ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

For decades, two irreconciliable narratives about Israel and its motivations have existed in parallel.

On the one side, an official Western narrative portrays a plucky, besieged “Jewish” state of Israel, desperate to make peace with its hostile Arab neighbours. Even to this day, that story dominates the political, media and academic landscape.

Time and again, or so we are told, Israel has held out an olive branch to “the Arabs”, seeking acceptance, but is always rebuffed.

• READ MORE: Shoot Palestinians, not settlers: Israeli general exposes double standard
• Jonathan Cook’s website
• Other reports on the war on Gaza, Lebanon Iran

A largely unspoken subtext suggests that supposedly irrational, bloodthirsty, Jew-hating regimes across the region would have completed the Nazis’ exterminationist agenda but for the West’s humane protection of a vulnerable minority.

A Palestinian counter-narrative, accepted across much of the rest of the world, is choked into silence in the West as an antisemitic “blood libel”.

It presents Israel as an ethnic supremacist, highly militaristic state — armed by the United States and Europe – bent on expansion, mass expulsions and land theft.

On this view, the West implanted Israel as a colonial military outpost, there to subdue the native Palestinian population, and terrorise neighbouring states into submission through relentless and overwhelming displays of force.

No middle ground possible
Palestinians cannot make peace, or reach any kind of accommodation, because Israel pursues only conquest, domination and erasure. No middle ground is possible.

The proof, note Palestinians, is Israel’s long-standing refusal to define its borders. As its military power has grown decade after decade, ever more extreme political agendas have surfaced, demanding not just Israel’s takeover of the last remnants of the Palestinian territories it illegally occupies but expansion into neighbouring states like Lebanon and Syria.

Here are two conflicting narratives in which each side presents itself as the victim of the other.

Two and a half years into a series of Israeli wars against the peoples of Gaza, Iran and Lebanon, how are these two perspectives holding up?

Does Israel look like the frustrated peacemaker facing off with barbaric opponents, or a rogue state whose decades-long aggression has provoked the very retaliatory violence exploited to excuse its constant war-making?

Is Israel a small, reluctant fortress state defending itself, or a Western military client so drunk on its own power that it can no more limit its territorial ambitions than a great white shark can stop swimming?

The truth is that the past 30 months have graphically exposed not only what Israel always was but, by extension, what our own Western states aspired to achieve through their most favoured Middle East client.

Ambassador let slip
In a moment of imprudence last month, Christian Turner, Peter Mandelson’s replacement as British ambassador to the US, let slip the reality. Washington, the West’s imperial hub, he said, had no deep loyalty to its allies — apart from one.

Unaware his words were being recorded, he told a group of visiting students: “I think there is probably one country that has a special relationship with the United States, and that is probably Israel.”

That special relationship requires that the political and media class in Washington’s other client states, such as Britain, shield the West’s Sparta in the Middle East from critical scrutiny.

So glaring have Israel’s atrocities become that the British government announced last month that it was shuttering its Foreign Office unit tracking war crimes — citing the need for cuts — rather than face further exposure of its collusion in those crimes.

If the British government refuses to monitor Israel’s war crimes, don’t expect more from the establishment media.

For months, Israel has been blowing up village after village in south Lebanon, driving millions of inhabitants from lands lived on for millennia by their ancestors, and it barely registers with our politicians and media.

Israel is destroying Gaza’s water supplies, as it earlier did the tiny enclave’s hospitals and health system, ensuring the further spread of disease, and our politicians and media have barely a word to say about it.

Israel kills, jourmalists, first responders
Israel kills journalists and emergency crews in Gaza and Lebanon week after week, month after month, and it raises barely an eyebrow from the political and media class.

Israel declares “yellow lines“ in Gaza and Lebanon, demarcating expanded borders that formalise its theft of other peoples’ lands, and this instantly becomes the new normal.

Israel continuously violates ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, spreading misery and inflaming yet more anger and bitterness, and once again, our politicians and media turn a blind eye.

Which Western media outlets are pointing out a starkly revealing fact: that Israel now occupies more of Lebanon than Russia does of Ukraine?

An analysis by the Newscord media monitoring group last month confirmed earlier research: that the British media studiously avoid naming ethnic cleansing and genocide when it is Israel — rather than Russia — carrying them out.

Comparing the coverage of the most “serious” establishment British news outlets — the BBC, The Guardian and Sky — with that of Al Jazeera, the study found that UK media consistently choose to obscure Israel’s responsibility for its crimes.

Israel was identified as conducting attacks in Gaza in only around half of British news reports, in contrast to nearly 90 per cent of Al Jazeera’s. As Newscord noted: “Half the time, BBC readers aren’t told who killed the person in the story.”

Hind Rajab headline
That was graphically illustrated in a notorious BBC headline: “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help.”

In fact, an Israeli tank had sprayed a stationary car with gunfire even though the Israeli military had known for hours that it contained a Palestinian girl — the sole survivor of an earlier attack — who emergency crews were desperately trying to reach. Israel killed the rescue team, too.

In another revealing finding, Newscord notes that four out of every five BBC reports on casualties caused by Israel’s attacks used the convoluted passive — rather than active — voice, clearly with the intent to downplay Israel’s culpability and savagery.

The British media also actively undermined the enormity of the Palestinian death toll in Gaza by regularly attributing the figures to a “Hamas-affiliated” Health Ministry — even though the numbers, currently at well over 70,000 Palestinians, are almost certainly a massive undercount, given Israel’s early destruction of the enclave’s government and its capacity to count the dead.

