New Zealander Jay O’Connor had finished a long but satisfying day as a crew member aboard Eros 1, one of dozens of vessels that formed the Global Sumud Flotilla that was heading to besieged Gaza to open a humanitarian aid corridor.

What Jay wanted was a well-deserved rest, not a kick in the head from a jack-booted Israeli soldier. But that’s what he got.

Late in the night of April 29, just as he was lying down for some rest, the Israelis struck.

• READ MORE: After Israel’s brutal attack on Kiwis the NZ government does nothing
• UN demands Israel immediately releases flotilla activists
• Other Global Sumud Flotilla reports

One of the crew ripped open the hatch, “We’re under attack!” Everyone was taken by surprise because the flotilla was nearly 1000 km out from Israel, near Greek territorial waters.

“We saw a couple of military RHIBS (rigid-hulled inflatables) sitting behind us. They had laser sights from rifles pointed in our eyes. They identified themselves as the Israeli Navy.”

The Israelis seized control of the boat, ferried the Sumud crew onto a nearby prison ship — an amphibious assault vessel converted to hold four shipping containers for the hostages.

As they did this, the Israelis sabotaged the Eros 1 and other intercepted vessels, cutting fuel lines, interfering with the engines, slashing sails, destroying navigation and comms equipment, and so on. All this happened in international waters, blatantly illegal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

‘Sticking guns in our faces’
Inside the shipping containers, the 180 captives realised things were going to get worse.

“They were holding us in stress positions for ages, yelling at us, making us touch the Israeli flag, firing flash bangs, sticking guns in our faces, all that kind of bullshit,” Jay O’Connor said.

The raiders stripped Jay of his wet weather overalls and left him with no shoes, a t-shirt and the skirt he slept in. The nights were very cold and there was no bedding or mattresses inside the shipping containers.

“Occasionally they’d toss a bit of water or some really stale bread for us to eat. They were constantly pointing guns at us. They were constantly yelling at us and then they would fuck with us for no reason — get us to line up and be counted, make us sit in stress positions and occasionally grab someone, drag him out and beat them up.”

This went on for three days.

“About a quarter of us had to sleep outside on the deck. And just for shits and giggles, they would flood the deck with sea water just to make sleeping impossible.”

An activist talks to Dawn News about the illegal, brutal Israeli attack from on board the flotilla.

Diabetic crew member prevented taking insulin
Moussa Taher, another New Zealander, sailing on the Saf Saf, said the Israelis even refused to let a diabetic crew member take his insulin. Taher said one of his comrades turned 75 years old inside that shipping container prison.

On the morning of the third day the captives were told they were being transferred to another ship.

“At this point, we stopped complying,” Jay said, “Because they had six of us in solitary. We hadn’t any confirmation that they were even alive. So we basically sat down.

“They came in and grabbed us one by one, dragged us into the fourth container.” This is where dozens were severely beaten.

“I got a few punches to the head, a kick to the head, and a couple of really nasty kicks to my ribs and right kidney. After that, they were twisting our arms and dragging us out. Then all of a sudden, we’re on a Greek Coast Guard vessel!”

Transferred by the Greeks to Crete, the most seriously injured Sumud crew were taken to a local hospital. Later that day Jay and others were released and unceremoniously dropped off in a town square to fend for themselves. No phones, no money, no support.

NZ officials’ contact ‘limited, unhelpful’
Contact with New Zealand officials was limited and unhelpful. Citizens of other Western nations were treated in the same way by their pro-Israeli governments. These heroic activists were on their own.

“We couldn’t pay for a hotel. We couldn’t pay for a coffee, we couldn’t do anything. And then we see this line of local anarchists marching towards us, chanting! It was such a wonderful moment.”

While NZ Foreign Affairs were drafting press releases making hollow declarations such as “The safety of New Zealanders involved is paramount”, the Kiwis had to rely on the kindness of strangers who took care of them, fed them, clothed them and organised places for them to sleep.

The New Zealand government refuses to condemn the attack on Kiwi citizens.

Hāhona Ormsby (Ngāti Maniapoto) was on one of the boats that escaped the raiders. In all, the Israelis attacked 22 of the more than 60 boats in the flotilla.

“This is a humanitarian flotilla,” he told Radio New Zealand. “The only thing we are armed with is aroha (love) in our hearts. The intention is to definitely keep going.

“As tangata whenua, Māori have lived through colonisation, land being taken, and cultural suppression, so that creates a natural solidarity with the Palestinians.”

Undaunted in spite of trauma
Mousa Taher says he is undaunted despite the traumatic experience. He is now in Turkïye, linking up with others preparing to restart the journey to Gaza.

“So please keep us in your prayers, and please keep the Palestinians in your thoughts and your prayers. Our silence is helping the occupation forces to systematically destroy them and dismantle them.”

A month earlier, back in Wellington Jay O’Connor said this:

“I will be traveling from Te Whanganui a Tara [Wellington] to join the Global Sumud Flotilla. I’m doing this because I can’t just stay at this side of the world watching this genocide unfold.

“I want to be able to look my kids in the eyes and tell them that I did something to try and alleviate the suffering of children just like them who are being victimised every day by Israel. So, Free Palestine!”

Now, after the horror of what he has been subjected to by the Israelis, how does Jay feel?

“Personally, any uncertainty about whether I wanted to continue or not has been burned out of me by my experience at the hands of the Israelis. I am so incredibly angry. I’ve never been this angry in my life. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

Kiwi heroes of our time
Jay O’Connor, Hāhona Ormsby, Mousa Taher, Julien Blondel, Sean Janssen and all the Kiwis onboard the Sumud Flotilla and within the Global Sumud Aotearoa Delegation represent the very best of the New Zealand spirit. They are the Kiwi heroes of our time.

Our government, sadly, stands with the villains and their names should live in infamy for not supporting their own people.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and hosts solidarity.co.nz

Speakers contrasted and condemned settler colonialism strategies in Aotearoa New Zealand and Israel’s illegal occupation and genocide in Palestine at a feisty solidarity rally in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau today — a day after Waitangi Day, the national holiday marking the 1840 signing of Te Tititi o Waitangi between 46 chiefs and the British crown.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto was one of the speakers after attending an earlier rally at Kerikeri and then driving 240 km with four fellow activists to join the Auckland protest.

“Colonisation in the present resonates with every Māori family. So here we are in that process of decolonisation, a slow process — it’s happening within Māoridom, and it’s happening in the Pākehā world,” Minto told the crowd.

• READ MORE: Why the Treaty Principles Bill had to go down
• Isaac Herzog is accused of inciting genocide in Gaza. He shouldn’t be welcomed to Australia
• Other Gaza genocide reports

“I was so delighted that when the Treaty Principles Bill came in we had that huge hikoī in Wellington,” he said.

“For those of you who know Wellington, we were in Manners Street towards the end of the march.

“And we got word that the rally had started in Parliament. We still had a kilometre to go. The streets were jammed with people, Pākehā, Māori, migrant people — Indigenous people from all over the world, all saying ‘no’.

“New Zealand is not a European country. We have an Indigenous people here and we want to work in partnership through the Treaty of Waitangi.

‘Weak prime minister’
“And what we have now, again, we’ve got a government that is — we have a weak prime minister, and we have got leaders of strong rightwing parties, that’s Winston Peters from New Zealand First, and that other guy from ACT . . .

“You know, whatever his name is . . .” Minto said jokingly. The crowd reeled of David Seymour’s name with a mocking tone and cries of “one term government” with a general election due on November 7.

Among other speakers was Janfrie Wakim, a longtime advocate for Palestine and one of the founders of the Auckland-based Palestine Human Rights Campaign founded in the 1970s, which later evolved into the PSNA in 2013.

