him.

BASEL ADRA: [translated] You’re expelling us. Arrest me! On what grounds?

ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] Grab him.

BASEL ADRA: [translated] On what grounds? I have a journalist card. I have a journalist card!

ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] Shut up!

BASEL’S FATHER: [translated] Don’t hit my son! Leave our village! Go away! Leave, you [bleep]! Shoot.

ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] Move back.

BASEL’S FATHER: [translated] Shoot me. Shoot me. Shoot me.

BASEL’S MOTHER: [translated] Get an ambulance!

BASEL’S FATHER: [translated] Run, Basel! Run! Get up, son. Run! Run, Basel!

AMY GOODMAN: Basel, that is you. Your mother is hanging onto you as you’re being dragged, your father. What do you want the world to know about Masafer Yatta, about your community in this film?

BASEL ADRA: I want the world to really act seriously. The international community should take measures and act seriously to end this, like, demolitions and ethnic cleansing that is happening everywhere in Gaza, in the West Bank, through different policies and different, like, reasons that the Israelis try to separate out, which is all lies.

It’s all about land, that they want to steal more and more of our land. That’s very clear on the ground, because every Palestinian community being erased, there is settlements growing in the same place.

This is happening right there, in the South Hebron Hills, everywhere around the West Bank, in Area C. And now they are entering camps, since January until now, by demolishing, like, destroying the camps in Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas, and forcing people to leave their homes, to go away.

And the world just keeps watching and not taking serious action. And the opposite, actually.

The Israelis keep receiving all. Like, this amount of violations of the international law, the human rights laws, it’s very clear that it’s violated every day by the Israelis. But nobody cares. The opposite, they keep receiving weapons and money and relationships and —

AMY GOODMAN: Basel —

BASEL ADRA: — and diplomatic cover. Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. I thank you so much, look forward to interviewing you and Yuval in the United States. Basel Adra, co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary No Other Land.

The original content of this programme is licensed and republished by Asia Pacific Report under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

He is the most popular Palestinian leader alive today — and yet few people in the West even know his name. Absolutely no one in Gaza or the West Bank does not know him.

That difference speaks volumes about who dominates the media narrative that we are spoon-fed every day.

Marwan Barghouti — known to many as “the Palestinian Mandela” — has spent more time in captivity than Nelson Mandela did.

• READ MORE: Imprisoned Fatah politician Marwan Barghouti and the Palestinian presidency

Barghouti, the “terrorist”, rotting in jail. Barghouti, the indomitable leader who has not given up on peace. Barghouti, loved by ordinary people as “a man of the street”. Barghouti, supporter of the Oslo Accords.

Barghouti, the 15-year-old youth leader standing beside Yasser Arafat. Barghouti, once a member of Parliament and Fatah secretary-general. Barghouti, leader of Tanzim, a PLO military wing, choosing militancy after the betrayal of the Oslo promise by the Americans and Israelis became fully clear.

Barghouti, a leader of the intifada that restored hope to a broken people. Barghouti, the scholar and thinker. Barghouti, the political strategist and unifier.

Marwan Barghouti is also that most powerful thing: a living symbol of an oppressed people. Why do so few in the West even know his name? He declared:

“Resistance is a holy right for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli occupation.

“Nobody should forget that the Palestinian people negotiated for 10 years and accepted difficult and humiliating agreements, and in the end didn’t get anything except authority over the people, and no authority over land, or sovereignty.”

Prison a defining part of Palestinian national consciousness
Researcher-writer Emad Moussa says imprisonment has become a defining part of the Palestinian national consciousness. In a 2021 article for The New Arab, he says that Marwan Barghouti proves you can imprison the Palestinians but not their struggle.

It’s not hard to understand why imprisonment is a central part of Palestinian consciousness.

Norman Finkelstein describes October 7 as more like a slave revolt than a terrorist attack.

Fellow Jewish scholar Masha Gessen likens Gaza to a Nazi-era Jewish ghetto.

In fact, all 7.5 million Palestinians are prisoners of the Zionist state. They are all prisoners of the history imposed on them by the powerful white nations of the West. Between 1967 and 2015 over 850,000 Palestinians had been detained by the Israelis.

According to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem more than 8000 Palestinians are held by the Israelis. Many are held in secret Israeli Defence Force (IDF) facilities and there have been verified cases of torture, sexual abuse and limb amputations due to prolonged shackling.

Many children are also held in grim captivity.

Denies the charges
Barghouti, returned to jail in 2002, and was convicted by an Israeli court on five counts of murder in 2004. He denies the charges and does not recognise the court.

Like many who see all non-violent avenues to peace shut off, Barghouti watched the Israelis relentlessly steal more and more Palestinian land and Palestinian homes, build hundreds of illegal settlements in defiance of international law and strangle his people with draconian controls — all while America and the powerful Western countries turned a blind eye.

“How would you feel if on every hill in territory that belongs to you a new settlement would spring up? I reached a simple conclusion. You, Israel, don’t want to end the occupation and you don’t want to stop the settlements — so the only way to convince you is by force.”

Lawyer and activist Fadwa Barghouti, Marwan’s wife, says: “Marwan’s goal has always been ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

“Marwan Barghouti believes in politics. He’s a political and national leader loved by his people.

“He fought for peace with bravery and spent time on the Palestinian street advocating for peace. But he also believes in international law, which gives the occupied people the right to fight for their independence and freedom.”

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy at Haaretz agrees: “Marwan was not born to kill . . .  because he is not a violent person, but Israel pushed him and the entire Palestinian people.”

‘The ultimate leader’
Alon Liel, formerly Israel’s most senior diplomat, proposed freeing Barghouti because he is “the ultimate leader of the Palestinian people,” and “he is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in.”

He is not alone in this view. Jerome Karabel, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, details Netanyahu’s support for Hamas (for example, facilitating money via Qatar to Hamas) as a way to neutralise the threat posed by pro-peace, pro-two-state figures like Barghouti to the Zionists’ own single Jewish supremacist state solution.

“In this context, the popular and charismatic Barghouti has posed a unique threat to Israel and its persistent claim that it had no plausible interlocutor with whom to negotiate,” Karabel says.

Was Barghouti involved in terror attacks? Quite possibly.

He rejects such a label: “My crime is not “terrorism” — a term apparently only used to describe the deaths of Israeli civilians but never the deaths of Palestinians. My crime is that I insist on my freedom, freedom for my children, freedom for the entire Palestinian people.

“And if indeed that is a crime, I proudly plead guilty.”

The standard he is held to — five life sentences — bears no comparison with the impunity that Israelis enjoy — settlers who kill Palestinians are often rewarded with stolen land, through to political leaders greenlighting mass killings, even genocide, with the support of the US and the white Western countries.

Abandon the myth
“Israelis must abandon the myth that it is possible to have peace and occupation at the same time; that peaceful coexistence is possible between slave and master.

“The lack of Israeli security is born of the lack of Palestinian freedom. Israel will have security only after the end of occupation, not before.”

Beaten and abused in captivity, now being shunted from prison to prison and held in solitary confinement, Barghouti’s name only grows in stature as the US-Israeli violence against his people becomes clearer and clearer to a hitherto uncaring world.

According to a March 2024 poll conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, “In presidential elections against current president Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’ leader Ismail Haniyeh, Barghouti wins the majority of those participating in the elections.”

It is the strange fate of the Palestinian people that most of their leaders — those that haven’t already been murdered — are either in Israeli jails, hiding from Israeli death squads or living in exile.

One of the most incredible — and for Westerners virtually unknown — political moments in the Israel-Palestinian conflict was the creation of The Prisoners’ Document in 2006 – a break-through in negotiations, led by Barghouti, between the fractious factions that divide the Palestinian polity.

In 18 points, the document calls for the unification of Palestinian factions and a revival of the PLO as the representative organisation of Palestine. It calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the 1967 borders, the right of return, and the release of prisoners.

Freedom fighter and the options
“The Palestinian Mandela” is a useful shorthand and there is some merit to the comparison. Nelson Mandela visited Gaza in 1999 and raised his voice to condemn racist, apartheid Israel.

The freedom fighter who was jailed for terrorism in his own country made clear what options lay before the Palestinian people. He told his audience, which included Yasser Arafat:

“Choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot move forward. Then, if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence.”

“I was called a terrorist yesterday,” Mandela once said, “but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists.”

Barghouti said: “Once Israel and the rest of the world understand this fundamental truth, the way forward becomes clear: End the occupation, allow the Palestinians to live in freedom and let the independent and equal neighbours of Israel and Palestine negotiate a peaceful future with close economic and cultural ties.”

The Mandela comparison has its limits. Ahmed Abu Artema, one of the organisers of the Great Marches of Return in 2018 and 2019 in which thousands of peaceful Palestinian protesters were shot and hundreds killed by Israeli snipers, replied when asked, ‘Where is the Palestinian Mandela?’: “The simple answer to that is that the Israelis have killed many Mandelas.”

Marwa Fatafta, a policy director at Access Now also dismisses the need for a Palestinian Mandela: “I don’t subscribe to the mythology. I don’t think Palestinians need a ‘saviour’ or one man to run the show. This Mandela idea dismisses the fact that Israel has one goal and one goal only: to establish an ethno-nationalist Jewish state — and that stands in complete contradiction with the idea of co-existence, peace and justice.

Building from ground up
“What we need on the Palestinian side is to build a movement from the ground up,” Fatafta said in 2022.

That said, Barghouti has an immense standing in the Palestinian community and, in a slightly kinder, saner world, could play a significant role.

In the racist narrative of Israel and the West, the only hostages are those held by Hamas. It’s time to free the Palestinian hostages, starting with Marwan Barghouti — the longest-suffering of thousands of hostages. All of the hostages should be freed — including the remaining 100 held by Hamas.

To riff on The Specials 1984 song ‘Free Nelson Mandela’:

“27 years in captivity

“His body abused but his mind is still free

“Are you so blind that you cannot see?

“Free Marwan Barghouti, I’m begging you”

Republished from Eugene Doyle’s website Solidarity with permission.

Gaza’s last standing university has been destroyed by the Israeli army as military continued to strike targets in areas of the besieged territory where it has told civilians to seek refuge.

Global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on Israeli authorities to end military pactices that “violate international law” with the deaths of civilians, including journalists.

This came in the wake of seven journalists being killed by Israeli security forces in the space of a week — six in the besieged Gaza Strip and the seventh in Lebanon.

“We’re stunned by this sad record of seven journalists killed in seven days during this bloody week, as a result of Israel’s indiscriminate response to the horrific massacre committed by Hamas,” said Christophe Deloire, the secretary-general of RSF, in a statement.

• READ MORE: ‘Drop in the ocean’: Aid trucks begin crossing into Gaza from Egypt
• Al Jazeera live news blog on Gaza
• Other War on Gaza reports

On Saturday, 14 October 2023, reporter Issam Abdallah was buried in the Lebanese town of El Khayam, where he was born and grew up.

The videographer was killed the day before while reporting for the British news agency Reuters with several colleagues.

The group of journalists, clearly identifiable according to several sources, was stationed near Alma al Chaab, in southern Lebanon on the border with Israel, to cover the clashes between Israeli military forces and those of the Islamist armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In total, around 10 journalists were killed in the region within a week, including seven in Gaza and Lebanon under Israeli bombardment and fire.

Protest to Israel
These include photojournalists Mohammed Soboh of the Palestinian news agency Khabar, Hisham al-Nawajha of the independent Palestinian news channel Al Khamissa, Ibrahim Lafi of the production company Ain Media, and Mohammad al-Salihi of the Palestinian news agency al-Sulta al-Rabia, as well as Saïd al-Tawil, editor-in-chief of Al Khamissa, and Mohammed Abou Matar, correspondent for Roya News.

“We solemnly call on the Israeli authorities to put an end to military practices that violate international law and result in the deaths of civilians, including journalists,” said RSF’s Deloire.

“RSF calls on the parties involved to implement their obligations to protect journalists during conflicts, and on international institutions to ensure that these protection measures are respected.”

Issam Abdallah, 37, had worked for Reuters in Beirut for 16 years.

A videographer in areas of tension, he has covered the conflict in Ukraine in recent months and, in 2020, the explosion in the port of Beirut.

In his last photo posted on his Instagram account on October 7, the reporter paid tribute to Shireen Abu Akleh, a journalist from Al Jazeera and correspondent in Palestine, who was killed by an Israeli sniper in May 2022 while covering an Israeli army raid in Jenin on the West Bank.

Six other journalists were wounded on Friday, October 13: two members of the Reuters team, Thaer Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh, an image reporter (Dylan Collins), and a photographer (Christina Assi) from Agence France-Presse (AFP), as well as two journalists from the Qatari television channel Al Jazeera, Carmen Jokhadar and cameraman Elie Barkhya.

They were taken to the American University of Beirut hospital. Their lives are out of danger, but Christina Assi was still in intensive care.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

As we prepared for this podcast, representatives of Arab states have presented a united front at the United Nations, criticising the UN Security Council of doing nothing to protect civilians from Israeli bombing and missile attacks on Gazan civilians and locations.

Since then, the UN Security Council has considered two resolutions, the latter calling for a pause in hostilities to allow a humanitarian effort to enter Gaza to assist civilians.

The United States vetoed that Security Council resolution.

• READ MORE: Regional tensions threaten to spill over, Israel continues attack on Gaza
• Other War on Gaza reports

Al Jazeera has detailed that Israel forces have targeted and bombed civilian facilities include hospitals, schools, residential areas resulting in the deaths of thousands of people, civilians – around one-third of the deaths are children.

It remains contested by all sides in this conflict as to who, or what, is responsible for the deadly attack on Gaza Hospital, resulting in the deaths of at least 471 people.

Additional to this, Israel has sealed the borders of Gaza while it prevents food, water and medical supplies from reaching civilians — in breach of international law requirements and laws of conflict.

Israel ordered Gazan civilians, who wish to get to safety, to get out of North Gaza and move toward the south, to the border with Egypt.

Heavy bombing, sealed border
But as people fled south toward what appeared to be safety, Israel bombed the southern Gaza region killing more civilians and sealing off that corridor for others who sought refuge.

As a consequence of the bombing, Egypt responded by sealing the Gaza-Egypt border.

Humanitarian aid now sits on trucks, waiting, on the Egypt side of the border, while United Nations officials implore Israel and Egypt to allow medical supplies, food and water to get through to those who are injured and dying.

The Israel Defence Force strikes followed a surprise-attack on Israeli citizens by soldiers operating under the Hamas banner.

Civilians were slaughtered and others taken hostage, only to be used as bargaining chips and leverage against their enemies.

Even Palestinian advocacy groups like the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa suggested that breaches of international humanitarian Law, crimes against civilians, have been committed by those Hamas-aligned fighters.

But they are clear, as others are too, that crimes against humanity, war crimes, have been committed by Israel, without consequence, as we all give witness to its response which is disproportionate, brutal, and disregarding of the thousands of Palestinian lives that have already been taken.

The View From Afar podcast on Gaza.

Getting worse
That is the grave current situation and it is likely to get much worse.

In this episode, Selwyn Manning and global security and geopolitics analyst Dr Paul Buchanan discuss the crisis yesterday:

• What are the world’s leaders doing to stop the carnage?
• Are the world’s nations being drawn into what will be an ever-expanding war?
• Are we witnessing the beginning of a war where on one side authoritarian-led states like Russia, Iran, the wider Arab states, and possibly China stand unified against the United States, Britain, Germany, and other so-called liberal democratic allies representing the old world order?
• Is what we are witnessing, what happens when a global rules-based order, multilateralism and institutions like the United Nations no longer have influence to prevent war, or restore peace and stability, or assert principles of international justice and enforce the rights of victims to see recourse to the law?
• Why has this slaughter become an opportunity for the US and Russia to square-off against each other at the UN Security Council — a body that was once designed to advocate and achieve peace, but has now become a geopolitically divided entity of stalemate and mediocrity?
• Eventually, will humanitarianism prevail? Will the world recognise that all people, the elderly, women, children, people of all ethnicities and religions, that they all bleed and die irrespective of their state of origin, when leaders of all sides, while sitting back in their bunkers, unleash weapons designed to kill as many people as is possible?

Watch this episode of A View from Afar

In the aftermath of Palestinian group Hamas’ terror attack inside Israel on October 7 and the Israeli state’s even more terrifying attacks on Palestinian urban neighbourhoods in Gaza, the media across many parts of Asia tend to take a more neutral stand in comparison with their Western counterparts.

A lot of sympathy is expressed for the plight of the Palestinians who have been under frequent attacks by Israeli forces for decades and have faced ever trauma since the Nakba in 1948 when Zionist militia forced some 750,000 refugees to leave their homeland.

Even India, which has been getting closer to Israel in recent years, and one of Israel’s closest Asian allies, Singapore, have taken a cautious attitude to the latest chapter in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

• READ MORE:  Israel-Gaza crisis: NZ must condemn atrocities but keep pushing for a two-state solution
• Big Auckland rally shows solidarity with Palestine over ‘genocidal’ war
• 7 journalists killed since beginning of Israeli aggression on Gaza
• Jakarta workers protest outside US Embassy, call for end to Hamas-Israeli war
• Other Hamas-Israel conflict reports
• Al Jazeera live news blog on the Hamas-Israel conflict

Soon after the Hamas attacks in Israel, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was “deeply shocked by the news of terrorist attacks”.

He added: “We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour.” But, soon after, his Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) sought to strike a balance.

Addressing a media briefing on October 12, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi reiterated New Delhi’s “long-standing and consistent” position on the issue, telling reporters that “India has always advocated the resumption of direct negotiations towards establishing a sovereign, independent and viable state of Palestine” living in peace with Israel.