The fact that the United Nations has found the Gaza figures to be credible was mentioned in only 0.6 percent of reports.

Similarly, the BBC and The Guardian made the decision to humanise Israeli captives of Hamas twice as often as they did Palestinian captives of the Israeli state.

The inappropriateness of that double standard is underscored by continuing insinuations from politicians and the media that Hamas “beheaded babies” and carried out systematic rapes on 7 October 2023 — more than two years after those claims were utterly discredited.

Sickening practice
Contrast that with the media’s effective burial of Euro Med Monitor’s report last month on the sickening practice by the Israeli military of raping Palestinian prisoners with dogs trained for that very purpose.

There has been a flood of accounts from Palestinians held captive by Israel of their systematic rape and sexual abuse, confirmed by human rights groups and by the testimonies of whistleblowing Israeli soldiers and medics. Little of this is making headway in the Western media.

Newscord points to a further, veiled problem that skews Western coverage: the omission of established but inconvenient facts that would present Israel in a depraved — that is, an accurate — light.

For example, observes Newscord, the BBC has entirely failed to report all but one of the hundreds of clearly genocidal statements made by Israeli officials, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu down.

It is easy to understand why. Legal authorities usually struggle to make a conclusive determination of genocide because, crucially, it depends on divining intent, which is typically hidden by those committing atrocities.

Starkly, in Israel’s case, not only do its actions in Gaza look like genocide, but its leaders have been crystal clear that those actions are intended to be genocidal. That is behaviour only seen in those intoxicated by a sense of their own impunity.

Once again, the British media have obligingly taken it upon themselves to shield Israel from any legal jeopardy — all in the interests of objective reporting, you understand.

Same story since 1948
This is nothing new. It has been the same story since before Israel’s violent creation on the Palestinians’ homeland in 1948, when 80 percent of the native population were ethnically cleansed by Israel from the new, self-declared “Jewish” state. Or when, in the continuing language of deceit employed by Western political, media and academic elites, some 750,000 Palestinians “fled”.

The aim has been to manufacture and maintain a bubble of illusion for Western publics, one where our own crimes — and those of our allies — remain invisible to us.

Note in this regard the UK government’s determined exclusion of Israel from a recent “independent” inquiry, under former Whitehall bureaucrat Philip Rycroft, into malign foreign financial influence on British politics. It was, of course, Russia that was put chiefly under the spotlight.

Predictably, Keir Starmer’s government rejected in April a petition signed by more than 114,000 people calling for a similar public inquiry into the influence of the powerful Israel lobby.

That came as no surprise, given that any such investigation would have risked foregrounding the many hundreds of thousands of pounds known to have been received by Starmer and his ministers from pro-Israel lobbyists.

The same British political and media class so averse to investigating the malign influence of the pro-Israel lobby is also ignoring Israel’s current, systematic destruction of villages and infrastructure across south Lebanon — in flagrant violation of a supposed ceasefire.

Israeli soldiers have told local media that their job is to target all structures indiscriminately, whether civilian or “terrorist”, with the goal of preventing the Lebanese inhabitants from returning to their villages.

Colonising occupied lands
That fits with Israel’s announcement that it does not intend to withdraw after the fighting ends, and widespread plans to colonise the occupied lands in Lebanon with Jewish settlers.

Were it not for videos of Israel blowing up Lebanese communities breaking through on social media, despite algorithmic suppression, we might not know about Israel’s wholesale efforts to ethnically cleanse south Lebanon.

Responding to these videos with a rare “mainstream” report on the campaign of destruction, The Guardian sugar-coated the horror faced by Lebanese families discovering their homes gone, along with priceless memories and heirlooms. This experience was described — absurdly — by the paper as “bittersweet”.

Critics note a consistent pattern. Israel is not only levelling south Lebanon; over the past 30 months, it has levelled almost every building in Gaza, too.

But the template for both is of much earlier origin, as every Palestinian learns from a tender age.

Having expelled most Palestinians from their homes in 1948, Israel spent years blowing up some 500 villages one after another — even as Israeli leaders publicly claimed to be begging the refugees to return and Western leaders were extolling Israel as the “only democracy” in the Middle East.

Expulsions that the West still pretends did not take place eight decades ago are now being live-streamed. This time, they are impossible to deny, as well as the colonial, supremacist agenda behind them.

Villify the messenger
If the message inhering in Israel’s atrocities can no longer be disappeared, laundered or normalised — as it was in an age before 24-hour rolling news and social media — then a different strategy is required: villify the messenger.

This is the political task of our times.

The anti-racist left are demonised as Jew-hating bigots for trying to burst the West’s long-established bubble of illusion by noisily flagging both the atrocities committed by Israel, supposedly in the name of Jews, and the complicity of their own governments in those atrocities.

Last month, Starmer’s government forced through the Commons a law allowing the police to outlaw protests causing “cumulative disruption” — that is, repeat protests like those against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The media barely blinked.

Last week’s attack on two Jewish men in Golders Green, allegedly by a mentally ill man with a long history of violence, is being quickly exploited by the main parties to prepare for even tighter restrictions on the right to protest.

Britons who try to stop Israeli war crimes, whether by targeting Israel’s factories of death located in the UK or by holding placards in support of this kind of direct action, continue to be treated as “terrorists”, even after a court ruling that the proscription of Palestine Action is unlawful.