She gave a “high fives” message of praise for protesters supporting the cause of Palestine justice and self-determination in this 122th week of demonstrations since October 2023.

Wakim also lauded the “kaimahi” — the workers who turned up each week to set up and pack up.

She said the colonisation of Aotearoa and Palestine had similarities — “but also some differences and decolonising is our task here in Aotearoa and in Palestine.”

Wakim paid tribute to Annette Sykes — “a wahine toa and heroic lawyer” advocate for Māori iwi — who wrote recently “decolonising is not erasing history but rewriting who controls the narrative”.

‘Enriching empires’
“Classic colonialists set out to exploit resources and enrich their empires,” Wakim said.

“European imperial powers dominated the past 500 years and they exited when their empires collapsed,” she said, naming Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal and Spain.

However, she added, “settler colonialism is different — it remains and is ongoing. All settler-colonial states seek more territory and fewer Indigenous people by ‘ethnic-cleansing’.”

“Settler colonialists sought to recreate Europe in the lands they invaded and they needed to eliminate the local native populations living there — think Australia.

“That is the story of Palestine.

“Settler colonialism is a structure not an event. And Zionists built their structure on that platform.”

Wakim said early Zionists knew well that Palestine was populated. They knew that the land had to be “emptied” to allow European Jews to establish their settler-colonial project.

Nakba refugees
She referred to the 1948 Nakba — “the catastrophe” — when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled by Israeli militias. They became refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria but with a UN-backed right to return.

More than 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed and their land stolen by the Israelis.

Wakim also told of the Zionists’ racist narrative dehumanising the Palestinians and their relationship to the land”.

“But nothing compares with what Israel is doing today — the brutal, ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing we have been witnessing and continue to witness.”

Wakim said the Zionist structure was built on a weak foundation that was crumbling — “not fast enough but the cracks are widening as is Israel’s reliance on one superpower which itself is in decline”.

She said Palestine and Palestinians remained steadfast and resisting the injustices.

“As here in Aotearoa, they are actively working across the world in solidarity with others to expose the lies and change the narrative and unite people of all nations, ethnicities and religions.

BDS movement growing
“BDS — [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement] is growing slowly but surely.”

She said Israel was imploding and she called on New Zealand to renew its “lead on social justice issues”.

“We may be small, but we can be powerful,” she added.

Another speaker, kaiāwhina Kerry Sorensen-Tyrer, spoke of her encounter that day at Te Komititanga Square with three IDF soldiers from Israel “holidaying” in New Zealand. After a brief exchange, she photographed them and reminded the crowd to be vigilant and to report information to the PSNA’s IDF hotline.

“We do not want you in Aotearoa,” she said of the soldiers and their role in a genocidal war on Gaza to loud cheers from the crowd.

It has been more than two weeks since world leaders gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh and declared, once again, that the path to peace in the Middle East had been found. As with previous such declarations, the Palestinians, the people who must live that peace, were left out.

Today, Israel holds the fragile ceasefire hostage while the world is fixated on the search for the remaining bodies of its dead captives.

There is no talk of the Palestinian right to search for and honour their own dead, to mourn publicly the loss.

• READ MORE: Gaza ceasefire holds despite Israeli attacks and severe aid restrictions
• Other Gaza reports

The idea of reconstruction is dangled before the residents of Gaza. Those who call for it from abroad seem to envision just clearing rubble, pouring concrete, and rehabilitating infrastructure.

There is no talk of rebuilding people — restoring their institutions, dignity, and sense of belonging.

But this is what Palestinians need. True reconstruction must focus on the people of Gaza and it must begin not with cement but with the restoration of classrooms and learning.

It must begin with young people who have survived the unthinkable and still dare to dream. Without them — without Palestinian educators and students at the centre — no rebuilding effort can endure.

Reconstruction without exclusion
The plans for governance and reconstruction of Gaza currently circulating are excluding those Palestinians most affected by the genocide. Many aspects of these plans are designed to control rather than empower — to install new overseers instead of nurturing local leadership.

They prioritise Israel’s security over Palestinian wellbeing and self-determination.

We have seen what such exclusion leads to in the Palestinian context: dependency, frustration and despair.

As scholars who have worked for years alongside Palestinian academics and students, we have also seen the central role education plays in Palestinian society.

That is why we believe that reconstruction has to start with education, including higher education. And that process has to include and be led by the Palestinians themselves. Palestinian educators, academics and students have already demonstrated they have the strength to persevere and rebuild.

Gaza’s universities, for example, have been models of resilience. Even as their campuses were razed to the ground, professors and scholars continued to teach and research in makeshift shelters, tents, and public squares — sustaining international partnerships and giving purpose to the most vital part of society: young people.

In Gaza, universities are not only places of study; they are sanctuaries of thought, compassion, solidarity and continuity — the fragile infrastructure of imagination.

Without them, who will train the doctors, nurses, teachers, architects, lawyers, and engineers that Gaza needs? Who will provide safe spaces for dialogue, reflection, and decision-making — the foundations of any functioning society?

We know that there can be no viable future for Palestinians without strong educational and cultural institutions that rebuild confidence, restore dignity and sustain hope.

Solidarity, not paternalism
Over the past two years, something remarkable has happened. University campuses across the world — from the United States to South Africa, from Europe to Latin America — have become sites of moral awakening.

Students and professors have stood together against the genocide in Gaza, demanding an end to the war and calling for justice and accountability. Their sit-ins, vigils and encampments have reminded us that universities are not only places of learning but crucibles of conscience.

This global uprising within education was not merely symbolic; it was a reassertion of what scholarship is about. When students risk disciplinary action to defend life and dignity, they remind us that knowledge divorced from humanity is meaningless.

The solidarity they have demonstrated must set the tone for how institutions of higher education approach engagement with and the rebuilding of Gaza’s universities.

The world’s universities must listen, collaborate and commit for the long term. They can build partnerships with Gaza’s institutions, share expertise, support research and help reconstruct the intellectual infrastructure of a society. Fellowships, joint projects, remote teaching and open digital resources are small steps that can make a vast difference.

Initiatives like those of Friends of Palestinian Universities (formally Fobzu), the University of Glasgow and HBKU’s summits, and the Qatar Foundation’s Education Above All already show what sustained cooperation can achieve. Now that spirit of solidarity must expand — grounded in respect and dignity and guided by Palestinian leaders.

The global academic community has a moral duty to stand with Gaza, but solidarity must not slide into paternalism. Reconstruction should not be a charitable gesture; it should be an act of justice.

The Palestinian higher education sector does not need a Western blueprint or a consultant’s template. It needs partnerships that listen and respond, that build capacity on Palestinian terms.

It needs trusted relationships for the long term.

Research that saves lives
Reconstruction is never just technical; it is moral. A new political ecology must grow from within Gaza itself, shaped by experience rather than imported models. The slow, generational work of education is the only path that can lead out from the endless cycles of destruction.

The challenges ahead demand scientific, medical and legal ingenuity. For example, asbestos from destroyed buildings now contaminates Gaza’s air, threatening an epidemic of lung cancer.

That danger alone requires urgent research collaboration and knowledge-sharing. It needs time to think and consider, conferences, meetings, exchanges of scholarships — the lifeblood of normal scholarly activity.

Then there is the chaos of property ownership and inheritance in a place that has been bulldozed by a genocidal army. Lawyers and social scientists will be needed to address this crisis and restore ownership, resolve disputes and document destruction for future justice.

There are also the myriad war crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people. Forensic archaeologists, linguists, psychologists and journalists will help people process grief, preserve memory and articulate loss in their own words.