Singapore has also reiterated its support for a two-state solution, with Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam telling Today Daily that it was possible to deplore how Palestinians had been treated over the years while still unequivocally condemning the terrorist attacks carried out in Israel by Hamas.

“These atrocities cannot be justified by any rationale whatsoever, whether of fundamental problems or historical grievances,” he said.

“I think it’s fair to say that any response has to be consistent with international law and international rules of war”.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has blamed the rapidly worsening conflict in the Middle East on a lack of justice for the Palestinian people.

Lack of justice for Palestinians
“The crux of the issue lies in the fact that justice has not been done to the Palestinian people,” Beijing’s top diplomat said in a phone call with Brazil’s Celso Amorim, a special adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, according to Japan’s Nikkei Asia.

The call came just ahead of an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on October 13 to discuss the Israel-Hamas war. Brazil, a non-permanent member, is chairing the council this month.

Indonesian President Jokowi Widodo called for an end to the region’s bloodletting cycle and pro-Palestinian protests have been held in Jakarta.

“Indonesia calls for the war and violence to be stopped immediately to avoid further human casualties and destruction of property because the escalation of the conflict can cause greater humanitarian impact,” he said.

“The root cause of the conflict, which is the occupation of Palestinian land by Israel, must be resolved immediately in accordance with the parameters that have been agreed upon by the UN.”

Indonesia, which is home to the world’s largest Muslim population, has supported Palestinian self-determination for a long time and does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

But, Indonesia’s foreign ministry said 275 Indonesians were working in Israel and were making plans to evacuate them.

Sympathy for the Palestinians
Meanwhile, Thailand said that 18 of their citizens have been killed by the terror attacks and 11 abducted.

In the Philippines, Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo said on October 10 that the safety of thousands of Filipinos living and working in Israel remained a priority for the government.

There are approximately 40,000 Filipinos in Israel, but only 25,000 are legally documented, according to labour and migrant groups, says Benar News, a US-funded Asian news portal.

According to India’s MEA spokesperson Bagchi, there are 18,000 Indians in Israel and about a dozen in the Palestinian territories. India is trying to bring them home, and a first flight evacuating 230 Indians was expected to take place at the weekend, according to the Hindu newspaper.

It is unclear what such large numbers of Asians are doing in Israel. Yet, from media reports in the region, there is deep concern about the plight of civilians caught up in the clashes.

Benar News reported that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has spoken with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict according to UN-agreed parameters.

Also this week, the Malaysian government announced it would allocate 1 million ringgit (US$211,423) in humanitarian aid for Palestinians.

Western view questioned
Sympathy for the Palestinian cause is reflected widely in the Asian media, both in Muslim-majority and non-Muslim countries. The Western unequivocal support for Israel, particularly by Anglo-American media, has been questioned across Asia.

Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post’s regular columnist Alex Lo challenged Hamas’ “unprovoked” terror attack in Israel, a narrative commonly used in Western media reporting of the latest flare-up.

“It must be pointed out that what Hamas has done is terrorism pure and simple,” notes Lo.

“But such horrors and atrocities are not being committed by Palestinian militants without a background and a context. They did not come out of nowhere as unadulterated and uncaused evil”.

Thus Lo argues, that to claim that the latest terror attacks were “unprovoked” is to whitewash the background and context that constitute the very history of this unending conflict in Palestine.

US media’s ‘morally reprehensible propaganda’
“It’s morally reprehensible propaganda of the worst kind that the mainstream Anglo-American media culture has been guilty of for decades,” he says.

“But the real problem with that is not only with morality but also with the very practical politics of searching for a viable peace settlement”.

He is concerned that “with their unconditional and uncritical support of Israel, the West and the United States in particular have essentially made such a peace impossible”.

Writing in India’s Hindu newspaper, Denmark-based Indian professor of literature Dr Tabish Khair points out that historically, Palestinians have had to indulge in drastic and violent acts to draw attention to their plight and the oppressive policies of Israel.

“The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), under Yasser Arafat’s leadership, used such ‘terrorist’ acts to focus world attention on the Palestinian problem, and without such actions, the West would have looked the other way while the Palestinians were slowly airbrushed out of history,” he argues.

While the PLO fought a secular Palestinian battle for nationhood, which was largely ignored by Western powers, this lead to political Islam’s development in the later part of the 1970s, and Hamas is a product of that.

“Today, we live in a world where political Islam is associated almost entirely with Islam — and almost all Muslims,” he notes.

Palestinian cause still resonates
But, the Palestinian cause still resonates beyond the Muslim communities, as the reactions in Asia reflect.

Indian historian and journalist Vijay Prashad, writing in Bangladesh’s Daily Star, notes the savagery of the impending war against the Palestinian people will be noted by the global community.

He points out that Hamas was never allowed to function as a voice for the Palestinian people, even after they won a landslide democratic election in Gaza in January 2006.

“The victory of Hamas was condemned by the Israelis and the West, who decided to use armed force to overthrow the election result,” he points out.

“Gaza was never allowed a political process, in fact never allowed to shape any kind of political authority to speak for the people”.

Prashad points out that when the Palestinians conducted a non-violent march in 2019 for their rights to nationhood, they were met with Israeli bombs that killed 200 people.

“When non-violent protest is met with force, it becomes difficult to convince people to remain on that path and not take up arms,” he argues.

Prashad disputes the Western media’s argument that Israel has a “right to defend itself” because the Palestinians are people under occupation. Under the Geneva Convention, Israel has an obligation to protect them.

Under the Geneva Convention, Prashad argues that the Israeli government’s “collective punishment” strategy is a war crime.

“The International Criminal Court opened an investigation into Israeli war crimes in 2021 but it was not able to move forward even to collect information”.

Kalinga Seneviratne is a correspondent for IDN-InDepthNews, the flagship agency of the non-profit International Press Syndicate (IPS). Republished under a Creative Commons licence.

A progressive foreign policy group is calling for the New Zealand government to condemn the siege of Gaza, and demand an immediate ceasefire to allow the establishment of a humanitarian aid corridor in the region.

Israel’s complete siege on the Gaza Strip has cut off power, food, water, electricity and fuel to the region, as the death toll from Israeli air strikes climbs over 1,100.

Human rights advocates are condemning this action as a crime against humanity.

• READ MORE: Operation Al Aqsa Storm: How, why, and where to now in Gaza?
• Other reports on the Attack on Gaza

Thousands of Palestinians — including the deaths of seven journalists bearing witness — and humanitarian workers have been targeted, injured and killed by Israeli air strikes.

Hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed, as fuel supplies needed to run generators have been cut off, resulting in a power blackout across the region.

“We are horrified by the New Zealand government’s failure to demand an end to Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza,” said Te Kuaka co-director Dr Arama Rata.

“We call for the New Zealand government to urge an immediate ceasefire and the provision of healthcare and humanitarian assistance in Gaza.”

Reckless rhetoric
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant justified the siege by claiming: “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”

US President Joe Biden condemned Hamas as a “terrorist” organisation, and affirmed “Israel’s right to defend itself”.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta reiterated these statements.

A member of Te Kuaka, researcher and writer Dr Max Harris, said: “There is a pressing danger right now that claims about Israel’s right to self-defence are being used as cover for profound violations of international law, and the destruction of families and communities in Gaza.”

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, has expressed deep concern about the situation, and about UK Labour leader Keir Starmer’s comments claiming Israel’s right to self-defence justified the cutting off of electricity and supplies to Gaza.

Albanese has called the intentional starvation of civilians as part of a broader attack on civilians a “war crime and, potentially, a crime against humanity”.

Dr Harris said: “New Zealand must set other countries’ sights on the need for a humanitarian aid corridor, and our political leaders must avoid reckless rhetoric that will pave the way for war crimes and further senseless loss of life.”

• Nationwide rallies on Saturday, October 14, calling for an end to the Israeli-Gaza war and the killing of civilians — in Auckland at 2pm at Aotea Square.
• Other rally details here

The tragic events in Israel/Palestine these past few days have highlighted the absolute failure of Western governments like New Zealand to hold Israel accountable for its myriad war crimes against the Palestinian people for more than 75 years.

Even in the past year the New Zealand government has failed to speak up despite obvious signs that unbearable pressure was building in Palestine following the election in late 2022 of the most extreme far-right government in Israel’s history.

• READ MORE: in the face of Western hypocrisy, people stand with Gaza
• Other Gaza-Israel war reports

This new government has taken numerous steps to ramp up pressure on Palestinians everywhere in the occupied Palestinian territories by:

• Announcing the building of more illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land;
• Encouraging attacks on Palestinian towns villages and rural communities by illegal Israeli settlers and provided Israeli military support for the settlers;
• Organising highly provocative incursions into the Al Aqsa mosque compound by Israeli government ministers; and
• Justifying and casualised the killing of Palestinians resisting the Israeli occupation of their country (more than 250 Palestinians were killed in the first nine months of this year including dozens of children)

The total silence of Western governments such as New Zealand to these developments has emboldened Israel to act with impunity as it bulldozes more Palestinian land, builds more illegal settlements.

The reaction from Hamas when its attack came has shocked and appalled Israelis, Palestinians and most of the world community.

Attacks on civilians condemned
Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has condemned the Hamas attack on civilians as a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention, just as we condemn any attack on civilians no matter who the attacker is.

But unlike our Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, and most Western governments, we also condemn Israeli war crimes.

It is a war crime to use collective punishment against civilian populations. In other words it is unlawful to punish a whole group for the actions of a few.

It is also unlawful to withhold, food, water and the essentials of life from people living under military occupation as Israel is doing to Gaza.

The New Zealand government must not only condemn war crimes committed by Hamas but it must also condemn war crimes against the Palestinian people.

But Prime Minister Hipkins has not once this year condemned Israeli war crimes and even after the events of the past few days he is silent. For the government, Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli lives.

More war crimes
Meanwhile, Israel has announced preparations to commit more war crimes against Palestinians.

“We are fighting against human animals” said Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant yesterday as he announced what he called a “complete siege” on Gaza which Israel is set to impose.

Hearing racist, dehumanising, language about Palestinians from Israeli politicians is nothing new but this time Israel is using genocidal language to justify the massive death toll which they are planning to inflict on Palestinian refugees in Gaza — refugees created through war crimes committed by Israeli militias in 1948.

On Saturday, Palestinians and their supporters are holding rallies and vigils around New Zealand to demand our government speak out and condemn not only the killing of Israeli civilians but also the slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

We will be demanding the government take action to hold Israel to account for the crimes of its occupation of Palestine in the same way we have held Russia to account for its crimes against the Ukrainian people in its occupation of Ukraine.

The start of each rally will include a minute of silence to remember all the civilians — Palestinians and Israelis — who have been killed in the last week.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

• Nationwide rallies on Saturday, October 14, calling for an end to the Israeli-Gaza war and the killing of civilians — in Auckland at 2pm at Aotea Square.
• Other rally details here

Almost 50 years to the day after the joint Egyptian-Syrian offensive that launched the 1973 October War, Israel has once again been caught with its pants down. On this occasion its briefs were dangling from its ankles as well.

Operation Al Aqsa Storm, as Hamas named its 7 October 2023 offensive into Israeli territory, represents an even greater Israeli failure.

Extensive and reasonably successful Egyptian and Syrian efforts to conceal their intentions, preparations, and capabilities notwithstanding, Israel in 1973 received multiple warnings about an impending Arab attack from, among others, King Hussein of Jordan, a high-level Egyptian agent, and several of its own intelligence officers.

• READ MORE: Netanyahu shows map of ‘New Middle East’– without Palestine — to UN General Assembly
• Hospitals under threat as Gaza power plant to run out in hours – Al Jazeera live news
• Other Palestine reports

Its primary failure was not ignorance, but the haughty dismissal of knowledge that contradicted preconceptions.

While hubris and complacency have been mainstays in Israel’s dealings with Arab military adversaries, on this occasion it additionally had no information about the impending operation.

This despite its world-leading surveillance and intelligence capabilities, and the reality that the Gaza Strip is not only miniscule in size but also the most intensively and intrusively surveilled territory and population on the planet, and one that has furthermore been under blockade for 17 years.

That Hamas and Islamic Jihad were under these circumstances able to plan and prepare an operation of such scale, scope, and sophistication, a process that will have consumed many months at the least, and will have required extensive communications among leaders, cadres, and operatives, is an astonishing achievement and testament to the legendary resourcefulness of Gaza’s Palestinians.

Launched in plain view
While we can at this point only speculate as to how Hamas managed to prepare and launch this offensive in plain view of Israel, the avoidance or effective encryption of electronic and digital communications will certainly have played an important role.

Similarly, Hamas has in recent years considerably improved its counter-intelligence capabilities to minimise infiltration, an essential feature given the nearly constant flow of Palestinians who transit through Israeli-controlled border crossings and are susceptible to recruitment by Israeli intelligence as conditions for access to health care, employment, and the like.

Rather than serving as Israel’s eyes and ears within the Gaza Strip, it seems likely at least some of these Palestinians conducted reconnaissance for Operation Al Aqsa Storm within Israel.

As for the weaponry used, much of it is either rudimentary or of local manufacture, making ingenious use of available materials such as paragliders, steel from a British ship that sunk off the Gaza coast decades ago to manufacture rocket tubes, and unexploded Israeli ordnance. More advanced capabilities will have been smuggled in, presumably with the assistance of Hizballah in Lebanon, perhaps with the cooperation of sympathetic or corrupt Egyptian border patrols.

The legendary corruption of Israel’s own border crossings with the Gaza Strip may also have played a role.

Committed to fighting the previous war, Israel constructed formidable underground obstacles to prevent Palestinian commandos from infiltrating Israel through their tunnel network. In response, Hamas and Islamic Jihad simply breached the weak points in the barriers surrounding the Gaza Strip, such as wire fences that relied on electronic monitoring rather than more sturdy concrete obstacles (some of which also appear to have been breached).

And a key objective of the initial Palestinian missile barrage, which targeted Israeli military airfields among other objectives, was to paralyze and thus delay Israel’s ability to rapidly respond.

Immediate objectives
Al Aqsa Storm’s immediate objectives were to infiltrate and seize key Israeli security installations, such as the Re’im military base which serves as the headquarters for the Gaza Division; kill or capture a significant number of Israeli soldiers; establish Palestinian territorial control over population centers within Israel’s boundaries for the first time since 1948; and present significantly improved Palestinian capabilities to the Israeli public and security establishment with a massive missile barrage at Israeli cities and the deployment of new infiltration and combat techniques.

While Israeli civilian casualties do not appear to have been an objective as such, it appears that many were killed, and others abducted. Additionally, there are reports of a massacre at a desert party.

In the event, the operation succeeded in nearly all respects, one suspects beyond the wildest expectations of those who planned and executed it. Dozens of Israeli soldiers, including a major general, were spirited into captivity inside the Gaza Strip.

Many more, including senior officers, were killed and wounded, and almost 24 hours after the operation commenced, Palestinian fighters remained ensconced in multiple locations and installations inside Israel.

Images of Israeli bulldozers and missiles deployed against the Israeli police headquarters in Sderot to dislodge Palestinian fighters within it will remain with us for some time, and as with the Egyptian military’s nearly effortless crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973, won’t be erased by subsequent developments.

A more difficult question concerns Hamas’s motives and broader aims. Seen from the movement’s perspective, Israel has simply gone too far, for too long.

Particularly under the stewardship of the Netanyahu government and its predecessor, escalation has been consistent and transformed into a strategy.

Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing of the Jordan Valley, army-enabled attacks on villages throughout the West Bank by settler auxiliaries, and increasing incursions by prominent Israeli politicians and settler groups into the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem’s Old City have reached new heights, and done so in the explicit service of formal annexation.

Indeed, speaking last month to the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu displayed a map that showed both the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, Israel has shown no inclination to lift or significantly relax the blockade, and treats Hamas as a force that can safely be ignored on the grounds that the movement cares about little else than maintaining its rule over the Gaza Strip.

Within Israel’s prisons, the situation of Palestinian detainees has been deteriorating by design. Yet every Israeli escalation has been normalised by Israel’s US and European partners, with each outrage met by little more than paeans to “shared values” and Israel’s “right to defend itself” and, under Washington’s leadership, a focus on an Israeli-Saudi agreement intended to render Palestine and the Palestinians irrelevant.

Within the region, a growing number of Arab states have in practice extended to Greater Israel a halal certificate, at Palestinian expense. Closer to home, Turkey has forced a number of Hamas leaders it previously hosted to leave the country, and Qatar has in recent months reduced the financial support it provides to Gaza in agreement with Israel, on the grounds that Hamas needs to find a more sustainable solution to its financial crisis.

So what is Operation Al Aqsa Storm meant to achieve? It appears that the movement concluded, some time ago, that a repeat of previous confrontations with Israel, such as during the 2021 Unity Intifada, the first that Hamas rather than Israel initiated, would be insufficient to break the logjam, and that only a spectacle on the scale of what we witnessed on October 7 would serve to concentrate minds in Israel and other relevant capitals.

In other words, the main objective would seem to be to render the status quo obsolete and put paid to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade, entirely or at least in its current form. Secondly, Hamas appears determined to free Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, and additionally use those it has captured and abducted as leverage in negotiations on other matters, including for example those relating to the Haram al-Sharif.

Insurmountable obstacles
It is highly unlikely that undermining Saudi-Israeli diplomacy formed an important motivation, because the proposed deal faces too many insurmountable obstacles in Washington and Israel, and both Hamas and its allies understand this.