With juries often proving reluctant to convict, the British state has set about openly rigging the trials. Juries are blocked from learning about the reasons for the targeting of Israeli weapons factories — the accused’s main defence. Judges instruct juries to convict.

Long-established right
Members of the public who silently hold signs outside court are arrested for reminding juries of a long-established right in law to defy such instructions, follow their consciences and acquit — a police abuse contravening hundreds of years of legal precedent, and one the courts appear increasingly ready to condone.

There are gags, being dutifully obeyed by the media, on other secret malpractices designed to help the British government secure the verdicts it needs to stop activism against the genocide. We only know because Your Party MP Zarah Sultana has used parliamentary privilege to draw attention to them.

It was telling last week that, in the current repeat trial of six Palestine Action defendants, five of them dispensed with their barristers for the closing speeches. They noted, darkly, that their legal representatives could not properly represent them due to “decisions made by the court”.

Meanwhile, the Starmer government is pressing ahead with plans to finally rid itself of troublesome juries and let more reliable judges decide these political show trials alone.

Welcome to the rapid unravelling of Britain’s most cherished constitutional rights — needed chiefly, it seems, to protect a far-off country that, according to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), commits the crime of apartheid against Palestinians and may plausibly be committing genocide in Gaza.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published on the author’s website and republished with permission.

As 2024 came to a close and we have stepped into a new year overshadowed by ongoing atrocities, have you stopped to consider how these events are reshaping your world?

Did you notice how your future — and that of generations to come — is being profoundly and irreversibly altered?

The ongoing tragedy in Palestine is not an isolated event. It is a crisis that reverberates far beyond borders, threatening your safety, the well-being of your children and family.

• READ MORE: ‘Gaza is a death trap’: At least 50 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks — the number of aid people killed rises to 736
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

Even fragile ecosystems and creatures have been obliterated and affected by the fallout from Israel’s chemicals and pollution from its weapons.

The deliberate targeting of civilians, rampant violations of international law, and the obliteration of the rights of children are not distant horrors. They are ominous warnings of a world unravelling — consequences that are slowly seeping into the comfort of your home, threatening the very foundations of the life you thought was secure.

But here’s the hard truth: these outcomes don’t just happen in a a vacuum. They persist because of the silence, indifference, or complicity of those who choose not to act.

The question is, will you stand up for a better future, or will you look away? And how could Palestine possibly affect you and your family? Read on.

Israel acting with impunity for decades
Israel has been acting with impunity for decades, flouting the norms of our legal agreements, defying the United Nations and its rulings and requests to act within the agreed global rules set after the Holocaust and the Nazis disregard for humanity.

The Germans, under Nazi rule, pursued a racist ideology to restructure the world according to race, committing crimes against humanity and war crimes that resulted in a devastating world war and the deaths of millions of people, including millions of Jews. A set of rules were formed from the ashes of these victims to ensure this horror would never happen again. It’s called international law.

However, after the Nazis defeat, it took less than a few years before atrocities began again, perpetrated by the very people who had just been brutally massacred and targeted.

European Jews, including holocaust survivors, armed by Czechoslovakia, funded by the Nazis (Havaara agreement), aided militarily by Britain, the US, Italy and France among others, arrived on foreign shores to a land that did not belong to them.

Once there, they began to disregard the very rules established to protect not only them, but the rest of humanity — rules designed to prevent a repeat of the Holocaust, safeguard against the resurgence of ideologies like Nazism, and ensure impunity for such actions would never occur again.

These rules were a shared commitment by countries to conduct themselves with agreed norms and regulations designed to respect the right of all to live in safety and security, including children, women and civilians in general. Rules that were designed to end war and promote peace, justice, and a better life for all humankind.

Rules written to ensure the sacred understanding, implementation and respect of equal rights for all people, including you, were followed to prevent us from never returning to the lawlessness and terror of World War Two.

But the creation of Israel less than 80 years ago flouted and violated these expectations. The mass murder of children, women and men in Palestine in 1948, which included burning alive Palestinians tied to trees and running them over as they lay unable to move in the middle of town squares, was only the beginning of this disrespectful dehumanisation.

Terrorised by Jewish militia
Jewish militia terrorised Palestinians, lobbing grenades into Palestinian homes where families sheltered in fear, raping women and girls, and forcing every man and boy from whole villages to dig their own trenches before being shot in the back so they fell neatly into their graves.

Pregnant Palestinian women had their bellies sliced open, homes were stolen along with everything in it — including my families — and many family members were murdered.

This included my great grandmother who was shot, execution style, in front of my mother as she carried a small mattress from our home for her grandchildren when they were forcibly displaced. I still don’t know what happened to her body or where she is buried. I do know where our house is still situated in Jerusalem, although currently occupied.

These atrocities enabled Israel’s birth, shameful atrocities behind its creation. There is not one Israeli town or village that is not built on top of a Palestinian village, or town, on the blood and bones of murdered Palestinians, a practice Israel has continued.

As I write, plans to build more illegal settlements on the buried bodies of Palestinians in Gaza have already been drawn up and areas of land pre-sold.

These horrific crimes have continued over decades, becoming worse as Israel perfected and industrialised its ability to exterminate human souls, hearts and lives. Israel’s birth from its inception was only possible through terrorist actions of Jewish militia. These militia Britain designated as terrorist organisations, a designation that still stands today.