Every discipline has a role to play. Education ties them together, transforming knowledge into survival — and survival into hope.

Preserving memory
As Gaza tries to move on from the genocide, it must also have space to mourn and preserve memory, for peace without truth becomes amnesia. There can be no renewal without grief, no reconciliation without naming loss.

Every ruined home, every vanished family deserves to be documented, acknowledged and remembered as part of Gaza’s history, not erased in the name of expedience. Through this difficult process, new methodologies of care will inevitably come into being. The acts of remembering are a cornerstone of justice.

Education can help here, too — through literature, art, history, and faith — by giving form to sorrow and turning it into the soil from which resilience grows. Here, the fragile and devasted landscape of Gaza, the more-than-human-world can also be healed through education, and only then we will have on the land once again, “all that makes life worth living”, to use a verse from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Rebuilding Gaza will, of course, require cranes and engineers. But more than that, it will require teachers, students and scholars who know how to learn and how to practise skilfully. The work of peace begins not with cement mixers but with curiosity, compassion and courage.

Even amid the rubble, and the ashlaa’, the strewn body parts of the staff and students we have lost to the violence, Gaza’s universities remain alive. They are the keepers of its memory and the makers of its future — the proof that learning itself is an act of resistance, and that education is and must remain the first step towards sustainable peace.

Sultan Barakat is professor in public policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, honorary professor at the University of York, and a member of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute ICMD Expert Reference Group. Alison Phipps is UNESCO Chair for refugee integration through education, languages and arts at the University of Glasgow. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

Within hours of being named the Nobel Peace laureate for 2025, María Corina Machado called on President Trump to step up his military and economic campaign against her own country — Venezuela.

The curriculum vitae of the opposition leader hardly lines up with what one would typically associate with a Peace Maker.  Nor would those who nominated her, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and recent US national security advisor Mike Waltz, both drivers of violent policies towards Venezuela.

“The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a brave and committed champion of peace, to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness,”  said the Nobel Committee statement.

• READ MORE: In Venezuela’s ‘darkest hours’, will peace prize boost opposition or backfire?

Let’s see if María Corina Machado passes that litmus test and is worthy to stand alongside last year’s winners, Nihon Hidankyo, representing the Japanese hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “honoured for their decades-long commitment to nuclear disarmament and their tireless witness against the horrors of nuclear war”.

Machado supports Israel, would move embassy
Machado is a passionate Zionist and supporter of both the State of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu personally.  She has not been silent on the genocide; indeed she has actively called for Israel to press ahead, saying Hamas  “must be defeated at all costs, whatever form it takes”.

>If Machado achieves power in Venezuela, among her first long-promised acts will be the ending of Venezuela’s support for Palestine and the transfer of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Machado is a signatory of a cooperation agreement with Israel’s Likud Party.

The smiling face of Washington regime change
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, US’s largest Muslim civil rights organisation, called Machado a supporter of anti-Muslim fascism and decried the award as “insulting and unacceptable”.

Venezuelan activist Michelle Ellner wrote in the US progressive outlet Code Pink:

“She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatisation, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy.

“Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. She has called for foreign intervention, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help ‘liberate’ Venezuela with bombs under the banner of ‘freedom.’

She has demanded sanctions, that silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations.”

Legitimising US escalation against Venezuela
Ellner said she almost laughed at the absurdity of the choice, which I must admit was my own reaction.  Yale professor of history Greg Grandin was similarly shocked.

“It is really a disaster. It’s laying the groundwork and justifying greater military escalation.”

What Grandin is referring to is the prize being used by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration to legitimise escalating violence against Venezuela — an odd outcome for a peace prize.

Grandin, author of America, América: A New History of the New World says Machado “has consistently  represented a more hardline in terms of economics, in terms of US relations. That intransigence has led her to rely on outside powers, notably the United States.

“They didn’t give it to Donald Trump, but they have given it to the next best thing as far as Marco Rubio is concerned — if he needs justification to escalate military operations against Venezuela.”

The Iron Lady wins a peace prize?
Rubio has repeatedly referred to Machado as the “Venezuelan Iron Lady” — fair enough, as she bears greater resemblance to Margaret Thatcher than she does to Mother Teresa.

This illogicality brought back graffiti I read on a wall in the 1970s: “Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity”.  Yet someone at the Nobel Committee had a brain explosion (fitting as Alfred Nobel invented dynamite) when they settled on Machado as the embodiment of Alfred Nobel’s ideal recipient — “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Machado, a recipient of generous US State Department funding and grants, including from the National Endowment for Democracy (the US’s prime soft power instrument of regime change) is praised for her courage in opposing the Maduro government, and in calling out a slide towards authoritarianism.

Conservatives could run a sound argument in terms of Machado as an anti-regime figure but it is ludicrous to suggest her hard-ball politics and close alliances with Trump would in any way qualify her for the peace prize. Others see her as an agent of the CIA, an agent of the Monroe Doctrine, and as a mouthpiece for a corrupt elite that wants to drive a violent antidemocratic regime change.

She has promised the US that she would privatise the country’s oil industry and open the door to US business.

“We’re grateful for what Trump is doing for peace,” the Nobel winner told the BBC. Trump’s recent actions include bombing boatloads of Venezuelans and Colombians — a violation of international law — as part of a pressure campaign on the Maduro government.

Machado says she told Trump “how grateful the Venezuelan people are for what he’s doing, not only in the Americas, but around the world for peace, for freedom, for democracy”.  The dead and starving of Gaza bear witness to a counter narrative.

Rigged elections or rigged narratives?
Peacemakers aren’t normally associated with coup d’etats but Machado most certainly was in 2002 when democratically elected President Hugo Chavez was briefly overthrown.  Machado was banned from running for President in 2024 because of her calls for US intervention in overthrowing the government.

Central to both Machado’s prize and the US government’s regime change operation is the argument that the Maduro government won a “rigged election” in 2024 and is running a narco-trafficking government; charges accepted as virtually gospel in the mainstream media and dismissed as rubbish by some scholars and experts on the country.

Alfred de Zayas, a law professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy who served as a UN Independent Expert on International Order, cautions against the standard Western narrative that the Venezuelan elections “were rigged”.

The reality is that the Maduro government, like the Chavez government before it, enjoys popularity with the poor majority of the country.  Delegitimising any elected government opposed to Washington is standard operating procedure by the great power.

Professor Zayas led a UN mission to Venezuela in 2017 and has visited the country a number of times since. He has spoken with NGOs, such as Fundalatin, Grupo Sures, Red Nacional de Derechos Humanos, as well as people from all walks of life, including professors, church leaders and election officials.

“I gradually understood that the media mood in the West was only aiming for regime change and was deliberately distorting the situation in the country,” he said in an article in 2024.

I provide those thoughts not as proof definitive of the legitimacy of the elections but as  stimulant to look beyond our tightly curated mainstream media. María Machado is Washington’s “guy” and that alone should set off alarm bells.

Michelle Ellner: “Anyone who knows what she stands for knows there’s nothing remotely peaceful about her politics.”

“Beati pacifici quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God”. Matthew 5:9.

Amen to that.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

The grim facts should speak for themselves. Since 7 October 2023, Israel has deliberately killed an unprecedented number of Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

Those brave individuals are smeared as Hamas operatives and terrorists by Israel and its supporters.

But the real story behind this, beyond just Western racism and dehumanisation towards Arab reporters who don’t work for the corporate media in London or New York, is an Israeli military strategy to deliberately (and falsely) link Gazan journalists to Hamas.

