A South African activist representing more than 200,000 shack dwellers has praised New Zealanders for their international solidarity against settler colonialism and appealed for them to “emulate” their 1981 stand against apartheid over Palestine.

S’bu Zikode, co-founder and current leader of Abahlali baseMjondolo, recalled how it had been 15 years since he had been in New Zealand to mark the 20th anniversary of the “great protests against the Springbok rugby tour of 1981”.

Speaking at a public event in Auckland’s Ellen Melville Centre organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) last night, he said he wanted to remember that history and thank all those people of this country who “stood with us against apartheid”.

• READ MORE: Four children among five killed in Gaza floods
• ANC faces bruising defeat in South African local elections with 80 percent of ballots counted
• Other Gaza genocide reports

“You refused to allow the apartheid state to present itself as a normal member of the international community,” he said.

“This was an outstanding example of international solidarity, and an example that we should seek to emulate in our solidarity with the people of Palestine.”

Zikode is in New Zealand for a week-long tour primarily to speak at a Federation of Socialist Societies event in Dunedin on November 13/14. He also addressed a Palestine solidarity rally in Auckland yesterday and will speak in Hamilton today.

He will visit Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, Kerikeri and Whangarei.

“In our movement we speak of living solidarity. This means solidarity that exists in actions, not just in words,” he said at Ellen Melville, speaking on the theme “South Africa, Palestine and the urgency of solidarity”.

“It means solidarity between people who recognise one another as equals.”

Settler colonialism oppression
Zikode said South Africa and Palestine were both countries that had been oppressed by settler colonialism. This was part of the reason for the long solidarity with Palestine among South Africans.

His words came as global headlines exposed the cruelty of Israel’s breaches of the so-called Gaza genocide “ceasefire” with savage storms and flooding killing five Palestinians living in tents and during local body elections in South Africa where the progressive African National Congress (ANC) has suffered its worst electoral defeats.

Zikode said there were important differences between the two forms of settler colonialism.

“In South Africa, the colonial system was organised around dispossession of Africans from their land, the theft of their cattle and the exploitation of their labour.

“The economy depended on African workers in the mines, on the farms, in the factories and in the homes of white people. The settlers wanted the land , but they also wanted the labour of the people the dispossessed.

“Huge numbers of people were forced from their homes and land as African people were pushed into ‘reserves’, based on the system used to oppress Native Americans, and later into the ‘Bantustans’, the so-called ‘homelands’.

“The Bantustans were not just used to confine African people to tony areas of land. They were also central to the migrant labour system that ensured cheap labour for white capital and white families in their homes.”

Forced to leave families
African workers were forced by economic necessity to leave their families and communities to find work in the mines and cities. Many were compelled to live in single-sex hostels, separated from their families.

“When we look at Palestine today, we recognise many of these methods of oppression. We see a fundamentally racist settler colonial system in which there is ongoing dispossession of people from their land by the Israeli state and settlers,” Zikode said.

“We see homes being demolished. We see communities separated from one another by walls, checkpoints and military restrictions. We see people who stand up against oppression being called ‘terrorists’ and subject to mass imprisonment, torture and murder.

“The struggles against racism and for land are central to the struggle for freedom, both in South Africa and in Palestine. But there are also differences between apartheid in South Africa and oppression in Palestine.

“While Palestinians have been exploited as workers, the fundamental drive of settler colonialism in Israel is to remove or destroy the Palestinian people rather than to exploit them for their labour.”

The Nakba of 1948 had forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, Zikode said.

Many had become refugees in other countries while they and their descendants remained unable to return. The occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967 had brought further dispossession, settlement expansion and military rule.

Genocide continues Nakba
The genocide in Gaza — with more than 75,000 Palestinians killed, mostly women and children, in three years of war on the besieged enclave – and the ongoing theft of land in the West Bank had continued the process begun with the Nakba.

“We must also recognise that the Palestinian experience has become more terrible in certain respects than the experience of apartheid South Africa,” Zikode said.

“The scale of the destruction of Gaza, mass displacement and the killing of civilians have horrified people across the world.

“But we must be clear that, within South Africa itself, the apartheid state did not carry out mass killing on the scale that we have witnessed with the genocide in Gaza.

“Recognising this difference does not diminish the suffering of South Africans under apartheid.”

He acknowledged that the Palestinian people had not yet won their freedom .

“There must also be a single free and democratic country with equal rights for all and one person, one vote in historic Palestine – ‘from the river to the sea’.”

Warning against betrayal
Zikode warned also against sabotage of the path to freedom.

“In South Africa, we have been betrayed by the ANC who have enriched themselves, repressed popular movements and struggles, and left a devastated country with mass impoverishment, mass hunger, and mass unemployment – including more than 60 percent youth.”