Additionally, if Muhammad bin Salman is determined to proceed with such a deal, there’s no indication he would be deterred by a mound of Palestinian corpses any more than his Arab cohorts who preceded him, and in any case, could consummate any agreement after a decent interval.

This notwithstanding, embarrassing not Riyadh specifically but all regional capitals that maintain formal or informal relations with Israel is an added benefit for Hamas. Particularly so if mass demonstrations in the region in support of the Palestinians serve to remind its governments and the world at large that Palestine remains a live issue.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad can additionally be presumed to hope that their offensive fatally weakens the PA ensconced in Ramallah, thereby creating greater freedom of action for their movements in the West Bank.

The above notwithstanding, the timing of this operation is curious, because conventional wisdom held that Israel’s various adversaries were content with a strategy of managed escalation so as not to interrupt the growing polarisation and dysfunction within the Israeli political arena.

That Hamas nevertheless chose an unprecedented offensive at this moment may have been related to matters of operational security and fears of exposure, or an assessment that this was an opportune moment with Israel having prioritised sadism in the West Bank and reinforcement of its border with Lebanon, or indeed a revised assessment that exposing the colossal failure of Israel’s extremists and security establishment is the best way to weaken them.

It is inconceivable that Hamas would have embarked on an operation of this scale without also preparing for an unprecedented Israeli response. Together with Islamic Jihad and others, it will probably have prepared for massive Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip launched for the purpose of significantly degrading their organisations and infrastructure, killing cadres and assassinating leaders it can locate, and leaving a massive trail of death and destruction.

Last stand thinking
Better a last stand than a slow death, the thinking apparently goes, particularly if that stand gives a renewed lease on life. Israel will presumably also conduct a massive sweep throughout the West Bank, crack down on Palestinians within Israel, and may also seek to abduct or liquidate Hamas leaders based abroad.

It’s a scenario based on the reasonable assumption that Israel remains unprepared to resume direct control of the entire territory for a protracted period of time. In other words, and as with previous assaults on the Gaza Strip, Israel’s objective may ultimately be to restore a version of the status quo that produced the present crisis.

Inflicting significant casualties in close-quarter combat, as the Palestinians succeeded in doing in 2014, could reduce the length and intensity of such incursions. The Palestinian organisations presumably know better than to believe that holding dozens of Israeli prisoners will provide them with a measure of protection from the authors of the Hannibal Doctrine, which considers a dead Israeli soldier preferable to a captive one.

It is an issue that can at most be used for psychological warfare.

A key question is whether Gaza’s militants will confront Israel only with their existing preparations, or whether Operation Al Aqsa Storm is part of a broader initiative by the self-styled Axis of Resistance, in which Hezbollah and perhaps others will join the fray if Israel crosses certain red lines to relieve the pressure on the Gaza Strip.

If Israel follows through on its demands of mass evacuations of densely populated Palestinian neighborhoods and proceeds with intensive carpet bombing to flatten them, causing mass casualties in the process, we may soon find out.

Mouin Rabbani has published and commented widely on Palestinian affairs, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He was previously senior analyst Middle East and special advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group, and head of political affairs with the Office of the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria. He is co-editor of Jadaliyya Ezine.

Hamas has responded to Israel’s escalating violence with an unprecedented attack. This is not a new tragedy; it is an extension of the same old cycle.

We grieve all the losses of this calamity, and we call on our government not to speak the same old words but to finally act.

To call today’s act “unprovoked” is wilful blindness. Choose your timeframe; choose your provocation.

• READ MORE: Gaza-Israel war: Death toll rises as Israeli attacks continue to pound Gaza – live updates
• What is Hamas? A simple guide to the armed Palestinian group
• John Minto: Systemic NZ misreporting on Israeli occupation of Palestine and Palestinian resistance
• Al Jazeera coverage of the war
• Other Palestine reports

Israel is carrying out the longest, now-illegal, now-apartheid occupation in modern history. Gaza has been illegally blockaded for 17 years, confining more than two million mostly civilian human beings in deteriorating conditions, subjecting them to repeated bombardments and ceaseless deprivation.

More than 200 Palestinians have been killed in 2023 so far, including four the other day. The latest of Israel’s settler-state pogroms in the West Bank took place in Huwara one day before Hamas’s action.

Hamas’s attack is a response to longterm and escalating, immediate violence.

The blockade wall that was breached is an illegal structure. A million children have been born behind that wall; did you expect them to sit quietly?

Wall deserves to fall
That wall deserves to fall — but we, here in Aotearoa and throughout the world, should have brought it down with diplomatic and economic and legal sanctions long before it came to this.

Now Hamas’s violent resistance has broken through the wall.

Palestinians have a legal right to armed resistance, but no one has a right to unlimited violence. There is no honour in attacking civilians in their homes or bombing Gazan apartment buildings.

It is a core principle of international humanitarian law that the violations of one armed group do not release another armed group from its constant obligation to uphold the rights of civilians. Armed groups are responsible to the law, to the idea of minimising the harm done in this world.

We who demand the protection of Palestinian civilians can best do that by calling for the protection of all civilians: human rights are either everyone’s rights or they are nothing.

If we lose sight of that, the world becomes even more dangerous — and Palestinians have always borne the brunt of that danger.

No military solution
There is no military solution. Solutions call for political will here, outside Israel/Palestine.

The rage and despair accumulated through generations and decades of brutality will not reset. Do not call for the return to the status quo ante because it was intolerable, unjust and illegal.

We, here in Aotearoa New Zealand, need to act on the basis of law and the equal rights of human beings to protection, to justice, to self-determination.

We call on our government to initiate, to pick up the phone and lead in mustering international action.

For anyone to be safe, Palestinians must be free and civilians must be protected.

The Hamas attack on Israel yesterday has brought the usual round of systemic misreporting by New Zealand news outlets as they repost stories from the BBC, AP and Reuters which bend the truth in favour of Israeli narratives of “terrorism” and “victimhood”.

The worst comes from the BBC which is dutifully reposted by Radio New Zealand.

As we said in a commentary earlier this year the systemic anti-Palestinian in reporting from the Middle East includes:

• READ MORE: John Minto: Israeli attacks on Al Aqsa mosque – and the failings of media
• Al-Aqsa raid: How BBC coverage is enabling Israeli violence
• New Zealand politicians speak out over Israel-Hamas violence
• Al Jazeera coverage of the crisis
• Other Palestine reports

The BBC, AP and Reuters typically talk about the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem when they should be reported as the occupied West Bank, occupied Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem.

“Occupied” is the status these territories have under international law, United Nations resolutions and NZ government policy and should be consistently reported as such.

The BBC, AP and Reuters typically refer to Palestinians resisting Israel’s military occupation Palestinian “militants” or “terrorists” or similar derogatory and dismissive descriptions.

We would not call Ukrainians attacking Russian occupation forces as “militants” so why do our media think it’s OK to use this term to describe Palestinians attacking Israeli occupation forces?

Palestinian right to resist
Under international law, Palestinians have the right to resist Israel’s military occupation, including armed resistance and should not be abused for doing so by our media.

Palestinian resistance groups should be described as “resistance fighters” or “armed resistance organisations” while Israeli soldiers should be described as “Israeli occupation soldiers”.

The BBC, AP and Reuters typically give sympathetic coverage to Israelis killed by Palestinians but do not give similar sympathetic coverage to Palestinians killed, on a near daily basis, by the Israeli occupation (more than 240 killed so far this year, including dozens of children.

The vast majority of these killings are simply ignored.

Palestinians are the victims of Israeli apartheid policies, ethnic cleansing, land theft, house demolitions, military occupation and unbridled brutality and yet our media ends up giving the impression it’s the other way round.

Wide coverage is given to Israeli spokespeople in most stories with rudimentary reporting, if any, from Palestinian viewpoints.

For example, so far Radio New Zealand has reported on the views of New Zealand Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses but has yet to interview any Palestinian New Zealanders who suffer great anxiety every time Palestinians are killed by Israel.

Support for self-determination
New Zealanders overwhelmingly support the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination. They rightly reject Israel’s racist narratives and its apartheid policies towards Palestinians.

Yara Eid, a journalist from Gaza, expresses her reaction to the news that her friend and fellow journalist 21-year-old Ibrahim Lafi was murdered by Israeli missiles in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/4LqutaOgmP

— PALESTINE ONLINE (@OnlinePalEng) October 8, 2023

Our government policy needs to change.

We should not be calling for negotiations between the parties because Palestinians face both Israel and US at the negotiating table and this will never bring justice for Palestinians and will therefore never bring peace.

Instead, we need a timeline for Israel to abide by international law and United Nations resolutions. This would mean:

• Ending the Israeli military occupation of Palestine;
• Ending Israel’s apartheid policies against Palestinians, and Allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land in Palestine

John Minto is national chair of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished with permission.

Contact with the journalist Nidal Al-Wahidi was lost yesterday during his coverage of events at the Beit Hanoun checkpoint, and there is no confirmed information about his death. https://t.co/2U9wAkrwaw

— PALESTINE ONLINE (@OnlinePalEng) October 8, 2023

The New Zealand government bears heavy responsibility for loss of life of Palestinians and Israelis in the latest fighting in Israel/Palestine and must revisit its policy, says the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national chair John Minto.

“Whatever the eventual outcome of the Hamas attacks on Israel today [Saturday], the New Zealand government bears heavy responsibility for the loss of life of Palestinians and Israelis,” he said in a statement.

“Like other Western countries, New Zealand has failed to hold Israel to account for its multiple crimes, including war crimes, against the Palestinian people, day after day, year after year and decade after decade.

• READ MORE: Israel-Palestine escalation live: Strikes hit Gaza after Hamas offensive
• Why Hamas launched the attacks on Israel
• Other Israel-Palestine reports

“We have ignored human rights reports of Israel’s apartheid policies. Our government has been looking the other way.”

Hamas launched a large-scale military operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” against Israel, describing it as in response to the desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque and increased settler violence.

The group running the besieged Gaza Strip (population 2.1 million) said it had fired thousands of rockets and sent fighters into Israel. Reports said at least 40 Israelis had been killed, 35 people taken captive and more than 750 had been wounded and taken to hospitals.

Palestinian sources said 160 people had been killed, mostly in Gaza Strip.

Repeated Israeli attacks
Minto described the Hamas attacks as “understandable”.

“Over recent months Western countries have turned a blind eye to the brutality of the Israeli army and settler groups engaging in repeated attacks on Palestinian towns and villages and the killing of civilians and children,” he said.

“The result is now playing out in more violence initiated by Israel’s brutal occupation — the longest military occupation in modern history. The occupation includes Israel’s 17-year-old blockade of the Gaza strip — the largest open-air prison in the world.”

Al Jazeera reports that almost 250 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces so far this year.

“New Zealand must reassess its policy on the Middle East and demand Israel adopt a timetable to implement international law and United Nations resolutions.”

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is finished. Politically and otherwise,” declared Al Jazeera political analyst Marwan Bishara, who says Israel has never learnt from history of colonialism.

“His arrogance has finally caught with him. No matter how many Palestinians this corrupt opportunist kills before his final downfall, he will go down in utter humiliation.

“Israel gets a glimpse of the real future days after Netanyahu cavalierly showed us at the United Nations future maps of the new Middle East centered around Israel — with no Palestine existence.”

Israel launched air strikes on Gaza in retaliation in an operation called “Iron Swords”.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) supporters are livid Labour is refusing to recognise the state of Palestine a full 104 years after the first Palestinian calls for an independent state.

It’s a disgraceful decision, both unprincipled and cowardly.

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson confirmed this decision when answering questions here:

• READ MORE: Other Palestine reports

Q – ??? about the Palestinian Representative in Australia to present his credentials here. That was announced formally.

Grant Robertson – There is a formal Foreign Policy part of the manifesto. We’re sticking with the long standing bi-partisan approach to a two-state solution in the Middle East and what we are doing is working with the Palestinian representative on closer discussions but that doesn’t make a change to a formal recognition. It just means that we open that dialogue up.

Q – So no formal recognition?

GR – Not until there is a state to recognise. But we have long stood for a two-state solution and what we have said is that we want to have more open and regular dialogue with Palestinian Representatives.

Labour implied in their manifesto release this week that they would recognise the state of Palestine although the wording was unclear and ambiguous. What is clear now is that the slippery wording was deliberately meant to mean all things to all people.

The disingenuous wording in the Labour manifesto says:

Labour is committed to an enduring and just two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on the right of Israel to live in peace within secure borders internationally recognised and agreed by the parties, and reflecting the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people to also live in peace and security within their own state.

A re-elected Labour government will:

Invite the Head of the General Delegation of Palestine to present their credentials as an Ambassador to New Zealand.

One hundred and thirty eight other countries have recognised Palestine as a state and haven’t had the “problem” of recognition that Grant Robertson has manufactured for Labour.

It seems Labour has once more buckled to pressure from a tiny pro-Israel lobby group within the party. They are allowing these anti-Palestinian racists to veto any meaningful steps to support the Palestinian struggle for human rights.

It’s an indelible stain on Labour’s integrity.

Background to the 104 years
After 1918, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of the First World War, each of the countries of that empire gained independence — except Palestine. The first Palestine National Congress was held in 1919 and called for independence from Britain which held the League of Nations mandate for Palestine.

Britain, however, refused independence and in the 104 years since, Western countries, including New Zealand, have colluded with Britain, then Israel and the US, to deny a Palestinian state or even equal rights for Palestinians who are citizens of Israel.

Western countries turned a blind eye to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1947–49 and look the other way today as Palestinians continue to be driven out of their homes and off their land by Israeli settlers, backed up by the Israeli military.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.

If re-elected, Labour would invite Palestinian ambassador to Canberra to present credentials here. pic.twitter.com/UvzyOTd96T

— Thomas Coughlan (@coughlthom) October 1, 2023

By Yumna Patel

On September 13, 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Yasser Arafat shook hands in front of an elated US President Bill Clinton on the White House lawn.

The image capturing that handshake came to be one of the most famous images of all time, representing one of the most defining moments in recent Palestinian history.

It was the day that the Declaration of Principles (DOP), or the first Oslo Agreement (Oslo I) was signed, kicking off the so-called peace process that was meant to culminate with “peace” in the region and resolve the so-called “conflict”.

• READ MORE: Read other Palestine reports

But the Oslo Accords never actually promised an independent Palestinian state, or even something that remotely resembled it. In reality, it carved the occupied Palestinian territory up into bantustans with limited self-autonomy for Palestinians on a minuscule portion of their homeland.

It paved the way for Israel to swallow up more land, resources, and tighten its grip on the borders and the people living within it.

Even the promises that were made — halts on settlement construction, withdrawal from certain areas of the occupied territory, and the eventual transfer of control of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority (PA) — never happened.

Wednesday marked 30 years since the first Oslo Accords were signed. And though final status negotiations have failed repeatedly over the decades, the Oslo Accords have remained in effect, creating a unique situation on the ground for Palestinians.

The PA, which was set up as an interim government, has become permanent, and its leaders have remained unchanged for 17 years. Both the Fatah-dominated PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza have evolved into authoritarian regimes, causing many young Palestinians to declare their governments as “subcontractors of the Israeli occupation”.

In the meantime, Israel has a tighter grip than ever before on Palestinian life and land, with Gaza under tight blockade and the West Bank carved up into small cantons, or apartheid-style “bantustans,” as analysts put it.

With each passing year, the Israeli government has become increasingly right-wing, breaking its own records on violence against Palestinian communities and the construction of illegal settlements deep in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

To say that the reality on the ground is desperate would be an understatement. And many Palestinian youth, who grew up in the shadow of the accords and all its false promises, blame the accords, or “Oslo” as it is locally called, in large part for the situation they find themselves in today.

“Thirty years on, it is doubtful the charade of Oslo can continue much longer; certainly not after apocalyptical fanatics have taken power in Israel and are doubling down on Judaizing every corner of historic Palestine,” wrote Marwan Bishara…
https://t.co/1lZPmQOegL

— Marwan (@marwanbishara) September 14, 2023

Setting the stage
Before that fateful day on the White House lawn in 1993, there was a lot happening for Palestinians both at home and abroad.

From 1987-1993, the Palestinian streets were in upheaval. It had been two decades since Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and Palestinians were fed up.

The First Intifada, or the first Palestinian uprising, took Israel and the world by surprise. A mass civil disobedience campaign swept the country, and turned into years of protests and subsequent repression by the Israelis.

Despite the violence that plagued the Palestinian streets, many Palestinians found themselves hopeful — that by standing up to the occupation, they could change their reality.

Then, in the fall of 1991, the world convened in Madrid for a “peace conference”. Sponsored by the US and the Soviet Union, it was the first time Israel and the Palestinians were to engage in direct negotiations.

The PLO, which is internationally recognised as the representative of the Palestinian people, was operating in exile in Tunisia, and was barred from attending the conference. In its place, a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation was tasked with representing the Palestinian people instead.

Dr Hanan Ashrawi was one of the advisors to the delegation.

“We went with a sense of mission that we are representing a people who have dignity, who have rights, who have courage, who have defied this military occupation. And we are going to present ourselves to the world, and we are going to extract our rights,” Ashrawi told Mondoweiss, reflecting on the moment in history that propelled her onto the global stage.

“So we were confident, and there was a spirit of optimism, maybe naivete, if you will,” she said.

The Madrid conference set the stage for years of peace negotiations facilitated by Washington and Moscow. Despite its flaws, those involved in the Madrid conference, like Ashrawi, seemed hopeful that political negotiations could really lead somewhere.

“That was a period, albeit a short-lived period, of hope, of optimism, of confidence,” Ashrawi said.