• READ MORE: Palestinian journalists treated like ‘robots’ by Western media, says Gaza reporter in wake of latest Israeli killings
• Photojournalist resigns from Reuters over its ‘betrayal of journalists’ in Gaza
• Other Israeli attacks on journalists reports

The outlet +972 Magazine explains the plan:

“The Israeli military has operated a special unit called the ‘Legitimization Cell,’ tasked with gathering intelligence from Gaza that can bolster Israel’s image in the international media, according to three intelligence sources who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call and confirmed the unit’s existence.

“Established after October 7, the unit sought information on Hamas’ use of schools and hospitals for military purposes, and on failed rocket launches by armed Palestinian groups that harmed civilians in the enclave.

“It has also been assigned to identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel’s killing of reporters — the latest of whom was Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli airstrike this past week [august 10].

According to the sources, the Legitimisation Cell’s motivation was not security, but public relations. Driven by anger that Gaza-based reporters were “smearing [Israel’s] name in front of the world,” its members were eager to find a journalist they could link to Hamas and mark as a target, one source said.

As a journalist who has visited and reported in Gaza since 2009, here is a short film I made after my first trip, Palestinian journalists are some of the most heroic individuals on the planet. They have to navigate both Israeli attacks and threats and Western contempt for their craft.

I stand in solidarity with them. And so should you.

After the Israeli murder of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif on August 10, I spoke to Al Jazeera English about him and Israel’s deadly campaign:

Antony Loewenstein speaking on Al Jazeera English on 11 August 2025.   Video: AJ

Antony Loewenstein interviewed by Al Jazeera on 11 August 2025.  Video: AJ

Republished from the Substack of Antony Lowenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory,  with permission.

“Grow a spine for Palestine!” was a frequent theme among about 5000 people protesting in the heart of New Zealand’s largest city today as the protesters demanded that the coalition government should recognise the state of Palestine and stop supporting impunity for Israel.

More than 62,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza in the past 22 months and the country’s military have doubled down on their attacks on residential areas in the besieged enclave.

Several speakers, including opposition parliamentarians, spoke at the rally, strongly condemning Israel for its genocidal policies and crimes against humanity.

• READ MORE: Israel kills at least 1760 people seeking aid in Gaza since May, says UN
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

Many children took part in the rally at Te Komititanga Square and the return march up Queen Street in spite of the bitterly wet and cold weather. Many of them carried placards and Palestinian flags like their parents.

One young boy carried a placard declaring “Just a kid standing in front of his PM asking him to grow a heart and a spine”. The heart was illustrated as a Palestinian flag.

Other placards included slogans such as “Wanted MPs with a spine” and “Grow a spine for Palestine”, and “They try to bury us forgetting we are seeds” with the resistance watermelon symbol.

Many placards demanded sanctions and condemned Israel, saying “Gaza is starving. Words won’t feed them — sanction Israel now”, “NZ government: Your silence is complicity with Israeli genocide” and “Free Palestine now”.

Disillusionment with leaders
One poster expressed disillusionment with both the coalition government and opposition Labour Party leaders, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins, denouncing “apologists for genocide”.

Another poster challenged both Hipkins and Luxon over “what values” they stood for. It said:

“Our ‘leaders’ have refused to call for a ceasefire even after 10,000+ innocent civilians have been brutally murdered in their own homes, including 4000+ CHILDREN all under the name of “Kiwi values”.

“They, like a lot of other world politicians, are apologists for genocide.”

Frustration has been growing among the public with the government’s reluctance to declare support for Palestinian statehood after 96 consecutive weeks of protests organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and other groups, not just in the largest city of Auckland and the capital Wellington, but also in Christchurch and in at least 20 other towns and communities across the motu.

The “spine” theme in chants and posters followed just days after Parliament suspended Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick following a fiery speech about Gaza when she said government MPs should grow a spine and sanction Israel for its atrocities.

She had refused to apologise to the House and supporters at the rally today gave her rousing cheers in support of her defiance.

‘We need your help’
Te Pati Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told the crowd: “We need you to help her put the pressure on so that we can fight together in that place [Parliament] for our people to free, free Palestine; from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

“Return our dignity Aotearoa. Stand up for what is right. There is only one side to support in genocide, only one side. And Te Pati Māori will only work with those.”

When Swarbrick spoke to the crowd, she repeated her goal to find six government MPs “with a spine” to support her bill to “sanction Israel for its war crimes”.

She also said the Palestinian people were being “starved and slaughtered by Israel” in Gaza, adding that their breath was being “stolen from them” by the IDF (Israeli “Defence” Force).

“It is our duty, all human beings with breath left in our lungs, with the freedom to chant and to move and to demand action from our politicians, to do all that we can to fight for liberation for all peoples,” she said.

Other politicians speaking were Orini Kaipara, the Te Pati Māori candidate for the Tāmaki Mākaurau byelection, and Kerrin Leoni, mayoral candidate for Tamaki.

Targeted assassinations
Earlier, the targeted assassinations of six journalists by the Israeli military last Sunday — taking the toll to 272 — was condemned by independent journalist and Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie. He also criticised the NZ media silence.

Noting that New Zealand journalists had not condemned the killings or held a vigil as the Media Alliance (MEAA) had done in Australia, he cited an Al Jazeera journalist, Hind Khoudary, whose message to the world was:

“We are being hunted and killed in Gaza while you watch in silence. For two years, your fellow journalists here have been slaughtered.

What did you do? Nothing.”

A recent poll on whether New Zealanders want sanctions to be imposed on Israel, showed that of those who gave an opinion, 60 percent favoured sanctions.

The PSNA commissioned survey by Talbot Mills in July with 1216 respondents gave a similar result to one commissioned by Justice for Palestine a year ago.

Popular support for sanctions
PSNA co-chair John Minto said the numbers showed strong popular support for sanctions. The 60 percent overall rose to 68 percent for the 18–29 year category.

“The government is well out of step with public opinion and ignores this message at its peril.  There is popular support for sanctions against Israel,” he said.

“People see that Israel is committing the worst atrocities of the 21st century with impunity. It is starving a whole population.

“It has destroyed just about every building in Gaza. It is assassinating journalists. It holds 7000 Palestinian hostages in its jails without charge.  Its goal of occupying all of Gaza and ethnically cleansing its people into the Sudan desert, is all public knowledge.”

Minto said Israel’s “depraved Prime Minister” who was wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICJ) for war crimes and crimes against humanity, had boasting that if Israel was really committing genocide, “it could have killed everyone in Gaza in a single afternoon”.

“The poll shows New Zealand First supporters are most opposed to sanctions against Israel (59 percent of those who gave an opinion were opposed) so it’s little surprise Winston Peters is dragging the chain.”

The chief of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has described Gaza as “no land” for children, as two rallies were held in New Zealand’s largest city Auckland today to mark Palestine Children’s Day.

Citing the UN agency for children UNICEF, Phillipe Lazzarini said that “at least 100 children are reported killed or injured every day in Gaza” since Israel broke the truce with Hamas on March 18.

“The ceasefire at the beginning of the year gave Gaza’s children a chance to survive and be children,” said Lazzarini, who is Commissioner-General of UNRWA.

• READ MORE: With Hasbara failing, Israel placed Hossam Shabat on a kill list
• Other Palestine Children’s Day images, videos

“The resumption of the war is again robbing them of their childhood. The war has turned Gaza into a ‘no land’ for children. This is a stain on our common humanity.

Harrowing.
At least 100 children are reported killed or injured every day in #Gaza, since the strikes resumed (on 18 March) according to @UNICEF

Young lives cut short in a war not of children’s making.

Since the war began 1.5 years ago, 15,000 children were reportedly…

— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) April 4, 2025

The two Auckland Palestinian solidarity events today marking April 5 — one a children’s activities gathering in Albert Park and the other a regular weekly rally at “Palestine Corner” in downtown Te Komititanga Square — were among 25 activist happenings across the country on week 78 of continuous protests.