Jewish militia such as (Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang) formed into what is now known as the Israeli Defence Force, although they aren’t defending anything; Palestine was not theirs to take in the first place.

There was never a war of independence for Israel because the state of Israel did not exist to liberate itself from anyone. Instead, Britain illegally handed over land that already belonged to the Palestinians, a peaceful existing people of three pillars of faith — Palestinian Christians Muslims and Jews. If there were any legitimate war of independence, it would be that of the Palestinian people.

Free pass to act above the law
Israel continues to rely on the Holocaust’s memory to give it a free pass to act above the law, threatening world peace and our shared humanity, by using the memory of the horrors of 1945 and the threat of antisemitism to deter people from criticising and speaking out against the state’s unlawful and inhumane actions.

Yet Israel echoes the horrors of Nazi Germany and its destruction with its behaviour, the difference being the industrialisation of mass killing, modern warfare and weapons, the use of AI as a killing machine, the creation of chemical weapons and huge concentration and death camps which far surpass Germany’s capabilities.

Jews around the world have been deeply divided by Israel’s assertion that it represents all Jewish people. Not all Jews religiously and politically support Israel, many do not feel a connection to or support Israel, viewing its actions and policies as separate from their Jewish identity. For them, Israel’s claims do not define what it means to be Jewish, nor do they see its conduct as aligned with Jewish values.

This is not a “Jewish question” but a political one and conflating the two undermines the diverse perspectives within Jewish communities globally and is harmful to Jewish people. It is important to maintain a clear distinction between Judaism and the political actions of Israel.

How does a genocide across the world affect you?
The perpetration of genocide and gross violations of human rights, facilitated or supported by Western powers, erodes the very foundations of the global legal framework that protects us all. This assault weakens democracy, undermines international law, and destabilises the structures you rely on for a secure future.

It leaves your defences crumbling, your safety compromised, and your vulnerabilities exposed to the chaos that follows such lawlessness as a global citizen of this world under the same protections and with the same equality as the Palestinians.

Palestinian children are no less deserving of safety and rights than any other children. When their rights are ignored and violated, it undermines protections for children worldwide, creating a precedent of vulnerability and injustice. If violations are deemed acceptable for some, they risk becoming acceptable for all.

Sitting safely in Aotearoa does not guarantee protection. The actions of Israel and the US, Western countries — massacring and flattening entire neighbourhoods — send a dangerous message that such horrors are only for “others”, for “brown people” who speak a different language.

But Western countries are the global minority. Many nations now view the West with growing disdain, especially in light of Israel and America’s actions, coupled with the glaring double standards and inaction of the West, including New Zealand, as they stand by and witness a genocide in progress.

When children become a legitimate target, the safety of all children is compromised. Your kids are at risk too. Just because you live on the other side of the world does not mean you are immune or beyond the reach of those who see such actions as justification for retaliation.

If such disregard for human life is deemed acceptable for one people, it will inevitably become acceptable for others. Justice and equality must extend to all children, regardless of nationality, to ensure a safer world for everyone.

But why should you care?
Because Israel and the US are undermining the framework that protects you. Israel’s violations of International and humanitarian law including laws on occupation, war crimes and bombing protected institutions such as hospitals, schools, UN facilities, civilian homes and areas of safety, undermines these and sets a dangerous precedent for others to follow. Israel does not respect global peace, civilians, human rights nor has respect for life outside of its own. This lawlessness and lack of accountability is already giving other states the green light to erode the norms that protect human rights, including the decimation of the rights of the child.

The West’s support for Israel, namely the US, the UK, Canada, much of Europe, Australia and New Zealand, despite its clear violations of international law, exposes a fundamental hypocrisy. This weakens the credibility of democratic nations that claim to champion human rights and justice.

The failure of institutions like the UN to hold Israel accountable erodes trust in these bodies, fostering widespread disillusionment and scepticism about their ability to address other global conflicts. This has already fuelled an “us versus them” mentality, deepening the divide between the Global South and the Global North.

This division is marked by growing disrespect for Western governments and their citizens, who demand moral authority and adherence to the rule of law from nations in the East and South yet allow one of their “own” to brazenly violate these principles.

This hypocrisy undermines the hope for a new, respectful world order envisioned after the Holocaust, leaving it damaged and discredited.

Israel, despite its claims, has no authentic ties to the Middle East. What was once Palestinian land deeply rooted in Middle Eastern culture, has been overtaken and reshaped into to an artificial state imposed by mixed European heritage. It now stands as a Western outpost in stark contrast and isolated from surrounding Eastern cultures.

The failure of the West and the international community to stop the Palestinian genocide has begun a new period of genocide normalisation, where it becomes acceptable to watch children being blown up, women and men being murdered, shot and starved to death.

This acceptance then becomes a part of a country’s statecraft. Palestinian genocide, while it might be a little “uncomfortable” for many, has still been tolerable. If genocide is tolerable for one, then its tolerable for another.

Bias and prejudice
If you can comfortably go about your day, knowing the horror other innocent human beings are facing then perhaps it might be time to reflect on and confront any underlying biases or prejudices you hold.

An interesting thought experiment is to transform and transfer what is happening in Palestine to New Zealand.

Imagine Nelson being completely flattened, and all the inhabitants of Auckland, plus some, being starved to death.

Imagine all New Zealand hospitals being destroyed, Wellington hospital with its patients still inside is blown up. All the babies in the neonatal unit are left to die and rot in their incubators, patients in the ICU units and those immobile or too sick to move are also left to die, this includes all children unable to walk in the Starship hospital.