“And when we came back, people believed that they could achieve liberation through a political process, but that these were dashed afterwards completely.”

Backchannel negotiations
While public negotiations were being held on the global stage in the months after the Madrid conference, a different set of negotiations were being held behind closed doors between two unlikely partners.

In 1993, in Oslo, Norway, Israel and the PLO engaged in backchannel discussions that resulted in an unprecedented conciliation.

The PLO, a militant liberation organisation, recognised the state of Israel and its “right to exist in peace and security”. In exchange, Israel recognised the PLO as a “representative of the Palestinian people,” falling short of actually recognising the Palestinians’ right to sovereignty.

After months of secret negotiations, and in a shock to many Palestinians, Rabin and Arafat shook hands in September 1993, as the Declaration of Principles (DOP), or first Oslo Accords (Oslo I), were signed.

The move came as a shock to many Palestinians, including those who had been engaging in public peace negotiations for years, and were seemingly unaware of the secret deal that was materialising behind the scenes.

“The signing of the DOP was a real disappointment,” Dr Ashrawi told Mondoweiss. “I wasn’t upset or disturbed because there were backchannel discussions that we weren’t part of, or that it was signed behind our back.

“I said then very openly, that I don’t care who signs it or who negotiate it. I care about what’s in it, what’s in the agreement.”

When Dr Ashrawi saw the agreement, she said she was “extremely disappointed” and concerned over what she described as “built-in flaws,” which she said she felt at the time would end up backfiring on the Palestinians.

“Because [the accords] did not challenge the reality of the occupation, and they did not deal with the real issues, with the core issues, with the causes of the conflict itself. The totality of the Palestinian experience was excluded. The fragmentation was maintained, the phased approach was maintained, the Israeli actual control on the ground was maintained, and all the postponed issues had no guarantees, no oversight.”

Dr Yara Hawari, a political analyst for Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, said the Oslo Accords “were always set up to fail”.

“[They were set up] to make Palestinians lose out on what was supposedly peace negotiations, and so many decades on we’ve seen that actually, it has been complete capitulation for the Palestinian people.”

What did the accords say?
The Oslo Accords were a number of agreements, signed between 1993 and 1995, that laid the foundation for the Oslo process — a so-called peace process that, over the course of five years, was to culminate in a peace treaty that would end the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict”.

So, what exactly did the accords say? And why were they so controversial?

“The Palestinians were told that the Oslo Accords would be a peace process, and that over an interim period, Palestinians would be led to eventual statehood. And it was designed to be a phased process.

“So at each stage, Palestinians would be granted more and more sovereignty,” Dr Hawari said.

“But in reality, what we saw was that the West Bank was completely divided up into bantustans. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank were completely separated from each other, and the Palestinian leadership was turned into this service-functioning body, and Palestinians were deprived of complete autonomy.”

While they outlined economic and security agreements, the creation of the interim Palestinian National Authority (PNA), and limited Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza, the accords never actually agreed upon any of the major issues plaguing the Palestinian struggle: the borders of a future state, illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes, and the status of Jerusalem as a future capital.

“The totality of the Palestinian experience was excluded. The fragmentation was maintained, the phased approach was maintained, the Israeli actual control of the ground was maintained, and all the postponed issues had no guarantees, no oversight, no arbitration, and no accountability,” Dr Ashrawi said.

There was never any intention to accept any kind of sovereignty or self-determination for the Palestinians.

The fallout
In the years after the first Declaration of Principles was signed, the new Palestinian Authority went into full swing, forming their new interim government and welcoming back home hundreds of Palestinians who had been living in exile.

But by 1999, when the 5-year-interim period laid out by the accords had ended, little had been accomplished in terms of final status negotiations.

Israel had not followed through on its promise to fully withdraw from certain areas of the West Bank and Gaza, and despite promises to halt settlement construction, Israel was still building Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land.

And in 2000, spurred on by Ariel Sharon’s inflammatory visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque, the Second Intifada erupted. Israel’s military forces reoccupied the West Bank, and the next few years were marred by mass killings, arrests, and the construction of an illegal wall that separated families and annexed more Palestinian land.

Whatever fragments had remained of a peace process vanished.

The settlements and shrinking spaces
In the midst of the Second Intifada, America’s attempts to revive a peace process with the Camp David summit in 2000 proved to be futile. And yet, though the peace process was dead in the water, the framework laid out by the Oslo Accords remained in place.

That meant Palestinians were left with a government that was intended to be temporary but with no independent state for that body to govern. And Israel, through military force, still had control over the borders, resources, and effectively, the lives of millions of Palestinians

“The key promise of Oslo was Palestinian statehood, and we know that has obviously not been achieved,” Dr Hawari told Mondoweiss.

“Instead, what we see is these little pockets of false Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank. There were many other promises that were made as well: economic promises, promises to do with control over resources, and actually, none of those have been fulfilled.

“The only people that have won from the accords, or who have actually gained, are the Israeli regime, which now controls the West Bank in its entirety, has Gaza under siege, and basically has looted all of the Palestinian resources.

“And this was laid out in the Oslo Accords.”

In the years following the signing of the Oslo Accords, Palestinians witnessed their spaces shrinking rapidly, as Israel promoted vast settlement construction deep within the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

Between the signing of the Oslo Accords and the outbreak of the First Intifada, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank increased by almost 100 percent.

In the year 2000, the settler population in the West Bank stood at just over 190,000. Today, that number has surpassed 500,000 settlers, all of whom are living on Palestinian land, in violation of international law.

Including settlers living illegally in East Jerusalem, the settler population in the occupied Palestinian territory has surpassed 700,000.

An increase in settler population, coupled with an extreme right-wing Israeli government, has meant a significant increase in settler violence, with Palestinian civilians on the frontlines.

In the first eight months of 2023, the UN documented more than 700 settler attacks against Palestinians. The attacks have resulted in damage to homes, property, farmland, physical injuries, and even death.

Because of the maps drawn by the Oslo Accords, the PA only has security jurisdiction over 18 percent of the West Bank, meaning that in the event of a settler attack, most Palestinian civilians are left to fend for themselves.

A disillusioned youth
In the wake of the Oslo Accords, a new generation of Palestinians was born that would come to be known as the “Oslo Generation” — whose youth would be defined by false promises and loss of life, land, and the power to choose their own future.

“We witness our own family and friends being killed and arrested on a daily basis. We get humiliated at military checkpoints whenever we’re trying to leave or enter our cities or villages.

“And we witness our people being expelled from their land while more and more settlements are being built in their place,” Zaid Amali, a Palestinian activist in Ramallah, told Mondoweiss.

When asked what he thought of Palestinian and international leaders still promoting a two-state solution and “peace negotiations” on the global stage, Amali responded:

“It may be more convenient for them to stick to that framework, but it’s very unrealistic and naive to still hang on to it because Israel has systematically destroyed the two-state solution.

“And to us as well, it feels insulting and disrespectful to keep talking about this in theory, when in reality, on the ground, it’s the complete opposite of what’s happening.”

In the 30 years since the first accords were signed, the Palestinian Authority, which was intended to be an interim government, has become permanent. And yet, elections have only ever been held twice in 3 decades. Any attempts over the last 16 years at holding elections or reviving reconciliation talks between rival factions have been squandered.

PA leaders in the West Bank and Hamas authorities in Gaza have consolidated power in the hands of a few elites while growing increasingly authoritarian, cracking down on dissent, censoring the media, and jailing and even killing dissidents.

“The way the system became, in a sense, right now is quite disappointing,” Dr Ashrawi told Mondoweiss. Without naming names, Ashrawi continued, “People became more concerned with power, with control, other than with service.

“[They became] more concerned with self-interest, influence, and the trimmings of power rather than the whole idea of contributing and serving the people.”

When asked how things deteriorated into the present-day situation, Dr Ashrawi attributed it to an overall “abuse of power.”

“There were gradually constricting spaces for freedoms and rights that ultimately, now you don’t even have a legislative power. Even the judiciary was subjugated to the executive.

“The executive became concentrated in the hands of the few, and so we have distorted any semblance of democracy that we may have had and that we have tried to establish even under occupation,” she said.

“I don’t blame the occupation for everything. There are things under our control that were abused and distorted.”

The concentration of power in the hands of authoritarian figures like President Mahmoud Abbas has meant that an entire generation, like Zaid Amali, is now nearing or surpassing the age of 30 without ever having participated in a national election.

Amali, 25 years old, said it’s an extremely frustrating reality for young Palestinians like him.

“It’s frustrating because we should be able to elect our own government in a democratic way,” he said.

“This government should reflect our interests and manage the needs of the Palestinian people and represent us in a true way.”

“But on the contrary, it’s actually serving the interest of the few at the expense of the majority in Palestine. And when we talk about Palestinian youth, they do form the majority of the Palestinian population.

“So, for us young Palestinians, it is, again, very frustrating to see that this government is not really working in our interest. But oftentimes, unfortunately, [it is] against us.”

Turning to armed resistance
In 2023, the Palestinians who were born the year the Oslo Accords were signed turned 30. Until today, none have had the opportunity to participate in political life on a national level. Economically, their opportunities are few and far between.

Unemployment in occupied Palestine is close to 25 percent — while in Gaza alone, that number is closer to 50 percent.

All the while, Israel’s grip on Palestinian life grows ever tighter. 2022 and 2023 marked record-breaking years for Israeli violence against Palestinians, as well as settlement expansion. The situation on the ground has grown desperate, causing many young Palestinians to take matters into their own hands.

Since 2022, the West Bank has seen a resurgence in armed resistance, with militias led by Palestinians as young as 18 years old. Many of the armed resistance groups, some of which operate under a banner of unity and defiance of factional rivalries, have seen massive popular support.

But both the Israeli and Palestinian governments have deemed these armed militias as a threat to the status quo cemented after the Oslo Accords. As part of its policy of security coordination with the Israelis, which was outlined in the accords, the PA has in recent months jailed dozens of Palestinian fighters, along with political dissidents, activists, journalists, and university students.

While some fighters have accepted clemency and handed over their weapons willingly, those who haven’t are being hunted down and arrested.

“We don’t know who’s against us, the [Palestinian] Authority or the Israeli army,” one young man in the Jenin refugee camp told Mondoweiss, just days after a visit by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the camp — his first visit in 11 years.

“For four years before my arrest [by the Israelis], I was also wanted by the PA. We don’t feel safe at all with the presence of [the PA].”

“Right now, they are actually working against us,” the young man said, referring to the PA’s arrest campaign targeting fighters in areas like Jenin, as part of an ongoing joint security cooperation effort between the PA and the Israeli government.

“It’s all one operation, one operation with the Israeli military and intelligence. When the army comes to attack us, the PA goes and hides away in their stations.

“They [the PA] are trying to get us to turn ourselves in and hand over our weapons, and give up this cause that we are fighting for. But we won’t give it up, no matter what.”

But the PA’s attempts to curb resistance only seem to be backfiring. Public opinion polls from this year show that 68 percent of Palestinians support armed resistance groups, and close to 90 percent believe the PA has no right to arrest them.

Additionally, more than half of Palestinians believe that the continued existence of the PA serves Israel’s interests, not the interest of the Palestinian people.

“This is a leadership that has led us to a situation where we live in bantustans and essentially in ghettos in the West Bank, Gaza, and colonised Palestine,” Dr Hawari said.

“So we have to reckon with that, and that is internal work that Palestinians have to focus on.

“For us to have a brighter future, we have to take a very good look at our leadership and reassess what we want that leadership to look like.

“Do we want it to be a leadership that capitulates and collaborates with our oppressors? Or do we want a leadership that is revolutionary and centers our freedom in their narrative?”

Republished under a Creative Commons licence.

By Antony Loewenstein

The Israeli defence industry inspires nations across the globe, many of which view themselves as under threat from external enemies.

The Taiwanese foreign minister, Joseph Wu, recently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that: “Every aspect of the Israeli fighting capability is amazing to the Taiwanese people and the Taiwanese government.”

Wu explained that he appreciated how Israel protected its own country because, “basically, we [Taiwan] have barely started. The fighting experiences of Israel are something we’re not quite sure about ourselves. We haven’t had any war in the last four or five decades, but Israel has that kind of experience”.

• READ MORE: Antony Loewenstein: Palestine a testing ground for war tech
• Middle East Eye
• Antony Loewenstein’s website

Wu also expressed interest in Israeli weapons, suggesting his country had considered their usefulness in any potential war with China.

“Israel has the Iron Dome,” he said, referring to Israel’s defence system against short-range missiles. “We should look at some of the technology that has been used by the Israelis in its defence. I’m not sure whether we can copy it, but I think we can look at it and learn from it.”

It isn’t just Taiwan imagining itself as akin to Israel. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in April 2022 that his vision for his nation was to mimic “the Jewish state“.

Two months after Russia’s illegal invasion of its territory, Zelensky, who is a long-time supporter of Israel, argued that “our people will be our great army. We cannot talk about ‘Switzerland of the future’ — probably, our state will be able to be like this a long time after. But we will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.”

Zelensky went on to explain that what he meant was the need in the future to have “representatives of the armed forces or the national guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas; there will be people with weapons.”

The Palestine laboratory
This admiration for Israel is both unsurprising and disturbing. The praise for Israel almost always completely ignores its occupation of Palestinian territory — one of the longest in modern times — and the ways in which this colonial project is implemented.

When Taiwan, Ukraine or any other country looks to Israel for innovation, it’s a highly selective gaze which completely disappears the more than five million Palestinians under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

The appeal of the Palestine laboratory is endless. I’ve spent the last years researching this concept and its execution in Palestine and across the globe.

My new book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, uncovers how Israel has used the occupied Palestinians as the ultimate guineapigs when developing tools of repression, from drones to spyware and facial recognition to biometric data, while maintaining an “enemy” population, the Palestinians, under control for more than half a century.

Israel has sold defence equipment to at least 130 countries and is now the 10th biggest arms exporter in the world. The US is still the dominant player in this space, accounting for 40 percent of the global weapons industry.

Washington used its failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a testing ground for new weapons. During the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war has been a vital “beta test” for new weapons and sophisticated forms of surveillance and killing.

But Israel has a ready-made population of occupied Palestinians over which it has complete control. For more than five decades, Israeli intelligence authorities have built an NSA-level system of surveillance across the entire occupied Palestinian territories.

Nowhere is completely immune from listening, watching or following.

In the last decade, the most infamous example of Israeli repression tech is Pegasus, the phone hacking tool developed by the company NSO Group. Used and abused by dozens of nations around the world, Mexico is its most prolific adherent.

I spoke to dissidents, lawyers and human rights activists in Togo, Mexico, India and beyond whose lives were upended by this invasive, mostly silent tool.

Israeli state and spyware
However, missing from so much of the western media coverage, including outrage against NSO Group and its founders who were Israeli army veterans, is acknowledgement of the close ties between the firm and the Israeli state.

NSO is a private corporation in name only and is in fact an arm of Israel’s diplomacy, used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Mossad to attract new friends in the international arena. Despite being blacklisted by the Biden administration in November 2021, the company still hopes to continue trading.

My research, along with that of other reporters, has shown a clear connection between the sale of Israeli cyberweapons and Israel’s attempts to neuter any potential backlash to its illegal occupation.

From Rwanda to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to India, Israeli spyware and surveillance tech are used by countless democracies and dictatorships alike.

Beyond Pegasus, many other similar tools have been deployed by newer and lesser-known Israeli companies, though they’re just as destructive. The problem isn’t just Pegasus — it could close down tomorrow and the privacy-busting technology would transfer to any number of competitors — but the unquenchable desire by governments, police forces and intelligence services for the relatively inexpensive Israeli tech that powers it.

India is even looking for alternatives to NSO Group with a less controversial history.

The Palestine laboratory is so successful because nobody wants to seriously regulate the fruits of its labours.

Ideological alignment
The extent of Israeli collusion with 20th and 21st century repression is overwhelming.

Perhaps the most revealing was the deep relationship between apartheid South Africa and Israel. It wasn’t just about arms trading, but an ideological alignment between two states that truly believed that they were fighting for their very existence.

In 1976, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin invited South African Prime Minister John Vorster, a Nazi sympathiser during the Second World War, to visit Israel. His tour included a stop at Yad Vashem, the country’s Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

When Vorster arrived in Israel, he was feted by Rabin at a state dinner. Rabin toasted “the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence”. Both nations faced “foreign-inspired instability and recklessness”.

Israel and South Africa viewed themselves as under attack by foreign bodies committed to their destruction. A short time after Vorster’s visit, the South African government yearbook explained that both states were facing the same issue: “Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.”

A love of ethnonationalism still fuels Israel today, along with a desire to export it. Some arms deals with nations, such as Bangladesh or the Philippines, are purely on military grounds and to make money.

Israel places barely any restrictions on what it sells, which pleases leaders who don’t want meddling in their actions. Pro-Israel lobbyists are increasingly working for repressive states, such as Bangladesh, to promote their supposed usefulness to the West.

Israel and the global far right
But Israel’s affinity with Hungary, India and the global far right, a group that traditionally hates Jews, speaks volumes about the inspirational nature of the modern Israeli state. As Haaretz journalist Noa Landau recently wrote, while explaining why Netanyahu’s government defended the latest arguably antisemitic comments by Elon Musk about George Soros:

“The government’s mobilisation in the service of stoking antisemitism is not surprising. It is the fruit of a long and consistent process in which the Netanyahu government has been growing closer to extreme right-wing elements around the world, at the expense of Jewish communities it purports to represent.”

It’s worth pausing for a moment to reflect on this undeniable reality. Israel, which claims to represent global Jewry, is encouraging an alignment between itself and a hyper-nationalist, bigoted and racist populism, regardless of the long-term consequences for the safety and security of Jews around the world.