In Albert Park, one of the organisers said the children “had lots of fun — painting, drawing, listening to stories, making collages, playing games with Palestinian themes and some families had picnics.”

In “Palestine Corner”, several teachers spoke of the realities of the genocide in Gaza, protesters carried placards with photos and names of children killed by the Israeli bombing, while children coloured pictures and blew bubbles.

Huge toll on children
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports that children have been among the most severely affected by the continuing Israeli war on Gaza.

“Many of them have been killed, injured and orphaned and we can see that thousands of children have lost their limbs and they are suffering from severe trauma,” he said.

“As the UNRWA spokesperson stated: 51 percent of Gaza’s population are children and they make up the largest proportion of those that were killed since the war began back on October 7, 2023.

“For many children here in Gaza, displacement has taken a very heavy, huge toll on them.

“They have been repeatedly displaced, forced to flee their homes and right now they are forced to live in overcrowded shelters and tents and on the rubble of their destroyed homes and residential buildings.”

The Palestinian Human Rights Organisations Council (PHROC) — made up of nine groups — has written to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk to demand action on Israel in protest over the killing of children.

Israeli forces continued to kill Palestinians on a genocidal scale in Gaza and had created “conditions of life unfit for human survival,” the council told Turk.

Israel’s “intent to eliminate and eventually destroy Palestinians across unlawfully occupied Palestine” is also evident in occupied West Bank, the council said.

The council called on Turk to clearly label Israel’s conduct as genocide, pressure the Israeli government to end its genocide, ensure accountability for Israeli perpetrators, and mobilise the UN to implement a plan to end genocide against Palestinians across the occupied territory.

Albanese’s mandate renewed
Meanwhile, Francesca Albanese will continue to serve as Special Rapporteur until 30 April 2028, a spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Council announced after the vote today in Geneva by the UNHRC to retain her.

The UN Human Rights Council defied the efforts of Israel, the US, The Netherlands and other Western countries trying to unseat Albanese, who has been special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 for the past three years.

Albanese had faced a smear campaign for many months by deniers of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, which she had warned about in October 2023.

She documented the crimes against humanity, notably in her devastating report Anatomy Of A Genocide in April 2024.

The influence of the West is crumbling. Francesca Albanese‘s mandate has been renewed – as it is usual procedure – despite heavy pressure from Western Zionist genocidal lobby the tables are turning pic.twitter.com/vULovc3bVn

— Melanie Schweizer (@Melaniebelizi) April 5, 2025

One of the leading Palestinian solidarity groups in Aotearoa New Zealand has demanded that the government condemn Israel’s cutting off of all humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Israel announced its latest “humanitarian outrage” against the Palestinian people of Gaza as it tries to renegotiate the three-phased ceasefire agreement it signed with Hamas in January.

“Israel is trying to weasel its way out of the agreement because it doesn’t want to negotiate stage two which requires it to withdraw its troops from Gaza,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-national chair John Minto.

• READ MORE: NZ arms company building linked to Gaza genocide, claim peace activists
• Israeli forces attack Gaza, killing 2, as world condemns aid blockade
• Hamas accuses Israel of ‘blackmail’ over aid, demands end of US support for Netanyahu
• Activists scale NZ building in protest against global weapons company
• Other Gaza genocide protests

“Israel signed the ceasefire agreement and it must be forced to follow it through,” he said in a statement today.

“Cutting off humanitarian aid is a blatant war crime and New Zealand must say so without equivocation.

“Our government has been complicit with Israeli war crimes for the past 16 months and has previously refused to condemn Israel’s use of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war.

“It’s time we got off our knees and stood up for international law and United Nations resolutions.”

Violation of Geneva Conventions
Meanwhile, a Democrat senator, Peter Welch (vermont), yesterday joined the global condemnation of the Israeli “weaponisation” of humanitarian aid.

In a brief post on X, responding to Israel blocking the entry of all goods and supplies into Gaza, Senator Peter Welch, a Democrat from Vermont, simply said:

In a brief message on X, Senator Welch said: “This is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.”

This is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. https://t.co/vFDaPTqDAz

— Senator Peter Welch (@SenPeterWelch) March 3, 2025

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has hailed the launch of the Berlin Initiative led by former peace negotiators Yossi Beilin and Hiba Husseini.

In a statement, Guterres said the world must end this terrible war and lay the foundations for lasting peace, “one that ensures security for Israel, dignity and self-determination for the Palestinian people, and stability for the entire region”.

This required a clear political framework for Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction, he said.

“It requires immediate and irreversible steps towards a two-State solution — with Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, unified under a legitimate Palestinian authority, accepted and supported by the Palestinian people.

“And it requires putting an end to occupation, settlement expansion and threats of annexation.”

The State of Palestine has submitted a written plea to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) asking it for an advisory opinion regarding Israel’s obligations not to obstruct humanitarian and development assistance in the territories it occupies, Al Jazeera reports.

In the submission, Palestinian officials affirmed the responsibility of Israel, as an occupying power, to not obstruct the work of the UN, international organisations, and third states so they can provide essential services, humanitarian aid, and development assistance to the Palestinian people.

Many states, as well as international groups, have submitted written pleas to the ICJ ahead of oral proceedings set to start next month.

• READ MORE: Israel threatens a second Nakba, yet denies the first ever happened
• First phase of Israel-Hamas ceasefire ends with no deal

Last July, the ICJ issued a historic advisory opinion determining Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible”.

Widespread ‘torture’ of Gaza medics in Israeli custody
In a separate report, the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights accused the Israeli military of detaining more than 250 medical personnel and support staff since the beginning of the war on Gaza in October 2023.

More than 180 remained in detention without a clear indication of when or if they would be released, the physicians’ report said.

“Detainees endure physical, psychological and sexual abuse as well as starvation and medical neglect amounting to torture,” the report said, denouncing a “deeply ingrained policy”.

Healthcare workers were beaten, threatened, and forced to sign documents in Hebrew during their detention, according to the report based on 20 testimonies collected in prison.

“Medical personnel were primarily questioned about the Israeli hostages, tunnels, hospital structures and Hamas’s activity,” it said.

“They were rarely asked questions linking them to any criminal activity, nor were they presented with substantive charges.”

Where does Trump stand on the Gaza ceasefire?
With phase one of the ceasefire due to end today and negotiations barely started on phase two, serious fears are being raised over  the viability of the ceasefire.

President Donald Trump took credit for the truce that his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff helped push across the finish line after a year of negotiations led by the Biden administration, Egypt and Qatar, reports Al Jazeera.

However, Trump has since sent mixed signals about the deal.

Earlier last month, he set a firm deadline for Hamas to release all the captives, warning “all hell is going to break out” if it didn’t.

But he said it was ultimately up to Israel, and the deadline came and went.

Trump sowed further confusion by proposing that Gaza’s population of about 2.3 million be relocated to other countries and for the US to take over the territory and develop it.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the idea, but it was universally rejected by Palestinians and Arab countries, including close US allies. Human rights groups said it could violate international law.

Trump stood by the plan in a Fox News interview over the weekend but said he was “not forcing it”.

Responding to DAWN’s referral of Biden, Blinken & Austin to the ICC for investigation for aiding Israeli war crimes, @alhaq_org‘s @SJabaren says:

“Finally, we see an effort to hold” accountable “US officials who have armed, financed and politically defended Israeli atrocities.” pic.twitter.com/yCpRaogE2I

— DAWN MENA (@DAWNmenaorg) February 28, 2025

‘Finally’ an effort to hold the US accountable, says Al-Haq director
Palestinian human rights activist Shawan Jabarin has welcomed a plea by the US-based rights group DAWN for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Joe Biden and senior US officials for aiding Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

In a video posted by DAWN, Jabarin, director of the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, said the effort was long overdue.