Question time was lively with queries about solidarity organising, the global drift to the far right and fascism, stronger solidarity with Palestine, and why had South Africa requested more time for its genocide lawsuit against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

“We were proud when South African lawyers stood before the [ICC] court in The Hague and presented the case that Israel’s actions in Gaza violated the Genocide Convention.”

Zikode said this was an important act of international solidarity but South Africa was “paying a price” for the lawsuit and subjected to severe diplomatic pressure and threats from the United States. He also criticised the fact that South Africa had continued to “sell coal to Israel” and ANC-aligned trade unions had not blocked ships heading to Israel.

One young woman in the audience asked what worldwide protesters over the Israeli genocide should do when governments were failing to take action: “I am only 24, and already I am tired.”

Zikode replied it was important to not act alone, and to join others in solidarity and keep their spirits up.

COMMENTARY: By Nick Bollinger

I have to confess to a degree of imposter syndrome.

I was the wrong age and in the wrong place to be any part of this visionary organisation.

When the small group first gathered in the 1970s to plan what would be the foundations of the Ponsonby People’s Union (PPU), I would have been 12 or 13 and just starting secondary school at Onslow College in Johnsonville, near Wellington.

• READ MORE: From Resistance to the Ponsonby People’s Union, a courageous tale of struggle for justice — David Robie
• Honouring the people’s fight against hardship, repression and racism — Tony Fala
• Other Ponsonby People’s Union reports

But even then, it would have been hard not to notice that there were things going on, out in the world beyond our school walls, that were challenging the way society was being run; that sought fairness and justice and peace.

For the past five or six years New Zealand had been involved in a war, waged by America against the Vietnamese, and it didn’t take much to see that this was completely wrong. There were marches through town on Friday nights, organised by people just a few years older than me; some who our government were trying to force into military training, perhaps even to fight in this unjust war.

And these were some of the first activities that me and my Onslow friends would join in on, that could be seen as part of the challenge to the powers that governed our society.

There were other things happening too that I wanted to be part of. Some were deadly serious, like the movement against nuclear weapons or apartheid in South Africa. And there were others that just looked like more fun than the mainstream version of life in New Zealand that was being offered – rock concerts and festivals, communes, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.

Hope, ideas, action
It was a time of hope, ideas, and action.

It felt, however loosely, like a movement.

It looked to me like an attempt to change the world.

And in many ways I think it did.

Sometimes that things that changed would change back again, as the forces of the establishment regrouped. Some things may have had destructive side-effects that no one really questioned enough at the time.

But there were also lives that were meaningfully improved, perhaps even saved, because of the ideals and the efforts of people who, in different ways, made up this movement.

It would take me a good few decades to get around to it, but a few years ago I set out to write a history of all of this, which I loosely termed the counterculture (because that is how other historians around the world had defined it — and versions of this movement did take place all over the world.)

Just too young
As I had been just too young to really be more than an observer, I wanted to fill in some gaps in my experience. I wanted to know more about the people who had driven the movement in this country, where their ideas had come from, how they had developed them and put them into action and, ultimately, what had happened as a result.

I began interviewing people who had been involved – whether it had been in the protest activities, or the early bookshops, or the music festivals.

And I would always ask these people who they thought I should talk to; who else had been involved and might have valuable stories to share?

A name that would come up with amazing frequency was that of Roger Fowler.

Now as I’ve said in the introduction to this book, Roger would no doubt have been embarrassed to find his name in the first sentence because – as I discovered when I met him – his ethos was always one of co-operation, the power of people working together to achieve a common goal rather that the celebration of the individual.

As I worked on my project I began to see that sometimes a shared energy and sense of purpose can help unite a group of likeminded people who might not otherwise have found a focus for their own energies.

And I’m sure that for many people that is what Roger provided, and that was one of his great gifts.

Roger was involved in many, many causes and projects, both before and after the PPU, but it’s the PPU that we’re celebrating here today and it is a great example of something he achieved and how it was achieved.

Jumping Sundays
When I completed my book about the counterculture in Aotearoa, I named it after something else Roger was involved with, something perhaps more frivolous but which seemed to me to be a symbol of those times: I called it Jumping Sundays, which was the name by which people referred to the Sunday afternoon people’s festivals that took place in Albert Park, and where Roger would often perform with his band, the Frank E. Evans Memorial Lunchtime Entertainment Band.

In Jumping Sundays, I attempted, perhaps over-ambitiously, to look at all the aspects of this movement and show some of the connections and even contradictions between its different facets. So there’s a chapter on the Vietnam War but also one on communes; a chapter about alternative media – the underground newspapers and the Resistance Bookshop (something else Roger was involved with) – but there are also chapters on drugs and sex and rock’n’roll.