Israel has thrived as an ethnonationalist state for so long because the vast bulk of the world grants it impunity. European nations have been key supporters of Israel, willing to overlook its occupation and abuse of Palestinians.

According to newly declassified documents from the files of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, between 1967 and 1990 it’s clear that West Germany was becoming more critical of Israel’s settlement project in Palestine, but the main concern was protecting its own financial interests in the region if a regional war broke out.

In a document written on 16 February 1975 to the deputy director of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Western Europe, Nissim Yaish, before Israel’s Foreign Minister Yigal Allon’s visit to West Germany, Yaish explained the thinking in his country’s diplomatic bureaucracy:

“There is unanimity that this time such a war will have a far-reaching impact on all its affairs internally and externally and that it could wreak a Holocaust on the German economy. Based on this attitude, West Germany is interested in rapid progress toward a [peace] agreement.”

Western silence
But there has rarely been any serious interest in pursuing peace, or holding Israel to account for its blatantly illegal actions, because the economic imperative is too strong. Even today, when another Nakba against Palestinians is becoming more possible to imagine, there’s largely silence from Western elites.

Germany has banned public recognition of the 1948 Nakba and criminalised any solidarity with the Palestinian people. Germany is also keen to buy an Israeli missile defence system, confirming its priorities.

This is why Israeli apartheid and the Palestine laboratory are so hard to stop; countless nations want a piece of Israeli repression tech to surveil their own unwanted populations or election meddling support in Latin America or Africa.

Without a push for accountability, economic boycotts and regulation or banning Israeli spyware — the EU is flirting with the idea — Israel can feel comfortable that its position as a global leader in offensive weapons is secure.

This article was first published in the Middle East Eye.

The New Zealand government’s silence on the thousands of Palestinian deaths in the ongoing Gaza conflict with Israel fails the Palestinian people and perpetuates injustice, as this Newsroom article reports.

The recent Israeli incursion into Gaza (Breaking Dawn) has killed 49 Palestinians, including 17 children. Not that many New Zealanders would know much about this.

It has received little coverage by the New Zealand press, and the New Zealand government has made no public comments on the situation.

It was only a year ago that Israel attacked Gaza under the banner Operation Guardian of the Walls, killing more than 260 Palestinians, including 67 children.

• READ MORE: Other reports about the Palestine’s Occupied West Bank and Gaza

New Zealand, by remaining silent, in effect plays its part in giving a free pass to Israel to continue with its ongoing attacks on Gaza and the other Palestinian territories it occupies.

In 2014, Operation Protective Edge killed more than 2000 Palestinian people, including more than 500 children. Operation Cast Lead in 2008 killed some 1400 Palestinian people, including 300 children.

Operation Summer Rains and Operation Autumn Clouds in 2006 were similarly destructive in terms of the loss of Palestinian life.

Indeed, Defence for Children International estimates that 2218 Palestinian children have been killed across the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 2000. Notwithstanding the sanitising rhetoric that frames them, the deadly incursions by the Israeli State into Gaza and the Occupied West Bank has resulted in thousands of needless Palestinian deaths on their own land, since it was illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.

Is the New Zealand government’s silence because the Israeli incursions into Occupied Palestine are so commonplace they are not worthy of coverage any more? Or has the loss of Palestinian life become so normalised it fails to generate the horror the loss of Ukrainian life appropriately elicits from the New Zealand public?

NZ gives Israel ‘free pass’
New Zealand, by remaining silent, in effect plays its part in giving a free pass to Israel to continue with its ongoing attacks on Gaza and the other Palestinian territories it occupies.

This includes daily military incursions into Palestinian homes in the Occupied West Bank, resulting in ongoing loss of life.

Israel is bound by the Fourth Geneva Convention to protect the human and civil rights of the individuals living under its occupation. That Israel has been able to ignore these responsibilities enshrined in international law, and the multiple resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council condemning its behaviour, is a failure of the international community, including New Zealand.

It is incumbent on New Zealand to firmly stand behind the Palestinian people, as our silence perpetuates the injustice, fails to hold Israel to account, and does not align with our stated principled and independent values-based approach to foreign policy.

During New Zealand’s time on the United Nations Security Council in 2015-2016, it played an important role in advancing a Resolution (UNSC 2334) to halt further illegal Israeli settlement expansion in the Occupied West Bank.

However, beyond this setting, and the once-in-a-generation opportunity to participate (1993-1994 being the last time), we do little to voice our concerns and remain largely silent.

Accordingly, it’s hard to know what motivates the New Zealand government on the conflict. Having successfully shepherded Resolution 2334 in 2016 we have failed to speak up as Israel has rapidly continued with its settlements programme in the Occupied West Bank and Occupied East Jerusalem.

8 Palestinian villages for demolition
As a result of a recent Israeli Supreme Court decision, eight Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta in Southern Hebron, containing 1200 residents, will be demolished by Israel to secure it for a firing/security zone — which in turn will almost certainly become Israeli settlements.

Again, the New Zealand government has remained silent.

We have also failed to advance one of the key clauses of UNSC 2334, which calls on states to “distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”. Practically, this implies the inclusion of a differentiated country of origin labelling regime by the member states of the United Nations.

The New Zealand government has been completely silent on this requirement.

As New Zealand governments have repeatedly said, we operate a principled and independent foreign policy. But it is clear we are failing the Palestinian people in terms of our own stated values.

We either say nothing or adopt a neutral and benign linguistic position that appears to be critical of the latest human rights abuses but fails to hold Israel to account. We talk of supporting the Peace Process (Oslo Accords 1993) and a two-state solution but fail to do anything proactively to keep this possibility alive.

One might argue there is simply nothing to be gained from New Zealand seeking to advance the resolution of the conflict. After all we are a small country, and our focus must be closer to home, so the argument goes.

But this fails to explain our involvement in Ukraine, and Afghanistan in the recent past.

Risk of ‘upsetting US’
What appears to be more relevant is the risk of upsetting our key ally the United States, which is deeply invested in the conflict and its geostrategic interest in supporting Israel at all costs.

However, this position is indefensible as it implies a severely self-interested and limited foreign policy position, one inconsistent with Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta’s early statements about adopting a values-based approach to foreign policy — which include the values of manaaki (kindness), whanaunga (connectedness), mahi tahi and kotahitanga (shared aspiration), and kaitiaki (stewardship).

The absence of a New Zealand government voice on the conflict or its carefully crafted neutral rhetoric, designed not to give offence to its close Western English-speaking alliance friends, fails the Palestinian people miserably.

It is incumbent on New Zealand to firmly stand behind the Palestinian people, as our silence perpetuates the injustice, fails to hold Israel to account, and does not align with our stated principled and independent values-based approach to foreign policy.

US ice cream manufacturer Ben and Jerry has announced it will no longer sell icecream in the occupied Palestinian Territories.

This is a welcome development while Israel is continuing to flout international law with their new government approving the building of 31 more illegal Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank alongside the destruction of Palestinian homes and on-going ethnic cleansing of Palestinian families from occupied East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers. 

It appears this move may be linked to last week’s request from the UN Special Rapporteur, Michael Lynk, for countries to recognise Israel’s sponsoring of Israeli settlers on Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank as “a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”

• READ MORE: 1981, Apartheid wrong in South Africa – 2021, Israeli apartheid wrong in Palestine

The Special Rapporteur calls these settlers (680,000 across almost 300 illegal settlements) “the engine of Israel’s 54-year-old occupation, the longest in the modern world”. 

This UN report gives the government the opportunity to make public New Zealand’s abhorrence at these ongoing racist policies against Palestinians.  

New Zealand has been silent since 2016 when the last National-led government co-sponsored United Nations Security Council resolution 2334 which declared Israel’s illegal settlements to have “no legal validity” and constitute a “flagrant violation of international law”.  

The next step — as requested by the United Nations last week, is for New Zealand to declare this Israel settler policy as a “war crime”.

Five years of silence is complicity with Israel’s war crimes. It is not acceptable.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has written this week to the Minister of Foreign Affairs about this. We are expecting the government to speak out.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

The swearing in of a new Israeli Prime Minister after 12 years of appalling anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism from former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not good news.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett tips the scales as even more racist than Netanyahu.

Netanyahu was infamous for statements of race-hatred such as:

• “The way to deal with Palestinians is to beat them up. Not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until its unbearable”;
• “Palestinians are an existential threat to Israel” (shades of the Nazi attitudes to Jews); and
• “Israeli is not a state for all its citizens” (ie he’s right – it’s an apartheid state – Palestinians are second-class citizens)

(If anyone isn’t sure just how racist these statements are – replace the word “Palestinians” with the word “Jews” and read them again!).

• READ MORE: On the politics of victory and defeat: How Gaza dethroned the King of Israel – Ramzy Baroud
• Israel swears in new government, ending Netanyahu’s 12-year rule

Appalling attitudes
Bennett has, if anything, even more appalling attitudes:

His comment to a Palestinian representative in the Israeli Parliament “…when you were still swinging from trees, we had a Jewish state here.”

Bennett is on record as advocating the murder of Palestinians taken prisoner. The former Israeli Defence Force officer said: “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life and there’s no problem with that.”

“The establishment of a Palestinian state based on the ’67 borders is impossible.” He said there will never be a Palestinian state on his watch. “It’s just not going to happen.”

He supports illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, the continuation of the siege on Gaza, and laws and institutions which perpetuate Jewish superiority and the marginalisation of the Palestinian citizens.

Bennett’s number two on his Yamina Party list, and predicted to be the new Israeli Interior Minister, Ayelet Shaked, has to be seen to be believed.

She has posted on Facebook, saying “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and justifies its destruction, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.”

‘Little snakes’
She calls for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.”

She is a self-declared fascist. Here is a recent Ayelet Shaked election campaign video. It is not a spoof – it’s her actual election video.

In Israeli, it is business as usual in the racism, apartheid and brutality meted out against Palestinians.

And it is business as usual for the international solidarity movement which is building the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against apartheid Israel just as we did against apartheid South Africa.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

When Nanaia Mahuta was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, there were hopes for a change in government thinking towards the struggles of indigenous people. The minister said she hoped to bring her experience and cultural identity as an indigenous woman to her role on international issues.

Palestine, West Papua and Western Sahara are places where the indigenous people are struggling for freedom and human rights and early on there was hope New Zealand would join the 138 member states of the United Nations that recognise Palestine.

However the hope has faded and Mahuta finally spoke on Tuesday, via a tweet, saying she was “deeply concerned” about the deteriorating situation in Jerusalem and Gaza. She called for a “rapid de-escalation” from Israel and the Palestinians, for Israel to “cease demolitions and evictions” and for “both sides to halt steps which undermine prospects for a two-state solution”.

• READ MORE: This is apartheid: A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea
• Google employees urge firm to support Palestinians: Report
• Netanyahu ‘determined’ to continue Gaza bombardment
• Israeli onslaught against Gaza continues: ‘But we are still alive!’

Speaking with reporters later she said she did not want to apportion blame and in a further statement on Thursday said New Zealand officials had raised Israel’s “continued violation of international law and forced evictions occurring in East Jerusalem” with the Israeli ambassador.

Mahuta speaks as though there was some kind of political or military equality between Israel and Palestinians. But there isn’t.

In reality, it means the minister is appeasing the highly militarised state of Israel, with which we have extensive bilateral relations, against a largely defenceless indigenous Palestinian population that lives under Israeli occupation and/or control.

She is addressing only the symptoms of the problem. The heart of the problem is that for the past 53 years Israel has run what the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organisation Human Rights Watch has called “crimes of apartheid and persecution” against Palestinians.

Their detailed 213-page HRW report on Israel’s systematic abuses of Palestinians across the entire area of historic Palestine was released earlier this year.

With tensions rising, Israel this month mounted an extraordinary brutal attack on Muslim worshippers as they were praying in the Al Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. This mosque is the third holiest site for Muslims and this was seen around the world as an outrage against all of Islam.

From there the Hamas leadership in Gaza, after issuing an ultimatum to Israel to withdraw security forces from Al Aqsa, began firing rockets into Israel, which has responded with heavy bombing of the densely populated Gaza strip.

I have a T-shirt that says “The first casualty of war is truth, the rest are mostly civilians” and so it has been this past week, with Palestinians bearing the brunt of casualties with many dozens killed, including at least 60 children.

Despite all this, anyone reading the minister’s comments would think both sides are equally to blame when the problem lies with Israel’s denial of human rights to Palestinians over as many decades as the issue has remained unresolved.

So what should a small country at the bottom of the world do to influence events in the Middle East? The answer is simple. New Zealand should implement its existing policy on the Middle East and give it some teeth.

It is a policy based on respect for international law and United Nations resolutions. These should be at the heart of our response and direct what we say, how we say it and what we do.

This means the government should demand the following:

• An end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land (UN Security Council resolution 242) and the right of return for Palestinian refugees expelled by Israeli militias (UN General Assembly resolution 194 – reaffirmed every year since 1949).
• The end of the more than 65 laws discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel (These are illegal under the crime of apartheid as defined by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court).
• Israel stop building Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land (UN Security Council resolution 2334 which was co-sponsored by New Zealand under John Key’s National Government). These settlements are illegal under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Initially Israel will take not a blind bit of notice and these calls will need to be followed by escalating sanctions.

It’s time for the minister to speak up unequivocally for Palestinian human rights and bring Aotearoa New Zealand on to the right side of history.

John Minto is the national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). This article was first published by The New Zealand Herald and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

“If I don’t steal your house, someone else will.”

This is how an Israeli settler called “Yakob” responded to the Jerusalemite journalist Muna El Kurd when she asked him to leave the garden of her home in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

The video of the exchange Kurd posted on her Instagram page was shared on many news pages and sites, going viral and becoming iconic of the oppression her family—and the neighbourhood—currently faces.

The ongoing apartheid in Jerusalem.

“Even if i get out of the house, it won’t be returned to u” pic.twitter.com/5sELdmClH5

— Abed #SaveSheikhJarrah (@Abd_HajYahia) May 1, 2021

• WATCH: #Palestine: Videos of violence, images of death on social media – Al Jazeera’s Listening Post

Since El Kurd posted her video, tensions in the occupied Palestinian territories have flared up to the worst level in years. The blockaded enclave of Gaza has been pounded by Israeli airstrikes as Muslims marked the end of Ramadan, their holy month of fasting.

So far, at least 212 people, including 61 children, have been killed in Gaza so far since the latest violence began more than a week ago. Some 1500 Palestinians were also wounded.

Ten Israelis, including two children, have been killed as Hamas, which governs Gaza, fired hundreds of rockets on Israeli-occupied territories, in response to earlier Israeli provocation.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Jerusalemites have been wounded by occupation forces who have clamped down on protesters and worshippers in the past weeks.

The tensions in Jerusalem coincided with the start of Ramadan on May 13. Occupation Israeli forces set up barricades to block Jerusalemites from accessing the area of Bab Al-Amud, preventing them from observing a longtime ritual of casual gatherings in that part of the Old City.

This resulted in protests—which have come to be called the “Bab Al Amud Uprising”— which eventually displaced the barriers and obstacles erected by the Occupation forces.

This was followed by Israeli forces’ storming of Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, one of Islam’s holiest sites, firing tear gas and stun grenades and wounding many, and coincided with Israeli settlers appropriating the homes of Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, citing Israeli court verdicts.

Sheikh Jarrah: a decades-old struggle
The struggle over Sheikh Jarrah dates back to 1948, when representatives of the then-nascent state of Israel tried to storm the neighborhood, displace its people and destroy their homes. They were prevented from doing so by the British forces, which were protecting the city of Jerusalem at the time.

Fast-forward to the Six-Day War—also known as the June 1967 War—when Israeli forces occupied the West Bank, including Jerusalem and its environs.

Since then, consecutive Israeli governments have sought to displace the Palestinian population from the city of Jerusalem to shift its demographics to a Jewish majority, in line with efforts to position the city as Israel’s capital and mobilise countries to relocate their embassies there.

This despite Palestine’s United Nations-backed claim to at least part of the city as its capital.

The neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located to the north of Jerusalem’s Old City, contains one of the main arteries linking the concentration of the city’s Jewish population in the city to Hebrew University. Seizing control of the neighbourhood would bring the entire eastern side of Jerusalem under Israel’s authority.

The expulsion of Palestinians goes back to the period 1948-1967, when Jerusalem was under Jordanian control. In 1956, the Jordanian authorities, in cooperation with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), constructed housing for 28 refugee families in Sheikh Jarrah. The Jordanian Ministry of Construction and Development provided the land, with the proviso that construction took place through the UNRWA and that ownership of the homes would be transferred to their residents three years after the completion of construction. But this did not happen until 1967, when Jordan lost control of the West Bank.

أيام قليلة تفصلنا عن قرار محكمة الاحتلال بإخلاء حي #الشيخ_جراح او تأجيله.
أكثر من 500 فلسطيني موزعين على 28 عائلة يواجهون شبح نكبة جديدة وتهجير قسري.
لنعلي أصواتنا دعماّ وإسنادا لأهلنا في الحي المقدسي. #انقذوا_حي_الشيخ_جراح pic.twitter.com/XjDc6pL541

— فلسطين27 (@Pal_27KM) April 30, 2021

A few days separate us from the occupation court’s decision to evacuate the Sheikh Jarrah’s neighborhood #الشيخ_جراح or postpone it. More than 500 Palestinians over 28 families face the spectre of a new catastrophe and forced displacement. Let’s raise our voices to support our people in the Jerusalem’s neighborhood. #انقذوا_حي_الشيخ_جراح pic.twitter.com/XjDc6pL541 — فلسطين27 (@Pal_27KM) April 30, 2021

With Jerusalem under Israeli control, Israeli settler organizations began occupying houses whose residents happened to be absent at the time, even if temporarily. The Shatti family, for example, lost their house while they were away on a visit to Kuwait in 1967.