Electricity for the whole country is turned off and all patients and healthcare workers are forced to leave at gunpoint. New Zealand doctors and nurses are stripped down to their underwear and tortured, this includes rape, and some male doctors are left to die bleeding in the street after being raped to death with metal poles and electrodes.

Water is then shut down and unavailable to all of you. You cannot feed your family, your grandchildren, your parents, your siblings, your best friends.

Imagine New Zealanders burying bodies of their children and loved ones in makeshift mass graves, while living in tents and then being subjected to chemical weapon strikes, quad copters or small drones’ attacks that drop bombs and exterminate, shooting people as they try to find food, but targeting mostly women and children.

Imagine every single human being in Upper Hutt completely wiped out. Imagine 305 New Zealand school buses full of dead children line the streets, that’s more than 11,000 killed so far. Each day more than 10 New Zealand kids lose a limb, including your children.

This number starts to increase with the hope to finally ethnically cleanse Aotearoa to make way for a new state defined by one religion and one ethnicity that isn’t yours, by a new group of people from the other side of the world.

These people, called settlers, are given weapons to hurt and kill New Zealanders as they rampage through towns evicting residents and moving into your homes taking everything that belongs to you and leaving you on the street. All your belongings, all your memories, your pets, your future, your family are stolen or destroyed.

Starting from January 2025, up to 15 New Zealanders will die of starvation or related diseases EVERY DAY until the rest of the world decides if it will come to your aid with this lawlessness. Or maybe you will die in desperation while others watch you on their TV screens or scroll through their social media seeing you as the “terrorist” and the invaders as the “victims”.

If this thought horrifies you, if it makes you feel shocked or upset, then so too should others having to endure such illegal horrors. None of what is happening is acceptable, as a fellow human being you should be fighting for the right of all of us. Perhaps you might think of our own tangata whenua and Aotearoa’s own history.

What could this mean for New Zealand?
We are not creating a bright future for a country like New Zealand, whose remote location, dependence on trade, and its aging infrastructure, leaves it vulnerable to changing global dynamics. This is especially concerning with our energy dependence on imported oil, our dependence on global supply chains for essential goods including medicine (Israel’s pager attack against Hezbollah has compromised supply chains in a dangerous and horrific violation that New Zealand ignored), our economic marginalisation, and our security challenges.

All of this while surrounded by rising tensions between superpowers like the US and China which will affect New Zealand’s security and economic partnerships. Balancing economic and political ties is complicated by this government’s focus on strengthening strategic alliances with Western nations, mainly the US, whose complicity in genocide, war crimes, and disrespect for the rule of law is weakening its standing and threatens its very future.

Targeting marginalised groups
The precedent set in Palestine will embolden oppressive regimes elsewhere to target minority groups, knowing that the world will turn a blind eye. Israel is a violent, oppressive apartheid state, operating outside of international law and norms and has been compared to, but is much worse than the former apartheid South Africa.

This will have a huge impact felt all over the world with the continued refugee crisis. Multicultural nations such as New Zealand will struggle to cope with the support needed for the families of our citizens in need.

An increase of the far right reminiscent of Nazi ideology and extremism
Israel is a pariah state fuelled by radicalisation and extremism with an intolerance to different races, colour and ethnicity and indigenous populations. This has created a fertile ground for extremist ideologies, destabilising regions far beyond the Middle East as we have seen in Europe with the rejuvenation of the far-right movement.

Israel’s genocidal onslaughts will continue to be the cause for ongoing instability in the region, affecting global energy supplies, trade routes, and security. The Palestinian crisis will not be answered with violence, oppression and war. We aren’t going anywhere, and neither should we.

Weaponising aid and healthcare
Israel’s deliberate restriction of food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza weaponises humanitarian aid, violating basic principles of humanity. A new weapon in the arsenal of pariah states and radical violent countries and a new Israeli tactic to be copied and used elsewhere. Targeting hospitals, healthcare workers, distribution centres, ambulances, the UN, and collectively punishing whole populations has never been and will never be acceptable.

If it is not acceptable that this happens to you in Aotearoa, then nor is it acceptable for Palestinians in Palestine. It is intolerable for other “terror regimes” to commit such acts, so why is it deemed acceptable when carried out by Israel and the US?

Undermining the rights to free speech, peaceful protest and freedoms
During the covid pandemic, many New Zealanders were concerned with government-imposed restrictions that could be used disproportionately or as pretexts for authoritarian control. This included limitations on freedom of movement, speech, assembly, and privacy.

And yet Palestinians endure military checkpoints, curfews, restricted movement within and between their own territories, and the suppression of their right to protest or voice opposition to occupation — all due to Israel’s oppressive and illegal control. This is further enabled by the political cover and tacit support provided by this government’s failure to speak out and strongly condemn Israel’s actions.

Through its failure to take meaningful action or fulfil its third-party state obligations, this government continues to maintain normal relations with Israel across diplomatic, cultural, economic, and social spheres, as well as through trade. Moreover, it wrongly asserts on its official foreign affairs websites and policies that an occupying power has the right to self-defence against a defenceless population it has systematically abused and terrorised for decades.

The silencing of pro-Palestinian activists and criminalisation of humanitarian aid also create a chilling effect, discouraging global solidarity movements and undermining the moral fabric of societies. The use of victimhood to shroud the aggressor and blame the victim is a low point in our harrowed history. As is the vilification of moral activism and those that dare to stand against the illegal and sickening mass killing of civilians.