To fit it all in, I had to compress an awful lot of information. I believe that in the index to Jumping Sundays there are four entries for the People’s Union, but really it adds up to just a couple of pages in which I couldn’t do much more than outline how this organisation came about, who was involved and a few of the things that they did.

So I’m very glad that this new book has been put together from the memories and stories and writings and photographs of the people who were actually there. It’s like zooming in on those few paragraphs I wrote and expanding it to show us all the detail and colour that I could only hint at.

I’m hoping other people today will talk about some of the specific things the Ponsonby People’s Union achieved – whether it was providing cheap food for hungry families or staging occupations of substandard housing when landlords needed an extra nudge; the bus visits to prisons, or the way they worked with other groups like the Polynesian Panthers to fight racism on this city’s streets.

But the final thing I’d like to say is that, looking back on the counterculture era, in all its different dimensions, which ranged from the revolutionary to the ridiculous, the PPU for Survival and Freedom stands out as perhaps the most practical, principled, and inspiring example of countercultural ideals put into action.

This book is a reminder of what is possible. I believe that back then they used to call it “survival pending revolution”.

And we’ve never needed that more than now.

Nick Bollinger is a Wellington-based writer, historian, broadcaster and critic. He was a music columnist for The Listener for more than 20 years, has written for Mojo and been the voice of Radio New Zealand’s music review programme The Sampler.

Ponsonby People’s Union: At the Frontline of Community Activism in the 1970s, overview by Roger Fowler, and contributors (Steele Roberts), 2026, 102 pages.

Labour will recognise Palestine, put in place economic sanctions on Israel, and join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

These are among highlights of Labour’s foreign policy stance and the action the party says it will take if elected as the government next month.

Labour’s foreign policy spokesperson Vanushi Walters made that clear in her recent speech alongside the Labour leader, Chris Hipkins, as part of Diplosphere’s foreign policy election series at Parliament.

• READ MORE: Labour sums up its foreign policy approach as ‘independent, principled and unafraid’
• The full Labour foreign policy speech
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Explaining what was meant by “restoring our independent foreign policy”, she said independence was pivotal to New Zealand’s foreign policy approach.

Independence was about agency.

New Zealand’s silence this term on breaches of the United Nations Charter “has been noticed” globally.

“This government’s silence as one after the other States recognised Palestine has been noticed.”

Silence over Palestine
She said the National-led coalition government’s “silence in failing to stand up [with] a sanctions regime, following the ICJ [International Court of Justice] decision on the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, continues to be loud”.

“New Zealand’s abstentions this term, on the floor of the UN whether it be about the reappointment of the High Commissioner of Human Rights or a vote abstaining on indigenous participation at the UN, have been met with confusion by our colleagues in the international space.

“We do not grow our agency if we stand for nothing because that too is a choice that has consequences.

“We lose our reputation as an honest broker and a consistent champion of international law. Make no mistake, the choice to shrink from the moral challenges we face will diminish our agency not expand it.”

Walters said a Labour government would “make full use” of the foreign policy tool box.

“There is a time for quiet diplomacy and there is a time when quiet diplomacy must bend to moral clarity — that is undeniably the case when the scale of human rights abuses is so stark that it amounts to genocide, to ethnic cleansing.

“Labour will recognise the State of Palestine. Labour will place economic sanctions on Israel and ensure the NZ Super Fund and ACC divest from holdings on the UN list of companies operating in the occupied territories.

Labour to join South Africa at ICJ
“Labour will intervene in support of South Africa’s case at the [ICJ] in respect of a breach of the Genocide Convention.”

Walters said that in this time of tension, “we must also remember there are seeds being planted”.

“International Courts continue to perform with diligence the duty of their statutes, people protest with astonishing courage in defence of their rights, humanitarians place everything on the line in the pursuit of development and peace for all, like-minded countries have begun acting on their desire to revisit creative diplomacy in defining new alliances,” she said.

She acknowledged Foreign Minister Winston Peters for his service during this term and under prior governments.

“We disagree on critical aspects regarding the role New Zealand must play in a fraught world, but not on all aspects of foreign policy, and I want to acknowledge in particular the breadth of his travel and the relationships he has maintained in the Pacific as hallmarks of his time in the role.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has hit back after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to the UN General Assembly podium to accuse him of supporting Hamas and making Jewish New Yorkers “feel unsafe” — remarks that came after delegates from scores of countries walked out of the chamber to protest against the far-right fugitive’s presence.

Refuting allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza — where Israeli forces have killed more than 75,000 Palestinians, including more than 21,500 children, since the Hamas-led attack of October 2023 — Netanyahu said: “To all those spreading these lies about my country and about our brave soldiers, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the antisemitic mayor of New York City, I say this: Shame on you.”