In 1972, two Israeli societies comprising Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews went to the Israeli Land Registry Department claiming ownership of the area of Karm Al-Jaouni in Sheikh Jarrah. The claim was based on a purchase document allegedly dating from the Ottoman period. The societies were granted ownership of the land.

Between 1974-1975, the two societies then filed a lawsuit in an attempt to force four families to evacuate their homes. The Israeli court dismissed the cases because the residents were tenants protected by law.

But the lawsuits resumed again in 1982, this time against 23 families, 17 of whom retained an Israeli lawyer, Tosya Cohen. In 1991, however, Cohen shocked his clients by concluding a deal with the two settler societies, recognising their ownership of the land. Cohen’s recognition created a legal precedent that paved the way for the two societies to strip Palestinians such as the Hanoun and Ghawi families of their homes.

An initial court decision directed these two families to pay rent to the plaintiffs, and although they complied, they were expelled in 2002. In 2003, the two societies sold their share in the land to an investment company. The change in ownership allowed the Hanoun and Ghawi families to appeal their expulsion, enabling them to return to their homes until the case was adjudicated.

Mona ElKurd’s family has been the target of lawsuits since the beginning of the 1990s. After numerous rulings, the last of which was in 2009, Israeli settlers were granted the right to appropriate the ElKurd’s house. Since that time, ElKurd family has been sharing their home with the settlers who appropriated it, leaving them with only 50 metres to live in.

More recently, in October 2020, El Kurd, Al Qasim, Al Jauni and Al Skafi families received evacuations notifications from the Israeli Magistrate’s Court. In September, three other families—Hammad, Dajani, and Al Dawoudi—received similar notifications, bringing the total of people facing threats of eviction from their homes to 55. These decisions were suspended until February 2021, during which an evacuation order was issued to be carried out by Thursday, May 6, 2021, resulting in the current escalation.

Sheikh Jarrah residents ‘can’t breathe’
As tensions brewed, Palestinians took to social media to speak about the oppression they’re facing.

Bentzi Gopstein (Lehava), one of the “Death To Arabs” march organizers, is coming to Sheikh Jarrah tonight at 8:30 pm. #SaveSheikhJarrah from colonial violence. https://t.co/ov5rqBjDVE

— mohammed el-kurd (@m7mdkurd) May 6, 2021

The phrase “I can’t breathe”—the last words uttered by George Floyd as he was killed by police last year in Minnesota—is trending on social media among Palestinian users and sympathisers, as Israeli occupation forces violently cracked down on those expressing solidarity with the evicted residents of Sheikh Jarrah.

“I cant breath” he said.

The apartheid never stops. pic.twitter.com/jnQXZr6W5M

Another Twitter user, Kawther, wrote:

— Abed #SaveSheikhJarrah (@Abd_HajYahia) May 4, 2021

The same violence but no one speak . #انقذوا_حي_الشيخ_جراح pic.twitter.com/N1HYD5M4iF

— kawther slama (@KawtherSlama) May 6, 2021

In a gesture of solidarity with residents of Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalemites broke their fast every day of Ramadan in front of houses whose residents were being made to evacuate. This prompted Itamar Ben Ghafir, a member of Israel’s Knesset and leader of the Israeli far-right party Otzma Yehudit, to participate in a gathering in the district on May 6, the day set by the court to evacuate these houses, where he made the provocative announcement that he would relocate his office to Sheikh Jarrah to confront the “Arab extremists”.

When a crowd of Palestinians gathered to express their rejection of the parliamentarian’s incitements, a settler pepper-sprayed the Palestinians, an act documented in many video clips.

Israeli settlers spray pepper gas at Palestinian youths in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
#SaveSheikhJarrah #انقذو_حي_الشيخ_جراح pic.twitter.com/baiP9UeuH0

— Huda Fadil #Gaza (@HudaFadil2) May 6, 2021

This led to a clash between the two sides, involving the throwing of chairs and stones.

مستوطن يرش الشباب بغاز الفلفل وقت الافطار، والشباب ما قصرو معاه .#انقذو_حي_الشيخ_جراح #SaveSheikhJarrah pic.twitter.com/pmNArc0bFy

— شجاعية (@shejae3a) May 6, 2021

A settler sprays the guys with pepper spray, and the guys didn’t disappoint #انقذو_حي_الشيخ_جراح

#SaveSheikhJarrah pic.twitter.com/pmNArc0bFy

— شجاعية (@shejae3a) May 6, 2021

Israeli occupation forces intervened and arrested several Palestinians.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented the official documents containing details of the displacement operations carried out by Israel to the International Criminal Court on May 5, but the confrontations on the ground are not expected to abate.

On May 10, an Israeli court postponed a session scheduled that day to decide the fate of Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah. Announcing that the date of the upcoming session would be set within 30 days, the court permitted families facing eviction to remain in their houses until the session is held.

Muna El Kurd, whose Instagram video has turned her into an emblem of the struggle of Sheikh Jarrah’s residents, wrote:

We should not stop. Freezing [the decision] is not cancelling it.. The movement of Sheikh Jarrah is a popular and global movement against displacement and colonization in Jerusalem and all of Palestine. We must raise our voices, and intensify efforts through our presence and solidarity in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, and intensify our voice on social media platforms, because the violence of the colonial occupation is prevalent and its outbreak in our cities has not been frozen.

أيمن حسونة and Yasmeen Omera are Global Voices contributors.Republished with permission from Global Voices under a Creative Commons licence.

Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has condemned the Israeli police violence against Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the holy city of Jerusalem, reports Anadolu News.

Widodo emphasised that the expulsion of Palestinian civilians from their homes and the use of force against them at the Al Aqsa Mosque must not be ignored.

“Indonesia condemns such acts and urges the UN Security Council to take measures on the repeated violations carried out by Israel,” Widodo posted on his official Twitter handle.

• READ MORE: Gaza tower block collapses after Israeli strike – 32 Palestinians dead
• Palestinian resistance imposes new rules of engagement on Israel
• Jerusalem violence: Deadly air strikes hit Gaza after rocket attacks
• Marilyn Garson: Nakba is an event in the present tense – in Jerusalem and in Gaza

Widodo added Indonesia would continue to stand with the people of Palestine.

Israeli police on Monday stormed the Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem and attacked the Palestinians who were on guard to prevent raids by extremist Jews.

Al Jazeera reports that the Israeli military has continued its bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, targeting several areas after rockets were fired from the enclave.

Health authorities in Gaza said at least 32 Palestinians – including 10 children – were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Strip since late on Monday, after Hamas launched rockets from the coastal territory towards Israel.

Gaza ultimatum
The rocket fire came after Hamas, which rules Gaza, issued an ultimatum demanding Israel stand down its security forces from the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem after days of violence against Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Red Crescent said some of its employees were prevented from entering the Al Aqsa Mosque compound.

Thousands of Palestinians staged protests in the Al Aqsa Mosque complex, located in the old city of Jerusalem, after performing the dawn prayers on Monday. They stayed inside to guard the mosque from the raids of extremist Jews.

Setting up barricades at some points of Haram al-Sharif, the main building of Al Aqsa, they chanted slogans and said they would not leave there.

Extremist Jews had announced to storm Al Aqsa Mosque to celebrate the anniversary of the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem, as “Jerusalem Day” according to the Hebrew calendar.

Extremist Jewish organisations had called for raids on Al Aqsa Mosque on Sunday and Monday to mark Jerusalem Day, to celebrate occupation anniversary according to the Hebrew calendar.

Police raided mosque
The Israeli police then raided the mosque, using tear gas shells, rubber bullets, and stun grenades in clashes with the Palestinians, who responded by throwing stones. More than 300 Palestinians were in wounded.

Palestinian resistance group Hamas has said that Israel was waging a “religious war against Palestinian worshippers” in the occupied city of Jerusalem.

“What is happening in the Al Aqsa Mosque at the time of storming and assaulting worshippers is proof of the brutality of the Zionist occupation,” Muhammad Hamadeh, the movement’s spokesman for the city of Jerusalem said.

He called on the Palestinians to “remain steadfast”.

The Hamas spokesman held Israel responsible for its “incursion into the Al Aqsa Mosque,” saying: “The occupation will pay a heavy price.”

In New Zealand, yesterday — World Keffiyeh Day — was marked by Green MPs in solidarity.

“We celebrate Palestinian culture, humanity, and life, as we continue to call for an end to the terrifying violence suffered right now in Palestine at the hands of Israeli forces and settlers. Our [government] must speak!” Golriz Ghahraman said in a social media posting.

Don’t be ‘complicit’, says PSNA
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national chair John Minto has called on the New Zealand government to make a strong statement, not be “complicit” with ethnic cleansing by remaining silent. The statement said:

“The Palestinian people deserve the New Zealand government’s voice on their side rather than our ‘complicity through silence’ which usually accompanies Israeli racism and systematic brutality against Palestinians.

“In speaking out we urge you not to use anaemic language such as ‘calling for calm’ or ‘urging restraint on both sides’ because those statements in effect mean New Zealand siding with Israel’s racist, ethnic cleansing policies.

“Please intervene with a strong, clear voice which condemns both Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people of Palestine and the brutality meted out against them by the Israeli police and armed forces. New Zealand should be demanding equal rights and equal treatment for all people living under Israeli occupation and control.”

A tweet by Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta yesterday has been criticised by PSNA as “not cutting the mustard”.

Mahuta said New Zealand was “deeply concerned” and called for a “rapid de-escalation”, saying that both sides needed to “halt steps which undermine prospects for a two-state solution”.

is deeply concerned about the deteriorating situation in Jerusalem and Gaza. We call for rapid de-escalation from and . We call on Israel to cease demolitions and evictions and for both sides to halt steps which undermine prospects for a two state solution.

— Nanaia Mahuta (@NanaiaMahuta) May 11, 2021

However, Minto said today: “It was a tweet which focused on the symptoms rather than the problem which is Israel’s racist, apartheid policies and unbridled brutality against Palestinians.”

The multi-billion-dollar NZ Super Fund  – New Zealand’s state pension fund – has finally divested from five of Israel’s biggest banks due to their funding of illegal settlement construction in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

New Zealand Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman said the party welcomed the decision, telling The Spinoff:

“Our nation’s values and legal obligations have been long in breach by investments facilitating what the United Nations has consistently called an illegal occupation, causing the suffering of the Palestinian people, and leading to a number of other breaches of humanitarian law.”

• READ MORE: NZ Super Fund divestment from Israeli banks lesson for NZ government

A Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) statement last week said that Palestinian supporters in Aotearoa-New Zealand had frequently complained about these banks to the NZ Super Fund, especially following a 2018 report by Human Rights Watch which identified their active participation in settlement building in breach of international law.

In 2012, the NZ Super Fund ended its investment with three Israeli companies on ethical grounds. These were companies that were directly building illegal settlements on Palestinian land.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa spokesperson Janfrie Wakim said that the NZ Super Fund had, at last, conducted a thorough investigation and reached a firm conclusion that it would be unethical to continue to invest in these banks.

As documented by @hrw, in a 41 page report, most of Israel’s largest banks are complicit in settler colonialist apartheid as they help support, maintain, and expand illegal settlements by financing their construction in the occupied West Bank.https://t.co/Uq3KNitspC

— BDS movement (@BDSmovement) March 3, 2021

“There is a wealth of reliable information and law that makes any continuing NZ Super Fund investment with these banks untenable. No New Zealand institution should provide any support to the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people in their homeland and the brutal Israeli occupation,” she said.

“The fund still has investments in other Israeli companies, and the fund says it will be paying close attention to any future reports from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights about the culpability of other Israeli companies in illegal settlement construction.”

NZ government ‘lagging behind’
Janfrie Wakim also said that the NZ Super Fund divestment decision – and the evidence it had used – had shown up what she called a “dreadful lagging behind” by the New Zealand government.

“The NZ Super Fund divested in weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems in its first round of Israeli disinvestment in 2012,” Wakim said.

“Yet, the New Zealand government has admitted to buying military equipment, ground tested on Palestinians, from Elbit Systems, which is the very same company which the NZ Super Fund dropped from its portfolio in 2012.”

Roger Fowler is a veteran peace activist and community advocate from Auckland, Aotearoa-New Zealand, and coordinator of Kia Ora Gaza which organises support for international solidarity convoys and the Freedom Flotillas to break Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza. Fowler is editor of kiaoragaza.net. This article was first published in The Palestine Chronicle and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

• The NZ Super Fund document on the Israeli banks is here.

NZ’s $50b Super Fund is divesting from Israeli banks that fund settlement construction in West Bank and Gaza https://t.co/HwnSkXXlcj

— The Spinoff (@TheSpinoffTV) March 4, 2021

About 200 people protested in Auckland as demonstrations took place in at least nine New Zealand cities and towns today against illegal Israeli plans to annex more Palestinian land.

Last week, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters expressed “serious concern” at these Israeli plans which would amount to a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The convention relates to annexation of land seized through war.

Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb apologised that he could not attend one of the rallies but posted a video statement online urging other MPs to speak out against Israel’s annexation plans.

He called on them to attend the protests if they were able.

Annexation explained … a special report by New Zealand journalist Mohamed Hassan. Video: Middle East Eye

• More reports at Kia Ora Gaza

Two New Zealand activists have raised thousands of dollars through crowdfunding after an Israeli court fined them for their role in singer Lorde cancelling her show in Tel Aviv, but they plan to donate the money to Gaza Mental Health Foundation instead, reports Al Jazeera.

Justine Sachs and Nadia Abu Shanab have rejected the legal action which ordered them to pay over $12,000 in damages for causing mental harm to three Israeli teenagers who had purchased tickets to the concert.

The duo turned to a crowdfunding website raising more than $33,000 with 705 donors by today.

READ MORE: NZ activists fined for Lorde cancellation raise funds for Gaza charity

The defendants wrote on Friday on fundraising website Give A Little that they had no intention of complying with the Israeli ruling.

“We will not be paying the court ordered amount. Instead, we would like to redirect the support extended to us back to Palestinians in need of mental health support,” they wrote, adding that the money would go to the Gaza Mental Health Foundation.

“Emotional distress is a lived reality for Palestinians in Gaza, where over half of children suffer PTSD as a result of Israeli military attacks,” the activists wrote.

Abu Shanab of Palestinian descent told RNZ that the pair were not prepared for the amount of international attention they would receive.

‘Sense of responsibility’
She said the pair had been “struck with a sense of responsibility”.

“Israel has chosen to make an example of us,” Abu Shanab said.

The lawsuit, filed in January, is the first ruling to cite a controversial 2011 Israeli anti-boycott law that allows civil action against entities who call for a boycott of the state as part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Palestinians in Gaza face mounting mental health crisis

Activists behind the BDS movement say it is inspired by the campaign that targeted South Africa’s apartheid regime.

“Playing in Tel Aviv will be seen as giving support to the policies of the Israeli government, even if you make no comment on the political situation,” the activists wrote in their letter to Lorde in December.

The singer responded on Twitter, saying the concerns had been “Noted!”

Days later, the 21-year-old New Zealander cancelled the performance which was due to conclude her Melodrama world tour, saying she “didn’t make the right call” in her initial willingness to sing in Tel Aviv.

Israel sees BDS as a strategic threat and accuses it of anti-Semitism – a claim activists firmly deny, calling it an attempt to discredit them.

Artists who have participated in the cultural boycott of Israel through the Palestinian-led BDS movement include Brian Eno and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, writers Arundhati Roy and Eduardo Galeano, and filmmaker Ken Loach.

• Justine and Nadia’s Give a Little webpage

If you’re an optimist, then I’m about 24 hours from Gaza. If you’re a pessimist, then I’m about 24 hours from witnessing a violent raid by the Israeli Defence Force on the Al Awda, the lead boat in the 2018 Freedom Flotilla which is aiming to break the decade long naval blockade imposed on the Palestinian people of Gaza.

I joined the Flotilla a week ago, in Sicily, Italy. We’ve sailed for seven days, straight down the middle of the Mediterranean. As I write, we’re not far off the coast of Egypt.

Contrary to popular belief, the Freedom Flotilla’s primary aim is not to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, although it is carrying much needed medical supplies on board (and the boats, if they make it through, will be donated to a Palestinian union to help contribute to an economic base for a ravaged people).

The Flotilla’s primary aim is to break the naval blockade and bring international attention to the plight of Palestinians, a people who have suffered under a brutal Israeli occupation since 1967, the last time the Gaza sea port was officially open for business.

On that front, the Freedom Flotilla does very well.

This is not a big story in Australia (or New Zealand) – we find our own ways to oppress people, like those detainees on Manus and Nauru. So the indefinite detention of more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza is hardly newsworthy in Australian media eyes.

Indeed, we only really ever hear about Gaza when Israel unleashes another slaughter, like it did a few weeks ago when more than 140 unarmed Palestinian protesters were shot dead – and thousands more injured – for approaching the border fence between Gaza and Israel to protest their right to return to their lands.

Significant story
But the Flotilla is a significant story internationally. Thousands and thousands of column centimetres have been filed in papers around the globe as, for the past two months, four ships – Al Awda, Freedom, Falestine and Mairead – have sailed throughout Europe, visiting multiple countries including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, England, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy.

It’s also captured the imagination of the television media – on board Al Awda is a crew from Al Jazeera, an international news service based in Qatar. On board Freedom is a crew from Press TV, a service out of Iran.