“For decades we have called on the international community to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law, but time and again, the US has used its power and influence to block that accountability, to shield Israel from consequences and to ensure that it can continue its crimes with impunity,” Jabarin said.

“Now, finally, we see an effort to hold not just Israeli officials accountable but also those who have made these crimes possible: US officials who have armed, financed, and politically defended Israeli atrocities.”

My message today is really simple but brutal. 

Israel kills the journalists deliberately. This is unprecedented. The Western media — including here in Aotearoa New Zealand — kills the truth about genocide in Gaza.

On Boxing Day, an Israeli air strike killed five Palestinian journalists in a clearly marked white vehicle outside a hospital in central Gaza.

• READ MORE: Israel kills five Palestinian journalists in attack on media van
• RSF’s 2024 Round-up: journalism suffers exorbitant human cost due to conflicts and repressive regimes
• Silencing the messenger: Israel kills journalists, while the West merely censors them — David Robie
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

The journalists from the Al-Quds Today TV channel were outside the al-Awada Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp when their satellite broadcast van was struck by a pre-dawn Israeli strike.

Video footage that went viral showed the van with the words “PRESS” clearly marked in red block letters engulfed in flames.

Middle East Eye reporter Hani Aburezeq said from the scene: “The van was entirely burnt and destroyed. It was fully engulfed in flames.”

The slain journalists were – let’s honour their names — Fadi Hassouna, Ibrahim al-Sheikh Ali, Mohammed al-Ladah, Faisal Abu al-Qumsan and Ayman al-Jadi.

Jadi had gone to the hospital with his wife who was giving birth to their first child. He had gone out to check on the car and his mates when it was bombed.

Baby born on day father died for ‘truth’
Imagine that, the baby was born on the very day his father died while doing his job as a journalist — reporting the truth.

It is another cruel example of the tragic lives lost in this genocide by Israel which has killed more than 45,400 people, mostly women and children.

Al Jazeera’s report on the journalist killings. Video: AJ

Just last week, four other journalists were killed over two days. And now the total is 201 Palestinian journalists killed since 7 October 2023.

This is by far the highest death toll of journalists in any war or conflict.

By comparison, in the six years of the Second World War only 69 journalists were killed.

And in 20 years of the Vietnam War, just 63 journalists were killed.

Al Jazeera reports that Israel, which has not allowed foreign journalists to enter Gaza except on military embeds with the Israeli “Defence” Forces (IDF), which is increasingly being dubbed by critics as the Israeli “Offence” Forces (“IOF”), has been condemned by many media freedom organisations.

Gaza ‘most dangerous region’
The besieged enclave is now regarded as the “most dangerous region of the world” for journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders in its annual report.

Al Jazeera itself was banned by Israel in May from reporting within the country, and was subsequently barred from reporting within the occupied West Bank and the closure of the Ramallah bureau in mid-September.

Israel has tried to silence Al Jazeera previously in by threatening it in 2017, bombing its broadcast office in Gaza in 2021, and assassinating celebrated journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 and other reporters with impunity.

Al Jazeera, TRT News and many independent news outlets as Democracy Now!, The Intercept, Middle East Eye and The Palestine Chronicle stand in contrast to mainstream media such as BBC, CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post that have frequently been called out in investigative reports for systemic bias against Palestine.

Among the poignant messages from Palestinian journalists documenting this war are Bisan Owda, who signs on her video reports every day with “I’m still alive”.

But I would like to share this reflection from another journalist, videographer Osama Abu Rabee who says on his X news feed that he is “capturing the untold stories of resilience and hope”. He said in one post this week:

‘Moments away from death’
“One of my most vivid memories is when three journalists and I were in Eastern Jabalia and we needed to connect our e-sims to edit and upload content of a massacre.

“We went to a room but the connection wasn’t good so I suggested we go into another room. Less than 5 minutes later, the room we had been in got bombed.

“People came over running thinking that we were killed but luckily there were only injuries.

“This was one of the many times that I was moments away from death. I know that I’m targeted as a Palestinian but also as a journalist.

“Every single day I step out of my house and put on my ‘press’ vest and I look behind at my family, I’m not sure if I’ll see them again.

“I hope you understand the risks we are taking to show you the truth.

“Even 15 month later, we continue to go out every single day  and document the horrors that people in Gaza experience.

“We do this so that when God asks what you do, we respond with ‘we did what we could’.”

NZ media’s role shameful
Can journalists and the media in Aotearoa New Zealand say with hand on heart that “we did what we could” in the face of this genocide?

Of course not, the role of New Zealand media has been shameful, apart from notable exceptions such as Gordon Campbell.

It has failed to hold the Christopher Luxon coalition government to account over its pathetic inaction over the genocide.

It has failed to press the government into taking a stronger and more principled stance at the United Nations to call for sanctions against the apartheid and genocidal regime, or to even expel Israel from the global chamber — or the ambassador from Wellington.

It has failed to argue for New Zealand to join the South African-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Take Ireland, a smallish country like New Zealand, as an inspirational example. Earlier this month, Ireland responded immediately to the closure of Israel’s embassy in Dublin by opening a Palestinian museum on the premises.

Prime Minister Simon Harris condemned Israel’s genocidal actions, particularly against children and reaffirmed his country’s commitment to human rights and international law.

He said Ireland would not be silenced over Israel. He continued:

“You know what I think is reprehensible? Killing children, I think that’s reprehensible.

“You know what I think is reprehensible? Seeing the scale of civilian deaths that we’ve seen in Gaza.

“You know what I think is reprehensible? People being left to starve and humanitarian aid not flowing,”

Silence of the news media
Have we ever had such a courageous statement like this from our Prime Minister. Absolutely not.

It is shameful that our government has not taken a stand.

And it is shameful that the New Zealand media has been so silent over this most horrendous episode of our times — genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in front of our very eyes for 15 months.

To my knowledge, journalists in Aotearoa have not made even made statements of solidarity with the journalists of Gaza and their horrific sacrifice to bear witness to the truth.

I made a plea for such a stand last January and it was ignored. Australia is making a better job of challenging the status quo.

New Zealand journalists have already “normalised” the genocide. Shameful.

Dr David Robie is convenor of Pacific Media Watch and editor of Asia Pacific Report. This was first presented as an address to a Palestinian solidarity rally in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Te Komititanga Square in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau on 28 December 2024.

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, has condemned Israel’s extensive airstrikes on Syrian installations — reportedly almost 500 times in 72 hours, comparing them to historic Israeli actions justified as “security measures”.

He criticised the hypocrisy of Israel’s security pretext endorsed by Western powers.

Asked why Israel was bombing Syria and encroaching on its territory just days after the ousting of the Bashar al-Assad regime after 54 years in power, he told Al Jazeera: “Because it can get away with it.”

• READ MORE: Israel bombs near Damascus as Syrians celebrate fall of al-Assad regime
• Other Gaza and Syria reports

Bishara explained that Israel aimed to destabilise and weaken neighbouring countries for its own security.

He noted that the new Syrian administration was overwhelmed and unable to respond effectively.

Bishara highlighted that regional powers like Egypt and Saudi Arabia had condemned Israel’s actions, even though Western countries had been largely silent.

He said Israel was “taking advantage” of the chaos to “settle scores”.

“One can go back 75 years, 80 years, and look at Israel since its inception,” he said.

“What has it been? In a state of war. Continuous, consistent state of war, bombing countries, destabilising countries, carrying out genocide, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.