“Mr Mamdani, since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York,” the prime minister claimed. “It’s no wonder … You falsely and repeatedly accuse Israel of genocide. Israel didn’t commit genocide. Israel prevented genocide.

• READ MORE: Gaza watches Israel’s elections with fear and antipathy
• Pezeshkian speaks from the heart, but with legal, moral and strategic clarity
• Other Iran, Palestine reports

“And that’s exactly what Mr Mamdani’s Hamas buddies would have done to us had we not stopped them. They would have killed every last one of us.”

Mamdani issued a statement later saying: “As he has done time and again, Prime Minister Netanyahu used his speech to repeat baseless lies meant to sanitise his genocide of Palestinians.

“Yet no lie can change the fact that he remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defence minister, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, where they are accused of murder and forced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. The ICC also issued arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, but Israel assassinated them.

Third country arrest
While neither Israel nor the United States is a party to the Rome Statute governing the ICC, the treaty states that people from nonsignatory states who commit alleged crimes in states that are party to the treaty — as Palestine is — can be arrested in third countries and subsequently tried by the court.

Israel’s war on Gaza: Abbas and Netanyahu address the UNGA     Video: Al Jazeera

Mamdani has said that Netanyahu should be arrested and brought before the Hague-based tribunal for trial, but that he lacks the legal authority to apprehend the prime minister in New York.

The International Court of Justice — also located in The Hague, Netherlands — is currently processing a genocide case filed against Israel by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations.

The case is based on what the ICJ called the “plausibility” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The court has issued a series of provisional orders for Israel to adhere to the Genocide Convention — orders that critics say Israel has simply ignored.

Last year, an independent UN commission of inquiry found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, a conclusion shared by the International Association of Genocide Scholars and other experts, including many Israeli and diaspora Jewish academics, jurists, human rights campaigners, and others.

As Netanyahu prepared to deliver his UN speech on Thursday, delegates from a reported 77 nations walked out of the chamber in protest.

“If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t yet left this hall — please do so now,” the prime minister said. “Thank you very much.”

While some observers applauded the display of solidarity with Palestinians, others expressed disgust that Netanyahu was allowed to address the world body and that he has not yet been brought to justice.

War criminal Netanyahu has completely isolated Israel at the world stage – When he came today to UN General Assembly podium to speak, there was mass walkout and he was booed. Shamelessly, he called them ‘moral cowards’! pic.twitter.com/w5Oo78SeJv

— Ashok Swain (@ashoswai) September 24, 2026

UN failure to stop genocidal war
“The head of the genocidal Israeli apartheid regime, a fugitive indicted for crimes against humanity, was allowed to enter the US and to address the UNGA today, without arrest,” said Craig Mokhiber, a former senior UN official who resigned in protest of what he described as the world body’s failure to stop Israel’s genocidal war.

“Netanyahu insulted delegations, openly celebrated the regime’s many crimes, bragged about its terrorist pager attacks on Lebanon, repeated the regime’s debunked genocide propaganda, defended the illegal occupation of Palestine and Syria, lied incessantly, called violent, racist, illegal Zionist settlers ‘peaceful’ and ‘honorable people,’ labeled human rights defenders as ‘antisemites,’ even arrogantly attacked American citizens and officials for speaking out against the regime’s crimes,” he continued.

“This violent psychopath cannot hide behind [US President Donald] Trump’s skirts forever,” Mokhiber added. “He (and his collaborators) must be captured and brought to justice. And the UN must finally act to isolate the regime and hold it accountable. ”

Referring to Netanyahu’s address and Trump’s threat on Tuesday to “annihilate” Iran during his rambling, lie-laden General Assembly speech, University of Colorado Law School associate professor Maryam Jamshidi said on social media, “Between Trump threatening Iran w/annihilation and Netanyahu bragging about Israel’s pager attacks, the UN podium has become a venue for promoting genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.”

Meanwhile, people took to the streets of New York to protest Netanyahu’s presence in the city, US complicity in Israeli crimes, and to show solidarity with Palestinians.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside UN headquarters in Turtle Bay for a sit-in demonstration led by Jewish Voice for Peace. Demonstrators blocked roads while chanting slogans including, “Netanyahu you can’t hide, you are wanted for genocide!”

As Common Dreams reported earlier on Thursday, more than 100 demonstrators were arrested.

Among those reportedly arrested were progressive congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier; actors Susan Sarandon, Hannah Einbinder, and Cynthia Nixon; New York state Assemblymember Emily Gallagher (D-50); Democratic New York City Councilmembers Chi Ossé and Alexa Avilés; former Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning; and Palestinian American political activist Linda Sarsour.