Notably though, I’m the only western journalist on board (although the Press TV journalist is British, based in London). Richard is Muslim, brown and a journalist for a service beamed from a nation that has long been at war with Israel – I won’t be surprised if he’s singled out for a special welcome by the IDF, an army that describes itself as ‘the most moral on earth’, while imposing a ‘perfect Apartheid’ on the people of Gaza and the West Bank, and while shooting unarmed men, women and children for approaching a fence.

This is the same IDF that, eight years ago, raided the 2010 Freedom Flotilla, killing 10 passengers including two journalists. At least six of those passengers were found by a United Nations report to have been summarily executed. Hundreds more, the same UN report found, were tortured by Israeli soldiers and officials, while dozens were badly beaten at Tel Aviv airport by Israeli police – a kind of ‘Israeli farewell’ for peace activists with the audacity to try and shine a light on the actions of a state that daily breaches countless international laws, and basic human rights.

All of these facts about modern day Israel are known by the people participating in the 2018 Freedom Flotilla, and yet still, they come.

Three dozen of them from countries all over the world – New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, America, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Morocco, Algeria.

They also know what awaits them if (and when) the IDF does attack – a brutal boarding, and a stint in an Israeli prison followed by deportation which will make any future international travel to nations aligned with Israel substantially more difficult.

Talking to activists
I’ve spent days talking to activists like Joe, and Jan, and Charlie, and Jonathon, each of whom have already completed one Flotilla (some of them multiple Flotillas).

They keep coming back because nothing has changed. In fact, things have gotten worse, and not just in Gaza.

Every day, Israel expands more and more Jewish settlements into Palestinian land in the West Bank, a flagrant breach of international law done under the watchful and helpful eye of the United States, which uses its power within the United Nations to block any sanctions – and most criticism – of Israel.

For Australia’s part, we generally side with the Americans, either by voting with her or abstaining – we’re not a big enough, powerful enough nation to bully on a truly global scale, so we hide behind one instead.

That’s been one of the more eye-opening parts of this trip – with so many people from so many parts of the world living in such close quarters for an extended period, you get to learn a lot about other nations, and what they think about yours.

There’s a Kiwi on board with me, Mike Treen, a union leader from NZ. He’s really the only passenger with any deep understanding of Australia and the crimes our nation commits – and the ones we choose to ignore from others – in order to ensure a life of privilege and relative wealth.

Most of the rest of the crew and passengers see us as not much more than a “friendly nation of convicts” with kangaroos, BBQs and dangerous wildlife.

Lunar eclipse
Talk turned to that last night, as the crew and passengers gathered on the top deck to watch a full moon lunar eclipse, an event predicted decades ago, and not to be repeated for more than 100 years.

I enjoyed the irony of the symbolism. The ultimate outcome of the Freedom Flotilla – a raid by the IDF and the assault and jailing of peace activists – was also predicted a long time ago. Although it’s likely to be repeated again next year, or the year after.

Under the lunar eclipse, I asked the captain of the Al Awda, a 27-year-old Norwegian sailor named Herman, why he would risk jail, and worse, to bring attention to the brutalization of a people he’s never met, a nation he’s never visited.

“Change starts with the people. It always has,” said Herman.

“The point of this trip is to inspire people to bring about that change.”

New Matilda editor Chris Graham reported earlier today from the Al Awda, a lead ship steaming through the Mediterranean Sea about 24 hours [at that time] from an attempt to break the Israeli naval blockade on the Palestinian people of Gaza. Asia Pacific Report is sharing content with Kia Ora Gaza and Scoop Media.

By the time you read this, I’ll be sailing on an old, converted fishing trawler from Sicily, Italy, headed for Gaza, Palestine, the tiny sea port in the bottom right corner of the Mediterranean Sea.

I’m on board the Al Awda as a journalist, covering the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, an event staged every year or so to challenge the Israeli naval blockade that has been imposed on the Palestinian community for just over a decade.

Gaza is home to more than 2 million Palestinians. It’s a small strip of land that takes less than an hour to drive, from north to south. It borders Israel in the north, and Egypt in the south and is regarded as the world’s largest open air prison.

It’s called that because the people of Gaza do not have freedom of movement, like other global citizens. Their nation is occupied by Israel, which has prevented travel to and from by an air and land, in addition to the sea.

Israel’s rationale is that Hamas, the democratically elected leadership of Gaza, is a “terrorist” organisation that fires rockets.

Hamas does occasionally fire home-made, unguided rockets into Israel. Israel, by contrast, fires shells, sends drones, tanks, soldiers, naval ships, and American-built jet fighters. It has one of the most powerful armies on earth, as the body count – hopelessly one-sided in favour of Israel – should remind anyone.

That’s part of why I’m going to Gaza. I visited the West Bank in 2016, but was denied entry to Gaza by Israel. It is a nation with a long history of preventing journalists from scrutinising its actions.

Staring down Israeli army
I’m also going to report on the activists who are going to stare down one of the world’s great armies.

I’ve spent the past 10 days with dozens of them. I’m surprised at how inspired I’ve been.

In 2010, the Israeli Defence Force attacked the Mavi Marmara, a ship in the Flotilla with almost 700 activists on board. 10 were killed, at least six of them execution-style, including two journalists.

Israel was also subsequently found by the United Nations to have tortured hundreds of other activists in the days that followed.

The activists in the 2018 Flotilla also know that in the past few months, Israel has shot and killed more than 130 unarmed Palestinian protesters, during the Great Return protests, which have seen thousands more injured.

Footage of Palestinians – unarmed, waving flags – being sniped dead by Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border fence is shocking, and yet there has been barely any international response, including from Australia, which urged “both sides” to show restraint.

US ‘blind eye’
The Flotilla activists also know that there is little to no international sanction against Israel for its repeated violations of international and human rights law. Israel has a powerful friend in the United States, which routinely turns a blind eye to its violent excesses.

And yet, the 2018 Flotilla activists – featuring almost three dozen activists and three boats in total (a fourth has had to drop out) – are still prepared to get on boats and sail to Gaza, to try and break the Israeli blockade.

As a journalist, the threats I face are markedly reduced to those faced by the activists. I’m likely to be targeted in the initial raid by the Israelis, which, based on past experience, will be hyper-aggressive and violent.

But once the raid is over – once the Flotilla is under Israeli control – I’m likely to be treated far better than the activists on board.

I face at most a few days in jail, before being deported – ironically for illegally entering Israel. Of course, at no stage will I ever voluntarily enter Israel. I’m on a boat bound for Gaza, a city of another nation.

But instead, Israel will forcibly board the Flotilla in international waters, take the crew and passengers captive, and force them to an Israeli prison.

For this too, there will be no international sanction, although it pales into comparison compared to what the people of Gaza, and Palestinians in the West Bank face every day.

Deafening silence
The threat from Israel to journalists trying to report on the Freedom Flotilla is that all of your equipment will be confiscated, you’ll be jailed for a brief period, and you’ll then be deported, thus affecting international travel from that point forward.

But those threats are precisely why journalists should stare them down. They’re precisely why journalists should go on the Freedom Flotilla, and should find ways to get into Gaza, whether the Israeli military approve it or not.

Bad things happen when good people stay silent, as history well records. But horrendous things happen when media are prevented from scrutinising the actions of a state.

I hope to bring you stories from Gaza if the Flotilla breaks the blockade. But more likely, I’ll bring you stories of Israel once again flouting international and humanitarian law, and the deafening silence that inevitably follows from the international community.

I’ll file as soon as I’m able.

Chris Graham is the publisher and editor of New Matilda. He is the former founding managing editor of the National Indigenous Times and Tracker magazine. Graham has won a Walkley Award, a Walkley High Commendation and two Human Rights Awards for his reporting. Asia Pacific Report republishes this article with permission. New Zealand trade unionist Mike Treen is also on board the Al Awda.

• Other Gaza Freedom Flotilla articles

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

The three international Freedom Flotilla coalition boats have left Palermo in Sicily overnight in their bid to break the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza.

A coalition statement said the boats that make up this year’s Freedom Flotilla are not only bringing much needed medical supplies with them, but the boats themselves will also be donated to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) that represents Gaza’s fishers) once they arrive in the Strip.

New Zealand unionist and peace activist Mike Treen is on board the Al Awda (Return) and is filing reports for Kia Ora Gaza.

The Al Awda, with the smaller sailing boats, the Freedom and Falestine, are on their way. The fourth boat, the Mairead is not able to continue with the mission at this time.

Spokesperson for the Ship to Gaza-Sweden campaign Jeannette Escanilla said: “The illegal Israeli naval blockade has devastated the Palestinian economy, and in particular has hurt the fishing industry in Gaza, so these boats will provide important economic opportunities for Palestinians.”

The boats in this year’s “Just Future for Palestine” mission departed Sicily yesterday for the last leg to Gaza after more than 2 months at sea visiting 15 European ports.

Five times flotilla boats have successfully reached Gaza (before 2010) and organisers say they maintain the hope that it can be done again with this year’s mission, “but to do this we need our amazing network of passionate supporters to amplify our message”

• More information about fundraising and support for the Freedom Flotilla at Kia Ora Gaza website.

After months of preparation and training, the Freedom Flotilla is ready to depart for Gaza today.

The converted fishing trawler I am travelling on, the Al Awda (Return), along with three sailing yachts have been under constant guard as previous flotillas have been sabotaged in foreign ports by the Israeli secret services trying to stop the attempts to break the blockade.

I have met up with my fellow Kiwi of Palestinian descent, Youssef Sammour, a sailor and yacht engineer currently working in Dubai, who leaves Palermo after 45 days at sea.

READ MORE: Freedom Flotilla coalition 2018 mission

He has been sailing on the flotilla yacht Freedom since Amsterdam. If the boats are intercepted and the crew arrested they will all be subjected to a 10-year ban on re-entering Israel.

As a third generation refugee, Youssef does not want to rule out the possibility in the future of visiting his homeland.

Youssef considers himself a Kiwi as he has spent half his life in New Zealand at school and university. His father Khalil got work in New Zealand as a surgeon at Greymouth Hospital on the West Coast of the South Island.

My mum, Joan, grew up in Blackball, a small mining town just outside of Greymouth, and went to school in Greymouth. My Granddad, Walter Kirk, was a miner and a unionist, and part of the “red” Federation of Labour, the first national union federation formed in 1920 which had its national headquarters in Blackball.

Famous figures
Famous figures of the New Zealand Labour movement – Paddy Webb, Bob Semple, Walter Nash, Harry Holland – were household names, friends or colleagues.

Granddad was also one of the first, if not the first, Kiwi to play rugby league professionally in Australia for at least one season in the early 1900s.

For mum, Blackball was home, and it was where she wanted her ashes spread when she died which we were able to do five years ago. The only problem is she wanted them spread at the top of a steep mountain range behind Blackball known as The Creases.

I was back on May Day this year to commemorate the fifth anniversary of her death.

Youssef’s dad didn’t actually want to go to Greymouth – too small, isolated, and cold. He left his wife and son in Auckland and visited when he could.

Yet three years later, by the time he had finished his contract in Greymouth, Youssef says his father left in tears as he had come to love the place his colleagues, patients, and the wonderful people of Greymouth.

Youssef’s family’s story is both typical and special. Youssef’s dad was born on May 15, 1948 – the day known in Palestinian history as the Nakba – the day of “catastrophe”. The Jewish settlers proclaimed the state of Israel and presided over the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians.

Traumatised by events
Youssef’s grandmother went into labour while on the road from Palestine to Lebanon. She gave birth to Khalil and was so traumatised by the events that she could not breast feed her child. They were forced to crush almonds for the milk to feed him along the way.

His parents were childhood friends, growing up in a refugee camp in Lebanon. Dad went to Cairo to become a surgeon and Samira, Youssef’s mum stayed in Beirut to study Chemistry. They ended up meeting again a few years later as they found themselves working in the same hospital in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

They are still happily married today, Khalil is in his last year of work as chief of the surgical department in a private hospital in the Emirates.

They are looking to move back to NZ and finally get some well earned R&R. For a Palestinian family, home can be Beirut, Auckland or Greymouth, but often never Haifa, the home of their birth, even to scatter their ashes as I was able to do for my mum.

My own place on the Al Awda, I am taking over from another young Palestinian scholar, Awni Farhat, who grew up and Gaza and completed a master’s degree in human rights conflict studies in the Netherlands, but can’t return like a normal person to visit his family.

Such are the many small, but cruel, ironies of life in occupied Palestine.

Al Awda was a Norwegian fishing trawler. Scandinavians have been strong supporters of the decade-long campaign to breach the blockade from sea. Like New Zealand, these countries have strong fishing industries.

Blockade inhumanity
One aspect of the inhumanity of the blockade is stopping the fishing people in Gaza from plying their trade – even within the 12-mile maritime boundaries.

A reign of terror is maintained. Boats are fired on several times a day, dozens of fishers are wounded and a few killed each year. Just this last few weeks a limit of three nautical miles has been imposed. Several boats in Gaza that were planning to meet our small armada were singled out to be bombed in port.

Swedish sailors and campaign supporters were instrumental supplying the three yachts – Freedom, Mairead and Falestine – that have been part of the flotilla from the beginning of the journey in May. A Danish Socialist MP, Mikkel Gruner, is on the Al Awda. We have a professional chef from a leading restaurant as our personal cook.

Torstein Dahle, a city council member in the port city of Bergen and leader of the Red Party in Norway has spearheaded getting a fishing boat ready that can be donated to the fishers of Gaza and be able to carry the crew and volunteers to break the blockade.

This work to transform the ship began in January this year. A volunteer team of engineers, mechanics, carpenters and electricians have laboured for hundreds of hours to complete the work in time for the sailing part of the journey to begin.

In many ways this is a project of direct solidarity from workers and fishers in Scandinavia to the fishers of Gaza. They have generously allowed some others to join them because we have our own positions in our own societies and can amplify their message across the globe.

Workers intervene
Other workers have intervened to ensure the boats can reach their goal. The port authorities near Lisbon, Portugal, tried to prevent the ship’s entry until the port workers union Sindicato Dos Estivadores E Da Actividade Logistica told them they would have a serious problem if they tried.

That has been the pattern through the journey. Usually national governments and the police try to make life hard, while local governments and the people’s organisations welcome the boats.

One yacht was rammed and damaged by French police boats in Paris. In Palermo where we are at the moment, the mayor, Leoluca Orlando, who comes from people’s campaigns against corruption and Mafia control of the Church and the state in Sicily has announced that port will be renamed in remembrance to the historic Palestinian national leader Yasser Arafat who died, or more likely murdered by Israel, in 2004.

He is also fighting to preserve the city as a place of safe haven for refugees and beat back attempts by the right-wing and fascist forces in Italy to blame refugees for the social problems created by the capitalist Europe project which has resulted in nothing but austerity, welfare cuts and growing unemployment for working people across Europe.

The Freedom Flotilla participants were also warmly welcomed by thousands of Italian and Spanish supporters of refugee rights and open borders in a joint march through the fantastically beautiful city at night.

Everything is on Mediterranean time here. The place comes alive from 7pm when many central city streets are closed to cars, and families (including young children which made my Anglo-Kiwi mind a bit uncomfortable) enjoy meals on street tables until late at night.

Palermo is the capital city of Sicily and has a history going back 2700 years. It has been governed and settled by Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans. It is a historical and cultural centre for the meeting points between west and east in Europe.

Ambassador’s visit
The Ambassador from Palestine to Italy, Dr Mai Alkaila, came to visit on July 18 during our training session to express solidarity and support. There was an unplanned and tearful reunion with Dr Swee Ang, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon; author of From Beirut to Jerusalem and the ship’s doctor.

Dr Ang’s journey with Palestine began as a volunteer surgeon in Gaza Hospital in Beirut’s Sabra Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in 1982. About three weeks after her arrival, more than 3000 of them were massacred.

These events traumatised the young surgeon and Dr Ang describes how the love and generosity of the Palestinian people helped bring her back to a purposeful meaningful life – but now one forever intertwined with the fate of the Palestinian people.

Dr Ang served in Gaza in 1988-89 during the first Intifada and again in 2009 after the Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008 that left thousands of casualties.

The ambassador generously offered to bring lunch the next day which she duly delivered and then served it herself – bodyguards discretely in the background. That day she spoke to Youssef and myself to say how she had delivered a special message of thanks to the NZ Embassy in Rome for New Zealand taking up the sponsorship of a UN Security Council resolution in December 2016 critical of the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

This resolution was significant because the US abstained rather than veto it as they usually did anything critical of Israel. This is not a new stance for New Zealand but one of the original sponsors had pulled out and it seems that then NZ Foreign Minister Murray McCully agreed to sponsor it without checking with the Prime Minister.

It led to Israel withdrawing its ambassador to New Zealand and barring the New Zealand ambassador in Israel. Diplomatic relations were restored in June 2017 after then Prime Minister Bill English wrote a cowardly letter to Israel expressing “regret” over the fallout from the resolution.

Peters not happy
The current Foreign Minister and NZ First leader, Winston Peters, who has a strong personal bias towards Israel, was not happy. The resolution features in the Labour-New Zealand First coalition agreement, which states a commitment to “record a Cabinet minute regarding the lack of process followed prior to the National-led government’s sponsorship of UNSC2334”.

Ambassador Alkaila also expressed her delight at the decision of NZ artist Lorde to boycott performing in Israel.

A city reception was also held and then the mayor and the ambassador joined and spoke at a support function in the evening of July 19.

We have had intensive training from US professionals in non-violent resistance. Tips have been given from those arrested, abused, or tasered by the Israeli military on previous expeditions on what might be expected.