“All of it for the same reason — presumably it’s security.

“Under the pretext of security, Israel would carry [out] the worst kind of violations of international law, the worst kind of ethnic cleansing, worst kind of genocide.

“And that’s what we have seen it do.

“Now, certainly in this very particular instance it’s taking advantage of the fact that there is a bit of chaos, if you will, slash change, dramatic change in Syria after 50 years of more of the same in order to settle scores with a country that it has always deemed to be a dangerous enemy, and that is Syria.

“So I think the idea of decapitating, destabilising, undercutting, undermining Syria and Syria’s national security, will always be a main goal for Israel.”

In an Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau solidarity rally today, protesters condemned Israel’s bombing of Syria and also called on New Zealand’s Christopher Luxon-led coalition government to take a stronger stance against Israel and to pressure major countries to impose UN sanctions against Tel Aviv.

A prominent lawyer, Labour Party activist and law school senior academic at Auckland University of Technology, Dr Myra Williamson, spoke about the breakthrough in international law last month with the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants being issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Lawyer and law school academic Dr Myra Williamson speaking at the Auckland rally today.  Video: Asia Pacific Report

“What you have to be aware of is that the ICC is being threatened — the individuals are being threatened and the court itself is being threatened, mainly by the United States,” she told the solidarity crowd in Te Komititanga Square.

“Personal threats to the judges, to the prosecutor Karim Khan.

“So you need to be vocal and you need to talk to people over the summer about how important that work is. Just to get the warrants issued was a major achievement and the next thing is to get them on trial in The Hague.”

ICC Annual Meeting — court under threat.      Video: Al Jazeera

New Zealand activists Youssef Sammour and Rana Hamida have been selected to join the volunteer crew on the international Freedom Flotilla ship Handala, currently visiting European ports and heading to break Israel’s siege of Gaza.

They will be farewelled at 10:30am upstairs at the Auckland International Airport on Sunday, reports Kia Ora Gaza.

Trevor Hogan, a former Irish rugby champion and pro-Palestinian activist who participated in several flotillas that were water cannoned and pirated by the Israeli military in the past, has sent a special message to the volunteers and those supporting the freedom missions in “a time of great, unquantifiable grief”.

• READ MORE: Education head condemns Israel’s ‘shameful’ ruin of UN schools in Gaza
• Why is NZ being so obstinate over its weak position on Gaza and Palestine?
  
• At least 25 killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza today, including infant
• ‘Traumatised, exhausted’: 1 million ‘trapped’ as south Gaza war rages – World Food Programme
• Kia Ora Gaza website
• Other War on Gaza reports

“While our Handala has just left the Irish port of Cobh and we continue to work on reflagging the flotilla ships stuck in Istanbul, the decades of solidarity from Ireland remains palpable, unwavering and tremendously significant for Palestinians and the wider diaspora,” said Kia Ora Gaza.

“This is a reminder to everyone watching: on those dark days, take time to regroup, regather, and come back again. Until Palestine is free.”

Trevor Hogan’s message to the world in support of Palestine.  Video: Freedom Flotila Coalition

Concerns raised over US ‘floating pier’
Meanwhile, Ahmed Omar in Monoweiss reports that in March 2024, US President Joe Biden announced in his State of the Union address that the US would be building a temporary “floating pier” on the Gaza shoreline to deliver “humanitarian aid” to the starving population in Gaza.

“No US boots will be on the ground,” he promised.

Since then, however, critics have raised concerns that the pier is not only being used for “humanitarian” purposes but is being employed for military activities that aid in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.

An intelligence source from within the resistance in Gaza, who spoke to Mondoweiss under conditions of anonymity, said there were mounting signs the US pier could also be used to forcibly displace Palestinians.

This would provide an alternative to the original Israeli plan of forcing Palestinians into the Sinai, which was rejected by Egypt early on in the war.

“The floating pier project is an American solution to the displacement dilemma in Gaza,” the source said.

“It goes beyond both the Israeli solution of displacing Gazans into Sinai . . . and the Egyptian suggestion of displacing [Gazans] into the Naqab [desert].”

Instead, the source said, the US pier would be used to facilitate the displacement of Gazans to Cyprus, and then eventually to Lebanon or Europe.

These concerns have been brought into sharp relief after the Israeli army committed a massacre in Nuseirat refugee camp last weekend, killing at least 274 Palestinians in order to retrieve four Israeli captives.

The US pier was at the centre of coverage of the massacre, as multiple news sources, videos, and eyewitness accounts from Gaza indicated that US forces may have been involved in the operation and that humanitarian trucks entering Nuseirat were hiding the Israeli soldiers that carried out the massacre.

Reported in collaboration with Kia Ora Gaza.

Nour Odeh, a Palestinian political analyst, says that the US is more likely to move in the “right direction” when it comes to Israel if it feels pressure from its allies, reports Al Jazeera.

“The more Washington feels pressure from its friends, that its policy on Israel is becoming a liability, the more likely I think that we’re going to see a movement in the right direction,” Odeh, who is also the former spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority, told Al Jazeera’s Inside Story.

Odeh noted a recent letter calling for the US to halt weapons sales to Israel, which showed more Democratic politicians, including Nancy Pelosi, are finding US policies “untenable” after a recent Israeli strike that killed seven aid workers in Gaza.

• READ MORE: Does Israel’s attack on aid workers mark a turning point for its allies?
• Six months on, no end in sight to Is­rael’s war on Gaza
• Al-Quds Day around the world

“What the Americans are doing now seems like a big deal because they’ve been complicit in this war since the beginning”, she said.

Odeh, who spoke to Al Jazeera from Ramallah, described the last six months as “soul-crushing”, but said that a lot of “solace if not hope is found in the global solidarity movement”.

“This is not a destiny anybody can accept,” she said.

Ngāmotu protest
Meanwhile, a Ngāmotu (New Pymouth) rally on al-Quds Day was featured on Al Jazeera Arabic world news as thousands of people took to the streets of New Zealand over the weekend to protest against the war and the failure of Israel to abide by the US Security Council resolution last month ordering an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

International Quds Day is an annual pro-Palestinian event held on the last Friday of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to express support for Palestinians and oppose Israel and Zionism.

It takes its name from the Arabic name for Jerusalem — al-Quds.

The Ngāmotu rally on Quds Day as featured on Al Jazeera Arabic.  Video: Al Jazeera

On RNZ’s Saturday Morning programme yesterday, the author of a new book featuring the hardships and repression facing Palestinians in their daily lives living under occupation in Jerusalem gave some insights into this human story.

Jerusalem-based American journalist and author Nathan Thrall’s book is named on 10 best books of the year lists, including The New Yorker, The Economist and The Financial Times.

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story is a portrait of life in Israel and Palestine, giving an understanding of what it is like to live there and the oppression and complexities of the pass system, based on the real events of one tragic day, where Jewish and Palestinian characters’ lives and pasts unexpectedly converge.

Thrall has spent a decade with the International Crisis Group, where he was director of the Arab-Israeli Project. His first book, published in 2017 is The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine.

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa wrote about Thrall’s original article that led to the book:

I pray that Thrall’s article will remind President Joe Biden of the courageous stance he took against apartheid in South Africa as a senator.

I hope that it will provide a mirror which shows that the very same type of laws that he opposed in South Africa are now instrumental in oppressing Palestinians, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Monday — and for the first time since the beginning of the Israeli military’s genocide of Palestinians, the United States abstained rather than vetoing it.

Security Council resolutions are legally binding, despite the Biden administration claiming that they are not.

But it is up to the Palestine solidarity movement to ensure the US government enforces it.