“I will never, ever be silent,” Sarsour said on Facebook. “I will never just accept the world as it is. I want history to record for future generations of Palestinians that we fought. At every turn. In every way. When it was easy and when it was hard.”

“I want Palestinian girls in Gaza to see me in my hijab and my unapologetic Palestinian blood fighting for them to live FREE,” she added. “This is bigger than all of us. Netanyahu is a war criminal and belongs in The Hague, not the United Nations.”

Netanyahu faces a general election in Israel on October 27.

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Republished from Common Dreams on a Creative Commons licence.

“Why is it that African teams and Middle Eastern teams have to answer for what their governments are doing but European teams don’t?” South African comedian Trevor Noah asked recently during a World Cup watch party.

He was reacting to the questions Western journalists had lobbed at Iranian players following their games. But the question goes far beyond Iran.

It speaks to a familiar hierarchy in global journalism: Some players are allowed to be athletes. Others are turned into ambassadors, defendants and moral exhibits.

• READ MORE: Iran’s heartbroken Team Melli exit World Cup amid silver lining of Mexican hospitality
• Iran bow out of World Cup: Late drama ends Team Melli’s knockout dream
• Iran’s Trojan Horse in US: Team Melli’s presence in WC
• Other FIFA World Cup reports

The World Cup is often sold as the place where football rises above politics. This has always been a canard. Politics, and hypocrisy, have always been part of the sport.

Teams have boycotted or been banned from the competition because of the policies of their governments. Russia is banned for its invasion of Ukraine. South Africa was eventually banned for apartheid.

Israel, however, gets to play in qualifiers despite occupying Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, bombing Iran, and despite findings by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and UN experts that it is committing genocide in Gaza and maintaining a system of apartheid at home and in the occupied territories.

The United States, too, has never been banned despite its many wars of aggression.

Full of politics
Nor is the World Cup unique. International cultural and sporting competitions are full of politics and hypocrisies dressed up as principle. Just look at the controversies around Israel’s participation in Eurovision.

Noah’s question is an indictment of a journalism that likes to imagine itself as challenging power but often mirrors its assumptions. Much ink was spilled over the propriety of Russia and Qatar hosting the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, given the policies of those governments.

Yet there has been far less interrogation of the propriety of the US hosting this tournament while it attacks Iran and Venezuela, deports asylum seekers, and blocks or restricts the travel of tournament officials, players and fans.

The selective accountability that runs through the institutions — who is banned, who is allowed to host — runs through the press box too. So it should not surprise us that some political questions are reserved for some teams and not others.

Ahead of their match against Egypt in Seattle, branded locally as a “Pride Match”, Iran and Egypt were both asked about LGBTQ rights. A FIFA official even read a statement saying Iran wished to answer only questions about the game. Still, the media persisted. Egyptian officials also shielded their players from similar questions.

Again, the point is not that LGBTQ rights, war, repression, discrimination, apartheid or genocide are unimportant. They are profoundly important. Journalists should ask difficult questions. But difficult questions should not become a ritual reserved for some passports only.

American players are not routinely asked to account for US bombings, border policy, racism, police violence or support for Israel. English players are not habitually asked about British arms exports or colonial legacy. French players are not expected to answer for military interventions in Africa. German players are not pressed on Berlin’s crushing of pro-Palestinian protests.

Not a confession
And when European teams have been pulled into politics — the OneLove armbands and the German squad covering their mouths for a team photo at Qatar 2022, England taking a knee at Euro 2020 — it was a protest they chose to make, not a confession demanded of them before they were allowed to speak.

No reporter required them to denounce their governments as the price of discussing a match.

Western footballers are treated as individuals who happen to represent a country. Players from Iran, Egypt, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Senegal or Ghana are more easily turned into representatives of regimes.

For many players from the Global South, the tournament press conference becomes an ideological checkpoint. Before they are allowed to talk about tactics, injuries or the opposition’s midfield, they are asked to explain their governments, their societies, their religions, their laws and their wars.

Sound familiar?

Remember Palestinian interviewees being required to condemn Hamas at the start of any interview before they could speak of the genocide in Gaza? The purpose was not clarification. It was classification.

It established the moral hierarchy before the conversation could begin: Israel good, Hamas bad. Palestinian suffering could be heard only after passing through the checkpoint of Western approval.

World Cup pressers
The same logic is visible in these World Cup pressers. The Iranians must condemn Iran. The Egyptians must condemn Egypt. Africans must prove they understand the West’s moral vocabulary before they can be trusted to speak. But Americans will not be asked to condemn the United States, nor the English the UK.

This is the real answer to Noah’s question. The issue is not whether politics belongs in sport. It always has. The issue is who is made to carry politics, and who is allowed to simply play.