The attempt to persecute brave students standing up to Zionist and Israeli-run organisations and those supporting Israel (including academic and cultural institutions), by both trigger-happy billionaire Jewish investors and elite families and company investors whose answer to peaceful resistance is violence, demonstrates how far we have fallen from democracy and the rights of the citizen.

I find it completely bizarre that standing up against a genocide of helpless, unarmed civilians is demonised in order to protect the thugs, criminals and psychopaths that make up the Israeli state and its criminal actors, and the elite families and corporations profiting from this war.

Even here in Aotearoa, protesters have been vilified for drawing attention to Israel’s war crimes and double standards at the ASB Classic tennis tournament. Letting into New Zealand an IDF soldier who is associated with an institution directly implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity should be questioned.

These protesters were falsely labelled as “pro-Hamas” by Israeli and Western media. They were portrayed negatively, seen as a nuisance. Their messages about supporting human rights and stopping a horrific genocide from continuing were not mentioned.

The focus was the effect their chants had on the tennis match and the Israeli tennis player, who was upset. Exercising their legal rights to demonstrate, the protesters were not a security issue. Yet Lina Glushko, the Israeli tennis player, claimed she needed extra security to combat a dozen protesters, many over the age of 60, who were never in any proximity of the controversial player nor were ever a threat.

No mention that Lina Glushko lives in an illegal settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, or that she was in service from 2018-2020 during the Great March of Return. Or that this tennis player has made public statements mocking the suffering of Palestinians, inconsistent with Aotearoa’s commitment to combating hate speech and promoting inclusivity and respect.

Her presence erodes the integrity of international sports and sends a dangerous message that war crimes and human rights violations carry no meaningful consequences despite international law and the recent UNGA (UN General Assembly) and ICJ (International Court of Justice) resolutions and advisory opinions.

Allowing IDF soldiers entry into New Zealand disregards the pain and suffering of Palestinians and the New Zealand Palestinian community, dehumanising their plight. It sends a message of complicity to the broader international community, one that was ignored by most Western media.

Similarly, Israel’s attempts to not just control the Western media but to shut down and kill journalists, is not only a war crime, but is terrifying. Journalists’ protection is enshrined in international law due to the essential nature of their work in fostering accountability, transparency, and justice. They expose corruption, war crimes, and human rights abuses. Real journalism is vital for democracy, ensuring citizens are informed about government actions and global events.

Israel’s targeting of journalists undermines the rule of law and emboldens it and other perpetrators to commit further atrocities without fear of scrutiny or consequences.

The suffering of Palestinians is a human rights issue that transcends borders. Allowing genocide and oppression to continue undermines the shared humanity that binds us all.
Israel’s actions reflect the dehumanisation of an entire population and our failure to enforce accountability for these crimes weakens international systems designed to protect your family and you.

Israel’s influence is far reaching, and New Zealand is not immune. Any undue influence by foreign states, including Israel, threatens New Zealand’s sovereignty and ability to make independent decisions in its national interest. Lobbying efforts by organisations like the Zionist Federation or the Jewish National Fund (JNF), the Jewish Council and the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand push policies that do not align with New Zealand’s broader public interest.

Aligning with a state that is violating rights and in a court of law on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, leaves citizens wide open to the same controls and concerns we are now seeing Americans and Europeans face at the mercy of AIPAC and Israeli influence.

Palestine is a test of the international community’s commitment to justice, human rights, and the rule of law. If Israel is allowed to continue acting with impunity, the global system that protects us all will be irreparably weakened, paving the way for more injustice, oppression, and chaos. It is a fight for the moral and legal foundations of the world we live in and ignoring it will have far-reaching consequences for everyone.

So, as you usher in 2025, don’t sit there and clink your glasses, hoping for a better year while continuing to ignore the suffering around you. Act to make 2025 better than the horrific few years the world has been subjected to, if not for humanity, then for yourself and your family’s future. Start with the biggest threat to world peace and stability — Israel and US hegemony.

What you can do
You can make a difference in the fight against Israel’s illegal occupation and violations of human rights, including the deliberate targeting of children by taking simple yet impactful steps. Here’s how you can start today:

Boycott products supporting oppression:
Remove at least five products from your weekly supermarket shopping list that are linked to companies supporting Israel’s occupation or that are made in Israel. Use tools like the “No Thanks” app to identify these items or visit the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) website for detailed advice and information.

Hold the government accountable:
Write letters to your government representatives demanding action to uphold democracy and human rights. Remind them of New Zealand’s obligations under international law to stand against human rights abuses and violations of global norms. Demand fair and equitable foreign policies designed to protect us all.

Educate yourself:
Learn about the history of the Palestine-Israel conflict, especially the events of 1948, to better understand the roots of the ongoing crisis. Knowledge is a powerful tool for advocacy and change.

Seek alternative news sources:
Expand your perspective by accessing a wide range of news sources including from platforms such as Al Jazeera, Double Down News, and Middle East Eye.

Be a citizen, not a bystander:
Passive spectatorship allows injustice to thrive. Take a stand. Whether by boycotting, writing letters, educating yourself, or raising awareness, your actions can contribute to a global movement for justice for us all.