Only one previous Gaza blockade shift saw casualties. In 2010, a six-boat flotilla led by a Turkish ship the MV Mavi Marmara, with almost 500 passengers was assaulted in the middle of the night and 10 were killed and dozens injured. This led to a prolonged diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Israel. Turkey as a NATO member is one of the few majority Muslim countries to maintain friendly relations with Israel.

Since then Israel has usually just boarded the ships, towed them to port and deported the participants after a few days of questioning.

My fellow passengers on the Al Awda are an extraordinary group. I hope to have a chance to talk to them more during our journey and get to tell their stories over the next few weeks.

Blockade must end
Whatever happens on this trip to Gaza, the siege and blockade will end.

lsrael is increasingly revealing its racist, authoritarian character. There are 13 million Palestinian people. Seven and a half million are displaced or in exile. Six and a half million Palestinians continue to live in historic Palestine alongside six and a half million people of Jewish descent.

A way must, and will be found to destroy the apartheid system that seeks to preserve the ethnic superiority of one group over another and allow that majority of people in the the region who want to live in peace and security to do so.

Mike Treen is the New Zealand representative on the 2018 international Freedom Flotilla which is determined to break through Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza. The national director of the Unite Union and a veteran human rights defender is reporting here in the first of a series of reports for Kia Ora Gaza. The reports are being shared on Asia Pacific Report by arrangement.

• Kiwis on board Gaza Freedom Flotilla
• Donate for the Gaza Freedom Flotilla

About 50 people gathered in Auckland’s Silo Park today to protest over the 70th year of Nakba – also known as the Palestinian “catastrophe”.

The protesters included a Palestinian whose father had been evicted by Israeli forces to make way for Jewish settlers and a prominent Pacific social justice advocate who had protested during the 1981 Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand.

Both protesters likened the policies of the Israeli state to the anti-apartheid policies of the former white minority South African regime.

READ MORE: Gaza rallies: How women shape Great March of Return movement

But Israelis celebrate tomorrow – 14 May 1948 – as Independence Day for their state.

One Palestinian was killed in Gaza on Friday as the six-week “Great March of Return” headed into its last days ahead of Nakba Day on May 15, reports the Middle East Eye.

According to the latest Gaza Ministry of Health tally on Wednesday, Israeli forces stationed behind the fence had killed 47 Palestinians and wounded 8536 during demonstrations.

The Palestinian supporters in Auckland marched peacefully from ANZ Event Centre by the waterfront to Silo Park beating steel washtubs and chanting slogans such as, “free free Palestine!” and “Israel is a racist nation!”

Placards declared “Israel is a racist state”, “Boycott Israel” and “Israel was built on a lie – the holohoax”.

Israeli supporters had organised their own events, which were attended by some National MPs and Rob Berg, head of the Zionist movement in New Zealand.

Police set up a “safe zone” to prevent protesters and Israel Day festival supporters clashing.

The Nakba protest at Silo Park today. Video: Rahul Bhattarai/PMC

Peaceful protesters
The line of police mostly held back the peaceful protesters while there were few police to monitor the pro-Zionist hecklers.

Billy Hania, a Palestinian living in New Zealand, told Asia Pacific Report he was at the protest to oppose the celebration of the state of Israel.

“Israel is an apartheid establishment and was founded by evicting people from their home,” he said.

The victims included his own father who was evicted at the age of 12 at gunpoint in order to make room for Jewish settlers, he said.

Hania was at the protest to commemorate the Nakba which was a “catastrophe”. This was in 1948 when the people of Palestine had lost their homes and continued to be under Israeli occupation which is illegal under international law.

Will ‘Ilolahia, a founding member of Polynesian Panther Party, was also present in “support of the anti-Zionist policy in regard to Israel, and also the pro-Palestinian struggle”.

‘Ilolahia was in the Patu Squad during the anti-apartheid protests against the 1981 Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand and he was “self-exiled” to Tonga.

‘Follow Lorde’ plea
He said New Zealand should follow in the footsteps of Kiwi musician Lorde and “put it out there that Israel is actually like apartheid”.

He said: “Zionist Israel is set up as just like apartheid.”

‘Ilolahia added that the “struggles of the Palestinians are the same as the struggles we’ve had here in Aotearoa and the Pacific – us indigenous people have to stick together”.

Valerie Morse, organiser of the Auckland Peace Action, said the protesters were there “as a protest against the 70th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel”.

She added: “We are here in support of the Palestinian people and their struggle for freedom and justice.”

Morse also said there had been seven decades of “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinian people – ever since the state of Israel had been founded.

Almost five million indigenous Palestinians live in refugee camps – waiting to return home – outside of their Palestine homeland.

Morse and other protesters were protesting over the displaced Palestinians as a part of an international campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

The BDS campaign has three main demands: to “ tear down the apartheid wall”, enable the right of return for Palestinians living outside of their former homeland, and equal rights for Palestinians within Israel.

• Gallery of protest images

Sixteen-year-old Ahed Tamimi was back in court last Thursday, with the judge ruling for the third time that her detention be extended – this time for another five days.

Over the past week and a half, Ahed has been shuffled between numerous Israeli prisons and police stations. She has been held in cold isolation cells with cameras pointed at her 24 hours a day.

READ MORE: Palestinian teen first to be killed by Israel in 2018

Repeatedly, without a parent or lawyer present, they have attempted to interrogate her. The reasoning for the judge’s rulings to extend her detention is that she “poses a risk” to the military and the Israeli government’s case against her.

Israel is right that Ahed Tamimi poses a risk. But it isn’t a risk to one of the most heavily armed and advanced militaries in the world or to the legal case being built against her.

The risk she poses is in her refusal to submit to the Israeli demand that Palestinians acquiesce to their own occupation.

Israeli logic is that Palestinians should cooperate with their own oppression. They should move quietly through the checkpoints, open their bags, not look their occupiers in the eye and not challenge or protest the theft of their lands, resources and freedoms.

Israeli logic is that if they don’t like it, they can leave. Actually, they would strongly prefer that Palestinians leave. The strategy is to make life so unbearable for Palestinians, that they leave willingly. This even has a name: “voluntary transfer.”

Regular resistance
Since Ahed was a young child, she and her family have engaged in active resistance to Israel’s occupation. From 2013 up until the present, they have staged regular demonstrations against the military and the nearby settlers who have taken over their lands and water spring.

The protests are met with tear gas, rubber bullets, skunk water and live ammunition.

In 2012, Ahed’s father was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. In 2013, her uncle was killed by a tear gas canister shot to the head. In 2014, her mother was almost permanently disabled when she was shot in the leg with a .22 caliber bullet.

In 2015, a video of Ahed preventing her younger brother from being arrested went viral. Her cousins and her older brother have spent time in Israeli prisons.

On Friday, December 15, during a protest of President Trump’s announcement of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Ahed’s 14-year-old cousin Mohammed Tamimi was shot in the face with a rubber bullet. He was taken to the hospital where he required surgery and a was placed in a medically induced coma.

A few hours later, when armed soldiers came to Ahed’s home demanding to enter, she pushed back. She slapped and kicked them, and screamed that they could not come in.

Shenila Khoja-Moolji wrote in Aljazeera about the stark contrast between the support Malala Yousafzai received after being shot in the head by the Taliban and the silence on Ahed’s case by feminist and political leaders.

Big difference
Granted, there is a big difference between being shot on the way to school and arrested after slapping a soldier.

Malala was invited to meet with President Barack Obama. She was championed by Senator Hillary Clinton and listed as one of the 100 most influential people in Time magazine.

In 2013 and 2014, Malala was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and in 2014, she won. In contrast, while Ahed’s story has received some coverage in the news, she has yet to find state actors or prominent influencers to champion her cause.

While the West seems mostly indifferent to Ahed’s plight, Israel is hell-bent on hating the girl.

Israeli Education Minister Neftali Bennett called for Ahed and her family to “spend the rest of their lives in prison.”

Minister of Defence Avigdor Liberman said she and her family should “get what they deserve,” and prominent Israeli journalist Ben Caspit said that Israel should “exact a price at some other opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras”.

Caspit afterwards tried to backpedal his threat, saying his words had been taken out of context. But as the #MeToo movement has made clear, denying one’s intentions does not undo or excuse them.

Marginalised voices
As the #MeToo movement continues to build and uplift more marginalised voices, Ahed’s voice is not recognised when she could be regarded as a pillar in the movement.

Ahed is revoking her consent for Israel’s brutal occupation. She refuses to give her consent to Israeli forces that invade her family’s home in yet another vicious, meritless night raid. She confronts her aggressors and stands up to the violent system of power that keeps perpetuating this cycle of abuse against Palestinians.

In the same way survivors of sexual assault and rape are silenced, doubted and blamed for the crimes committed against them, Ahed is facing the same backlash from her aggressors.

Israel is working overtime to discredit her and erase her voice, with the hope that people will believe their fabrications over her truth. Now is the time for voices in the #MeToo to call for her release and help draw the parallels.

Shenila Khoja-Moolji explains the reasons for such lack of support for Ahed as being due to acceptance of state violence, Western society’s selective humanitarianism and the political, rather than individual nature of Ahed’s feminism.

These are all valid and important explanations. But support for Ahed is also a condemnation of the state of Israel. It is a condemnation of Israel’s military court system which allows children to be held in isolation and denied access to their parents during interrogation.

It is a condemnation of Israel’s settlement enterprise and continued presence on Palestinian land. To support Ahed is to rebuke Israel’s assertion that Palestinians must comply with their occupiers, that they must open the doors for the soldiers who enter their homes.

Internal power
Certainly their 16-year-old girls must not raise an arm to soldiers. It is one thing to support Malala for taking on the Taliban, but quite another to support Ahed as she takes on Israel’s strongest allies and the purported only democracy in the Middle East.

Not all feminist leaders are afraid to express support for Ahed. CodePink is hosting a petition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demanding Ahed’s release. We, along with others, like Jewish Voice for Peace, are asking Members of Congress to sign onto Representative Betty McCollum’s legislation to require that US aid to Israel not go to the abuse and detention of Palestinian children.

Ahed is a threat to Israel’s entire system of power. She is not only aware of her own internal power, she is completely unafraid of her aggressors.

This is the same bravery required for sexual assault survivors to tell their stories and hold their accusers responsible. It is the essence of the struggle for women’s rights and why feminism is so incompatible with militarism.

For Ahed to be successful in her fight for the liberation of her people, we first need her to be released from jail. To make this happen, we need all people who call themselves feminists and human rights advocates to say #FreeAhed.

• One Palestinian family’s devastating tale of Israeli military cruelty
• Singapore bans film featuring Palestinian teen – Pacific Media Watch
• More Palestine reports

I was devastated. This is the beautiful young woman I’d met as a happy, innocent 10-year-old, in whose house I’d slept, with whose family I’d sat at table, to whose grandmother I had listened as she shared the pain of the terrible things her own children had suffered at the hands of the Israeli military, her daughter shot in a military court room, her son detained innumerable times.

I was gutted thinking of this family having to deal with yet another trauma, fearing what might happen to their 16-year-old daughter in military detention.

READ MORE: Why is the West praising Malala but ignoring Ahed?

Not only that but her 15-year-old brother, Mohammed, is now lying in an induced coma as the result of the injury caused by being shot in the face by a rubber bullet. For me it was heartbreaking news.

In 2011, as a NZ Catholic nun, a Mission Sister, I had volunteered with the International Women’s Peace Service group in Palestine on the West Bank, a group that supports the Palestinians in any nonviolent resistance to the occupation of their land by Israel, and reports on human rights abuses.

It was at that time I had the privilege of meeting Ahed’s father, Basem Tamimi, a charismatic village leader (in my book, another Gandhi or Mandela), whose gentleness and commitment to nonviolent, peaceful protest against the Israeli occupation of their land was in stark contrast with the picture of protesters I’d formed, from the media, of Palestinian resistance to occupation.

In that man’s home, with that little girl and their family, we enjoyed the warm, generous hospitality, typical of Palestine.

Accused by military police
Within days of that experience Basem was picked up by the Israeli military police accused of inciting protesters to throw stones at the soldiers.

What follows are excerpts from the speech Basem gave in the military court in June 2011.

“In my lifetime I have been nine times imprisoned for an overall of almost three years, though I was never charged or convicted. During my imprisonment, I was paralysed as a result of torture by your investigators…

“International law guarantees the right of the occupied people to resist occupation. In practising my right I have called for and organised peaceful, popular demonstrations against the occupation, settler attacks and the theft of more than half the land of my village…

“Our demonstrations are in protest of injustice. We work hand in hand with Israeli and international activists who believe like us that had it not been for the occupation, we could all live in peace on this land…

“I did not incite anyone to throw stones, but I am not responsible for the security of your soldiers who invade my village and attack my people with all the weapons of death and the equipment of terror…

“Despite all your racist and inhumane practices and Occupation we will continue to believe in peace, justice and human values. We will still raise our children to love; love the land and the people without discrimination of race, religion, or ethnicity, embodying thus the message of the messenger of peace, Jesus Christ, who urged us to “love our enemy”.

“With love and justice we make peace and build the future.”

Again suffering cruelty
Now, six years later in the wake of the demonstrations on the West Bank following Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, this family is again suffering from the cruelty and injustice of the occupation.

Ahed Tamimi, who was arrested by the Israeli army on December 20 is now scheduled for trial. This is the second delay in her trial date. Her father, Basem, has been summoned for interrogation. Her mother, Nariman, is still being held in detention.

This update from Basem:

“They dragged Ahed out of bed, handcuffed her and put her in the back of their military jeep. She is 16 years old.

“The next morning, my wife went to the police station to be with our daughter as she was interrogated. But Israel took her into custody as well. The following day, they arrested my 21-year-old niece Nour.

“This is too much! Israel must immediately release the Tamimi women! They must stop their persecution of my family.

“All of this started last Friday when soldiers in my village shot 15-year-old Mohammed Tamimi directly in the face with a rubber-coated steel bullet. Following surgery, Mohammad had to be placed in a medically induced coma.

“Then the soldiers came to our home. Ahed and Nour slapped the soldiers in the face and pushed them back, yelling that they could not enter our home.

“The Israeli military is threatened by our regular protests, by our refusal to live with occupation.”

Focus on ‘slapping’
What some people will focus on reading this or hearing the news will be the slapping of an Israeli soldier by a 16-year-old Palestinian girl.

What we don’t usually hear about is the provocation that leads to the reaction. In this case we do … the shooting of a rubber bullet in the face of the girl’s 15-year-old brother which has left her brother in an induced coma, and the ongoing history of harassment that family has experienced .

In the light of all this suffering by the Palestinians over 50 years and in an effort to end the violence and the occupation, Palestine leadership some years ago asked the international community to support them in one of the few nonviolent ways pressure can be brought to bear on the occupying force, that is through the BDS movement – the boycott of Israel, as was done in the past to bring an end to apartheid in South Africa.

That is why Lorde’s decision to cancel her tour to Israel is significant and she deserves to be commended for her courage in taking such a principled stand. Where you have victims and oppressors we all know on whose side we should stand.

New Zealand and New Zealanders have done that in the past. Let’s continue to do this for all the children and young people of our world, who suffer at the hands of military power, for Ahed and Mohammad, for their grandmother, for their mother and father, for the whole Tamimi family.

Sister Barbara Cameron is a Mission Sister in Morrinsville.

• How mainstream media gets Palestine wrong

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Australia and other Pacific nations did not join almost 130 countries in an overwhelming vote at the UN demanding the United States drop its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, reports RNZ Pacific.

US President Donald Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted in favour.

A total of 128 countries — including New Zealand and Papua New Guinea — backed the resolution, which is non-binding, nine voted against — including Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau and Nauru — and 35 abstained.

Twenty-one countries, including Samoa and Tonga, did not cast a vote.

New Zealand supported the UN resolution calling for the US to withdraw a decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

New Zealand’s longstanding foreign policy position supports a two-state solution.

President Trump’s move overturned decades of American foreign policy and defied world opinion.

The 35 abstentions included Australia, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Tuvalu.

US ‘leadership role’
Australian UN Ambassador Gillian Bird said Australia wanted to see the US play a leadership role in brokering peace and abstained from the vote, saying: “We do not wish to see any party isolated from the process.”

“There is much in this resolution with which we agree,” Bird told the General Assembly after the vote.

“We do not, however, consider that this further resolution in addition to the many on the peace process issued by the general assembly helps brings the parties back to the negotiating table.

Nevertheless, Washington found itself isolated as many of its Western and Arab allies voted for the measure.

Some of those allies, like Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, are major recipients of US military or economic aid, although the US threat to cut aid did not single out any country.

A spokesman for Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the vote “a victory for Palestine” but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the vote as “preposterous”.

US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, told the 193-member General Assembly ahead of Thursday’s vote: “The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation.”

Australia was joined by Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Philippines, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan in abstaining.

Micronesian nations
Guatemala, Honduras and Togo joined the Micronesian Pacific countries, formerly administered by Washington as a UN trust territory, US and Israel in voting no.

According to figures from the US government’s aid agency USAID, in 2016 the US provided some $US13 billion in economic and military assistance to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and $US1.6 billion to states in East Asia and Oceania.

The General Assembly vote was called at the request of Arab and Muslim countries after the United States vetoed the same resolution on Monday in the 15-member UN Security Council.

The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favour of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the US or Trump but expressed “deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem”.

• More Palestinian issue stories

• ‘What I’ve seen in 30 years of reporting on the Israeli occupation’
• Israel celebration of the 50th anniversary in an illegal settlement
• Israel is not a democracy