Western media is not merely asking questions. It is enforcing a story long carried by Western governments and institutions: the West is the measure of morality, and the rest of the world must constantly answer for itself.

Patrick Gathara is senior editor for inclusive storytelling at The New Humanitarian. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

A New Zealand policy research and advocacy group released a detailed blueprint today for a fresh “independent” Te Tiriti and Pacific-based approach to foreign policy, and called for greater transparency in election year.

The current coalition government has “radically shifted New Zealand’s longstanding foreign policy traditions” — including by moving the country away from a principled defence of its independent values to “unquestioning support” for the actions of the Trump administration, said Te Kuaka spokesperson Dr Marco de Jong.

“New Zealand’s slide under this government towards a tightly aligned, militaristic foreign policy is not inevitable,” he added.

• READ MORE: Other Aotearoa New Zealand foreign policy reports
• Other Te Kuaka reports

Te Kuaka — a group made up of academics such as Dr de Jong and Dr Arama Rata, and lawyers with expertise in international and constitutional law like Fuimaono Dylan Asafo and Gabriella Brayne — released a policy brief, “A Foreign Policy Alternative for the 2026 New Zealand Election”.

The group refers to the need to revitalise “an independent, Te Tiriti-based, Pacific-centred, internationalist foreign policy”.

Last year has witnessed “tumultuous developments in world affairs” such as Israel’s genocide in Gaza, US aggression in Venezuela, and US and Israel waging war on Iran.

Independent values
Te Kuaka’s policy brief says the current government “has radically shifted New Zealand’s longstanding foreign policy traditions”, including by moving NZ away from a principled defence of its independent values and interests towards total, unquestioning support for the actions of the Trump administration.

The brief calls for:

• greater transparency around trade agreements;
• a War Powers Act to ensure parliamentary authorisation for going to war,;
• shifts in New Zealand’s approach to the Pacific towards non-militarisation;
• NZ intervention in support of South Africa’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case against Israel; and
• other changes.

“How New Zealand acts in the world has always mattered,” said Dr de Jong. “And we need our political parties speaking more openly about their plans on how to maintain and strengthen our independent foreign policy.”

The policy brief also calls for New Zealand to take more strident steps in relation to Indigenous self-determination in Kanaky New Caledonia and to support a human rights visit to West Papua.

The coalition government did not have a mandate for this “dramatic repositioning” in support of the Trump administration, Dr de Jong said.

Call for ‘greater clarity’
“Before the coming election we are calling for greater clarity from political parties about what the public can expect to see from them in relation to New Zealand’s position in the world.”

The policy brief notes that Te Tiriti o Waitangi has not been sufficiently honoured in foreign policy, and also proposes formalising requirements for Māori representation alongside official New Zealand delegations to international forums.

“We are in a rupturing world,” said Dr de Jong. “We need to ensure we’re not unthinkingly caught in the riptide of major powers’ priorities, and that instead we chart our own course, appropriate to our histories and our location in the Pacific.”

• Te Kuaka has previously published reports on conflict prevention and peace mediation, New Zealand’s positioning on AUKUS, and civilian casualties and the NZ Defence Force.

The United States and Fiji have filed separate declarations of intervention in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alleging the country is committing genocide in Gaza.

While the US explicitly rejects the allegation that Israel is committing genocide, Fiji raises issues about how the 1948 Genocide Convention should be interpreted.

The 34-page Fiji declaration was filed on March 12 and is signed by Ambassador Ilaitia Tamata, Fiji’s Permanent Representative of Fiji to the United Nations and other international organisations in Geneva, reports The Fiji Times.

• READ MORE: Fiji files intervention in Gaza genocide case at ICJ
• Israel’s genocide in Gaza: Whatever happened to South Africa’s case at the ICJ?
• Palestine will continue to seek justice against Israel at ICC and ICJ, says The Hague ambassador
• More Gaza genocide lawsuit reports

In the declaration, Fiji said it was exercising its right under Article 63(2) of the ICJ Statute to intervene as a party to the Convention, arguing that the case raises important questions about how it should be interpreted.

The filing confirms that Fiji has appointed its Permanent Representative to Israel, Ambassador Filipo Tarakinikini, as agent for the proceedings.

The Fiji filing was made alongside separate interventions by Namibia and Hungary, according to a press release issued by the court on Friday, reports Middle East Eye.

All four states submitted declarations under Article 63 of the ICJ statute, which allows countries that are parties to a treaty under dispute to intervene in order to present their interpretation of that treaty.

Iceland, Netherlands also file
Earlier on Thursday, Iceland and the Netherlands also filed declarations under Article 63.

South Africa filed the case in December 2023, accusing Israel of breaching the Genocide Convention through its military campaign in Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks of  October 7 that year.