Together, we can challenge systems of oppression and demand accountability for crimes against humanity. Let 2025 not just be another year of witnessing suffering but one where we collectively take action to restore justice, uphold humanity, and demand accountability.
The time to act is now.

Katrina Mitchell-Kouttab is a New Zealand Palestinian advocate and writer.

During the anti-lockdown protests at Parliament last year, I was told about a 15-year-old who stopped to ask someone why they were crying.

The person replied they were Jewish and had been upset by Nazi imagery used by some protesters, including swastikas chalked on the ground.

Water bottle in hand, they set about washing these off, until a well-dressed, middle-aged woman threatened to kill them and parliamentary security ushered them away.

• READ MORE: In ‘freedom convoy’ and other vaccine protests, slogans cross the political aisle
• The NZ Parliament protest is testing police independence and public tolerance – are there lessons from Canada’s crackdown?
• The occupation of NZ’s parliament grounds is a tactical challenge for police, but mass arrests are not an option

The local Jewish community sounded a warning about the “grotesque and deeply hurtful” appropriation of the Holocaust by protesters that, as the situation in Wellington suggests, went unheeded.

The current occupation of Parliament grounds this month has also seen disturbing references to Nazism and the Holocaust. These have been variously deployed to call for the execution of journalists and politicians, invoke the Nuremberg Code and compare vaccine mandates to the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

Not only do such comparisons rest on false equivalences, absurd leaps of logic and historical anachronism, they are also tactics that tap into long histories of exploitation of the Holocaust for political ends.

Jewish leaders and Holocaust survivors are condemning the use of anti-Semitic material at anti-mandate protests and are urging people to watch their language. https://t.co/KhhqpA1CPT

— The Press Newsroom (@PressNewsroom) February 20, 2022

A history of appropriation
Twenty years ago, American historian Peter Novick surveyed the causes (left and right) that since the 1970s had sought legitimacy and impact by comparing themselves to the Holocaust. These included:

• anti-abortionists and pro-choice activists
• campaigners against the death penalty
• the National Rifle Association
• Christian conservatives
• LGBTQ activists during the AIDS epidemic
• and even an Oklahoma congressman who took the TV mini-series Holocaust to be a warning of “the dangers of big government”.

Since then, the trend has grown and the list become even more diverse. Social media and the active dissemination of conspiracy theories have made it global.

Holocaust references were used to condemn both Donald Trump’s immigration laws and Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Comparisons to Nazi genocidal policies have also cropped up wherever assisted dying legislation has been debated, with opponents claiming such policies would be akin to Nazi “euthanasia”.

As well as being inaccurate, that argument also perpetuates the criminal Nazi deception that hid racist mass murder under the euphemism of “euthanasia”.

First they came for …
In this charged context, anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller’s oft-cited quote about apathy in the face of threat — “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…” — has emerged as a favourite meme.

Niemöller had initially welcomed Hitler’s rise to power but was later incarcerated in Dachau in 1937. Visiting the camp after the war, he was struck by a sign reading: “Here in the years 1933-1945, 238,756 people were cremated.”

While his wife was shocked by the number of victims, Niemöller was horrified by the dates: where had he been between 1933 and 1937? From that experience came the famous lines lamenting German conformism and indifference that had allowed Hitler’s rise.

Niemöller never wrote them down as a poem, but would open his speeches with them, amending the groups of victims depending on his audience (as indeed do the many memorials where his words are now engraved).

The deliberate universality and adaptability of Niemöller’s words have now been hijacked by any number of protest groups, only sometimes in intended jest: “First they came for the wealthy…”, “First they came for the YouTubers…”.

Now, inevitably, the US alt-right’s “First they came for the unvaccinated…” reverberates around anti-vax conference venues and the online forums of “freedom convoys”, alongside imagery featuring yellow stars and striped pyjamas.

These threaten to become the rallying cries of those with no experience of genuine dictatorships, lack of freedom or persecution, yet who share forums with neo-Nazis and anti-Semites – including in New Zealand.

False equivalence
Reading ourselves and our times into history is a reasonably common phenomenon and easily done. After all, what was the Nazi party in its early days other than a tiny minority of disgruntled and disaffected “ordinary” people, coalesced around economic grievances and a general sense of moral and cultural malaise?

And while some historical analogies might be wrong, they’re not always harmful. But to compare vaccine mandates to Nazism is both inaccurate and harmful. As is comparing the New Zealand government’s health response to South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Not only do such comparisons equate fundamentally different policies, they wilfully ignore the fact those historical persecutions discriminated against people for who they were, not for what they believed or how they chose to behave.

Media and other commentators sometimes play down exploitation of the Holocaust or Nazism, either to starve it of publicity or because it can seem less serious or threatening than other more overt forms of intimidation.

But we should also guard against complacency. Since the 2019 Christchurch terror attack, New Zealand has known firsthand that racist and intolerant discourse can lead to deadly violence.

Despite evidence of violent rhetoric and behaviour in Wellington, some have sought to reassure that most protesters were “ordinary Kiwis”.

Just what constitutes an “ordinary” Kiwi is open to speculation. But I’d prefer to think they’re like the compassionate teenager who took out a water bottle to help remove swastikas, not the protesters who tolerate or ignore them.

Dr Giacomo Lichtner is associate professor of history, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

So the Parliament protest goes on, the first protest I can recall having absolutely no sympathy for. I’ve been on marches protesting lack of education funding, nuclear testing, abuse of GCSB [Government Communications Security Bureau] powers, the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] etc.