• READ MORE: US vows to press Is­rael on Gaza cease­fire with no let up in dead­ly strikes
• Other War on Gaza reports

The resolution demands an immediate ceasefire that leads to a “lasting” and “sustainable” ceasefire, demands the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” and emphasises “expand[ing] the flow of humanitarian assistance.”

The resolution also contains several weaknesses, reflected in its intentionally vague, watered-down language, which obscures member states’ responsibilities to enforce the ceasefire.

Concerningly, the resolution only demands a ceasefire “for the month of Ramadan,” which ends in two weeks. US diplomats also lobbied for concessions until the last minute, leading to replacing the call for a“permanent ceasefire” with the much weaker “lasting ceasefire.”

The resolution demands the release of all hostages, but it fails to explicitly name the tens of thousands of Palestinians held illegally in Israeli detention and subject to systematic abuse, instead referring ambiguously to both parties complying with “their obligations under international law in relation to all persons they detain.”

Essential clause ‘buried’
And although the resolution does “reiterate its demand for the lifting of all barriers to provision of humanitarian aid at scale” — in a clear message to the Israeli government — this essential clause is buried at the end of a longer sentence that merely emphasises the need to expand the flow of humanitarian aid.

As JVP international advisor Phyllis Bennis puts it, “in UN diplo-speak… ‘emphasising’ something ain’t even close to ‘demanding’ that it happen.”

Nevertheless, the US’s decision to abstain on the vote has inflamed tensions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who immediately announced that he had cancelled a high-level Israeli delegation bound for Washington.

President Biden had explicitly requested the meeting to raise concerns about Israel’s potential ground invasion of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city where nearly 1.5 million Palestinians are currently sheltering.

Biden has insisted on a plan to evacuate civilians, however impossible that may be, and has called the planned ground invasion a “red line.”

That a ceasefire resolution was finally achieved is in large part due to the massive pressure being exerted by the Palestine solidarity movement. It is a reminder that pressure works, and that now is not the time to let up.

That it took this long, however, shows us how far we have to go.

US vetoed four times
The US vetoed four previous UNSC ceasefire resolutions while the Israeli military slaughtered tens of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children, even after the World Court found South Africa’s claim that Israel was committing genocide to be “plausible.”

Gaza is now a shell of its former self, its entire landscape rendered unrecognisable by the Israeli military’s months-long genocidal onslaught.

Over 32,000 Palestinians have been killed. Full-blown famine is imminent, and half of Gaza’s entire population — 1.1 million people — are facing starvation.

Yet the Biden administration remains intent on continuing to arm the Israeli military.

Immediately following the passage of the resolution, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield was already undermining it by claiming that UN Security Council resolutions are not legally binding.

This is patently false — and it tells us that the Biden administration is fully prepared to skirt any and all responsibility to enforce this resolution, which would necessitate cutting off the flow of US weapons to the Israeli military.

$3.8 billion for Israeli military
Last week, Biden signed off on a spending bill that would provide $3.8 billion in funding to the Israeli military.

The bill will also ban funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) through March 2025.

Meanwhile, the US military continues to conduct aid airdrops in Gaza — a public relations manoeuvre intended to diffuse pressure on the US government.

These aid drops will not prevent a famine, and they do not absolve the United States government of its complicity in this genocide. They are also dangerous, expensive, and inefficient.

Republished from JVP

Indigenous support for Palestine around the world has been overwhelming — and Aotearoa New Zealand is no exception, says a leading Māori environmental and human rights advocate.

Writing on her Kia Mau – Resisting Colonial Fictions website, Tina Ngata (Ngati Porou) says that week after week, tangata whenua have been showing support for Palestine since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began last October 7.

“This alone is a mark to the depth of feeling New Zealanders have about this matter, not just that they show up, but that they KEEP showing up, every week,” she wrote.

• READ MORE: Make no mistake – there is no indigenous support for Israel
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“In an age where wrongdoers rely on the public to get bored and move on — that hasn’t happened,” said Ngata, an East Coast activist writer who highlights the role of settler colonialism in climate change and waste pollution.

“Quite the opposite, actually — with every week passing, more and more tangata whenua are committing time and effort to understanding and opposing the genocide being carried out by Israel, first and foremost as a matter of their own humanity, but also as a matter of Indigenous solidarity.”

She was responding to publicity over a counter protest earlier this month by Destiny Church members who performed a haka in the middle of a Gaza ceasefire protest in Christchurch.

Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters have been taking part in weekly rallies across New Zealand in support of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an independent state of Palestine.

More than 31,000 killed
More than 31,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza so far and at least 28 people have died from malnutrition as starvation starts to impact on the besieged enclave due to Israeli border blocks on humanitarian aid trucks.

“As we’ve seen here in Aotearoa (and in so-called United States/Canada and Australia as well), there are always a few Indigenous outliers who are co-opted into colonial agendas, and try to paint their colonialism as being Indigenous,” Ngata wrote.

FARC’s Derek Tait & his gleeful public dehumanising of Palestinian protesters in the name of Destiny Church’s Tu Tangata thugs during a standoff in Ōtautahi yesterday, his racist behaviour & misappropriated haka managing to make last nights lead story on 1 News no less. pic.twitter.com/LodBTMwfNV

— Kelvin Morgan (@kelvin_morganNZ) March 3, 2024

“In Aotearoa, those outliers have names, they are Destiny Church (and their political arm, the ‘Freedom and Rights Coalition’), and the ‘Indigenous Coalition for Israel’.

“This is not Indigenous support for Israel. It is Indigenous people, recruited into colonial support for Israel. It is easily debunked by the following facts:
– Israel is a product of Western colonialism
– Both groups are centered on Euro-Christian conservatism
– Both groups are affiliated with the far-right and white supremacists
– Māori have made it very clear, on our most important political platforms, that we stand with Palestine.”

Ngata wrote that when news media profiled these groups as “Indigenous support for Israel”, it was important to note that a “hallmark of Western domination is the tendency to see Indigenous peoples as a homogenous group”.

“Even the smallest cohort of Indigenous peoples are, within a Western colonial mind (and to Western media), cast as representative of the whole,” she said.

“Equally important to note is that Indigenous people, through the process of colonialism, are regularly co-opted into colonial agendas, and this is often platformed by media to suggest Indigenous support for colonialism.

NZ’s ‘colonial project’
“The most energy-efficient model of colonialism is Indigenous people carrying it out upon each other, and New Zealand’s colonial project has relied heavily upon a strategy of aggressive assimilation and recruitment.”

Ngata wrote that it was clear Israel’s claims of Indigeneity were “unpractised, clumsy [and] unconnected to the global Indigenous struggle and unconnected to the global Indigenous community”.

“This is a natural consequence of the fact that they are colonisers, and up until very recently, proudly claimed that title,” she said.

Unsurprisingly, she added, Israel did not participate in the 2007 UN vote to endorse the Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Researching this story took me down some wild rabbit holes and the challenge was making it all make sense. Israel has been maneuvering in the Pacific for decades.

Israel and the Pacific – a surprisingly close ‘friendship’https://t.co/mUpa3qMtyb

— Indira Stewart (@Indiratweets) March 10, 2024

While 143 countries voted in favour for the declaration at the UN, four voted against — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, with 11 abstentions, including Samoa. Recent articles and video reports have highlighted some groups in the Pacific supporting Israel, including the establishment of an “Indigenous Embassy” in Jerusalem.

“You know who DOES have a record of showing up at the United Nations as Indigenous Peoples?” asked Ngata.

“Indigenous Palestinians and Bedouin, both of whom have decried the colonial oppression of Israel.”

• Read the full article ‘Make no mistake – there is no Indigenous support for Israel’