Pretoria argues that Israel’s conduct — including mass killings, destruction of infrastructure and the imposition of conditions of life threatening the survival of Palestinians in Gaza — amounts to genocide.

Israel denies the accusation and claims its war is justified by considerations of self-defence.

The US submission on Thursday stands out among most interventions for directly defending Israel against the accusation brought by South Africa. Taking sides in a case is highly unconventional under Article 63 submissions.

“It’s very unusual for an intervening state (US) to use language like that,” explained Professor Gerhard Kemp, a scholar of international law.

“States normally stick to the legal issues, which can even be helpful for both sides. But terms like ‘false’ or ‘wrong’ don’t really move the needle,” he told Middle East Eye.

“They are probably aimed at a different audience.”

US argues genocide claim ‘false’
In its declaration, Washington argues that allegations that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza are “false” and urges the court to apply a strict legal threshold when determining genocidal intent.

It says, uncontroversially, that genocide can only be established where there is clear proof of specific intent to destroy a protected group.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza: Whatever happened to South Africa’s case at the ICJ?

That intent should only be inferred when it is the only reasonable explanation for the conduct in question, it says.

The submission argues that the ICJ must be fully convinced before determining an act is genocide, due to the exceptional gravity of the crime. It also says civilian casualties and destruction during armed conflict do not by themselves prove genocidal intent.

“The United States submits that the Court should maintain its standard for inferring intent. Lowering the standard risks broadening the application of the term ‘genocide’ such that it no longer carries its original weight and meaning, and invites attempts to misuse the Genocide Convention as a gateway for bringing extraneous disputes before the Court,” the US claimed.

Hungary and Fiji’s submissions similarly advance legal arguments that align closely with Israel’s position in the case.

Narrow interpretation
Hungary’s declaration calls for a narrow interpretation of genocide and emphasises that civilian casualties and destruction during armed conflict do not in themselves demonstrate genocidal intent.

Fiji’s intervention likewise urges the court to apply an extremely high evidentiary threshold for genocide, and cautions against relying heavily on reports by international organisations or non-governmental groups when assessing allegations.

By contrast, Namibia’s declaration focuses on a broader interpretation of the Genocide Convention and emphasises how genocidal intent may be inferred from patterns of conduct and cumulative evidence.

Namibia argues that acts such as the denial of humanitarian aid, repeated displacement and deprivation of basic necessities could fall within the Convention’s prohibition on deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of a protected group.

Its submission also stresses that genocide can be committed through omissions, including a refusal to allow or facilitate life-saving humanitarian assistance to civilians under a state’s control.

Third-state interventions
The new filings add to a rapidly expanding list of states seeking to intervene in the proceedings.

Since April 2024, similar interventions have been submitted by Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, Turkey, Chile, the Maldives, Bolivia, Ireland, Cuba, Belize, Brazil, the Comoros, Belgium and Paraguay in support of the South African argument.

Palestine and Belize have also sought to intervene under Article 62 of the court’s statute, which allows states to apply to participate in proceedings if they believe they have a legal interest that could be affected by the court’s decision.

Under Article 63, intervening states do not become parties to the dispute. Instead, they are permitted to present their interpretation of the treaty at issue — in this case the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The interpretation adopted by the court in its eventual judgment will also be binding on those states.

The case has become one of the most closely watched disputes ever heard by the ICJ and has drawn an unusually large number of third-state interventions, which have reached 22.

The court has already ordered Israel in legally binding provisional measures to take steps to prevent acts that could violate the Genocide Convention and to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Israel ignores court orders
Israel has repeatedly ignored the orders.

A final ruling on whether Israel has breached the Convention is expected in 2028. But it could take longer, depending on the length of hearings and the two parties’ adherence to deadlines.

On Thursday, Israel was scheduled to submit its counter-memorial, or arguments in response to South Africa’s accusations, after several deadline extensions by the court.

The court has yet to announce that Israel has filed its evidence, however.

During its devastating onslaught, Israel has so far killed more than 74,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children. It has also destroyed most of the enclave’s homes, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure, rendering it largely uninhabitable for its 2.3 million civilians.

A UN commission of inquiry concluded last September that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza since 7 October 2023.

The UN report’s authors, including legal experts Navi Pillay and Chris Sidoti, told Middle East Eye that the report used evidence and a similar methodology in its analysis to that which will be used by the ICJ.

New Zealand pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched peacefully on The Warehouse in downtown Auckland today to protest over the sale of products by the genocidal state of Israel.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair Maher Nazzal and fellow protesters delivered a giant letter calling on the management to stop selling SodaStream products.

SodaStream — an Israel-based company since 1978 — is at the centre of the global BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions) campaign.