All of which I cared about, but this protesting against health measures – yeah nah.

People have been through a lot during this covid-19 pandemic; some have lost loved ones, and some have endured serious illness. We’ve all missed events or time with family and friends by following restrictions for the greater good.

• READ MORE:  The real dangers lurking in the ‘freedom convoy’ protests
• Other reports on the Parliament protest

But these people? No they don’t want to comply with mandate restrictions to help others, no they don’t want to do their bit for herd immunity like the other 95 percent

Sure a small number have suffered as a direct result of mandates although unless there is a genuine medical reason you can’t be vaccinated I have no sympathy, choices have consequences.

You’re entitled to not get vaccinated, despite your placards this isn’t a fascist state. But if you want to be able to do certain jobs then get vaccinated, it isn’t hard, it is well tested, the science is out on this one.

There is a false equivalence between “no jab no job” restrictions put in place to reduce the spread of a virus with the persecution of people based on race or sexual orientation. How ridiculous.

Heavy machinery regulations comparison
A better comparison is of someone being outraged at regulations where because you work with heavy machinery you have to pass a drug test to check you’re safe to do so for the benefit of others around you.

Even that falls down, you’re not a danger to others if you turn up to work on Monday having smoked a joint on Friday evening, but if you refuse to get vaccinated to perform a role where you come in to contact with vulnerable people, for example in a retirement village or on a hospital ward, you present an additional risk to others.

It may be a small risk but it is an additional risk that you are happy to impose on others for your “freedom”.

There is also the additional, and unnecessary, cost to the health system of people not being vaccinated — the hospitalisation rate of the unvaccinated versus those with at least two doses is many many times higher. If our health system becomes overwelmed leading to the need to increase restrictions ironically it will be disproportionately down to people who want to remain unrestricted by regulations.

Some suggest we could run parallel systems for the unvaccinated so the odd nurse or teacher who doesn’t want to get vaccinated can continue working. Our public services have limited resources, they are already under pressure, to think that we should run a parallel system for the 5 percent of people who choose not to be vaccinated is absurd.

In addition to those opposed to health measures there are people at the protest for many different causes. According to their placards they oppose Jeffrey Epstein — which seems a reasonable thing to do if a little weird to include in this protest, fluoridation, 1080, Three Waters, and support Groundswell, Trump etc

Some refer to “Jewcinda”, paint swastikas on statues and carry placards of the PM as “Dictator of the year” with a toothbrush mustache, or talking about Nuremburg trials. But those are just a few bad eggs, like the ones that threw, err eggs, at a child for wearing a mask.

Not wanting others to wear masks
Apparently their desire for freedom extends to not wanting others to be allowed to wear masks.

Yes many people are there simply to oppose health measures rather than support these other causes, but the nutjob quotient, the thug element, even allowing for media sensationalism, seems incredibly high. I note the local Iwi have called for an end to the abuse and the threats at the protest.

If Philip Arps or Kyle Chapman turned up at many protests they would be made very unwelcome to say the least. Seemingly this group is quite tolerant of them, tolerant of white supremacists. Nah — you’re supposed to be intolerant of fascists. Not protest alongside them and pretend you can’t see them.

I don’t know if the other protesters are intimidated by the far right elements that are there with them, or happy that they have a common enemy in the government and content to co-exist.

What is not plausible is any claim that says they are not aware of them, of the abuse and the death threats by those around them. I call BS.

The Speaker of the house, Trevor Mallard, playing repetitive songs and covid health messages to the protesters, has outraged some people — many of us think it is rather funny.

New Zealand has seen protests where people have really endured hardship for causes, be it Ihumātao, Bastion Point, the Springbok marches. Honestly the people outside Parliament have been there in the middle of summer, had some rain, probably don’t have enough toilets, and listened to some annoying music — its not much compared to getting battoned on Molesworth Street by the Red Squad.

No return to Red Squad
I would certainly not want to see a return to the approach of the Red Squad, but the police, as they have at other protests against covid health measures, have really lost credibility with the lack of action, at least against those intimidating people. The failure to tow, or at least clamp, illegally parked vehicles has become a joke.

The mandates will eventually be gone of course; the government has already acknowledged this. When they go it will be based upon health information, one would hope, and not a relatively small group of people protesting.

Not protesting, it should be noted, when these health measures were introduced a year ago when border workers became the first workers who had to be vaccinated in order to stop more spread into Aotearoa, but when the end is likely already in sight.

Barring of course the unforeseen, the unknowable, that protesters demands would have ignored.

I’ve been on protests of 10,000 people, and boy that feels like a big protest when you’re on it. These people though look to have maybe 400-500. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say there are a thousand protesters. That is still a very small number to be getting this level of media coverage, making demands the majority are opposed to, or to be claiming to speak on behalf of others.

Don’t claim to be standing up for my rights, put down the placard and stop holding the good folks of Wellington — who would like their city back — to ransom. As one old fellow interviewed on the news said: “Go home — and take a bath.”

These people do of course have the right to protest, not erect tents or park illegally mind you, but certainly to protest. I also have the right to think and say they’re a bunch of selfish idiots, a view I suspect is shared by a very large number of people.

Nick Rockel is a “Westie Leftie with five children, two dogs, and a wonderful wife”. He is the author of the Daily Read where this article was first published. It is republished here with the author’s permission.

• A petition against the “attempted takeover of democracy” protest has reached more than 135,000 and is still climbing.