• READ MORE: Israel attacks Gaza as large-scale recovery of bodies set to begin
• Other Gaza reports

The letter was reluctantly accepted by The Warehouse city branch duty manager Alyce, who needed to take a management phone call before agreeing to take the letter mounted on a board.

“The Warehouse’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes must stop,” said Nazzal in the letter. “I know you will be appalled as we are at Israel’s cruel and depraved war crimes against Palestinians.”

The letter was handed over by a small deputation on behalf of about 200 protesters who stood peacefully by the shop entrance escalator in Elliott Street as they chanted “Blood on your hands” and other condemnation of Israel over the genocide in Gaza that has killed at least 69,000 people, mostly women and children.

The letter addressed to The Warehouse management said that “trading in SodaStream products . . . supports Israel to continue its war crimes against Palestinian people. It encourages Israel to expand its illegal occupation and its genocidal oppression of Palestinians.”

One third of aid trucks
In spite of the so-called “ceasefire” brokered by US President Donald Trump commencing on October 10, only one third of the promised 600 aid trucks a day had been allowed into Gaza.

“Arrest warrants have been issued by the International Criminal Court against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. But this is not enough,” said the letter, signed by scores of the protesters.

“On 19 July 2024 the International Court of Justice, in a landmark ruling, declared Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories — the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza strip — is illegal and no one should give ‘aid or assistance’ to Israel in maintaining its illegal occupation.

“However, The Warehouse is giving direct ‘aid and assistance’ to Israel’s racist policies through selling SodaStream. This must stop.

“Since 2005, Palestinian civil society organisations have called for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel, to build international, non-violent pressure on Israel to end its brutal oppression of Palestinians.

“BDS aims to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, end its apartheid policies towards Palestinians and allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land in Palestine.

The PSNA letter said the protesters supported BDS against Israel — “just as we supported the international boycott of apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s”.

‘New Zealanders support sanctions’
“New Zealanders support sanctions against Israel by the ratio of two to one amongst those who give an opinion. New Zealanders expect The Warehouse to end its collaboration with Israeli apartheid and genocide and swap out of SodaStream for alternative brands,” the letter said.

The Warehouse Group’s says “ethical sourcing” policy was cited in the letter, quoting in part: “Like our customers,  we  care about doing the right thing — not only here in New Zealand but everywhere we operate.

“Our aim is to ensure our customers have confidence  that  our products have been ethically sourced.”

The letter continued: “Selling SodaStream directly violates this policy. So why do The Warehouse and it’s subsidiary, Noel Leeming, continue to sell these products linked to ethnic cleansing and genocide?”

Nasser said PSNA wanted the opportunity to speak with The Warehouse management directly about the stocking of SodaStream and looked forward to hearing from the business.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched on the Warehouse in downtown Auckland today to protest over the sale of products by the genocidal state of Israel. #AsiaPacificReport #TheWarehouse #sodastream #protestletter @BDSmovement @palestine @OnlinePalEng https://t.co/jLbwrcUnLB pic.twitter.com/qY2hMDlrk1

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) November 22, 2025

Earlier, at a rally in Te Komititanga Square several speakers about BDS policies included PSNA secretary Neil Scott and South African-born activist Achmat Esau, who explained how global sanctions had forced the brutal racist minority white regime in his homeland to abandon apartheid and bow to genuine democracy.

Esau recalled how in 1968 white South African Prime Minister John Vorster banned a tour by the England cricket team because it included a mixed-race player, Cape Town-born Basil D’Oliveira.

Boycott of apartheid South Africa
“After this incident, South Africa was excluded from international cricket until the release of political prisoner Nelson Mandela 22 years later.

“The anti-apartheid boycott of the South African regime from the 1960s until the 1980s was instrumental in bringing the racist apartheid regime to its knees,’ Esau said.

He said the success of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa was an indicator of how it could also succeed through the BDS movement against apartheid Israel.

“We must draw in the politicians and political parries to isolate, expose and oppose this evil Zionist regime that is guilty of state terrorism.”

An Australian author whose award-winning book about Israel’s military and surveillance industry has swept the world is scathing about a controversial Gaza transit company.

Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book about how Israel tests arms and surveillance technologies in the illegal occupation of Palestine, says the shadowy scheme carrying Palestinians to South Africa or other countries was waging “disaster capitalism”.

He said the Al-Majd Europe outfit that reportedly flew 153 people from Gaza to South Aftica could have been operating for weeks or months before being noticed.

• READ MORE: ‘Trip of suffering’: Gaza evacuee details 24-hour journey to South Africa
• Other Gaza reports

Commenting on this mysterious flight carrying people from Gaza that transited through Kenya’s capital Nairobi and ended up in South Africa, Loewenstein told Al Jazeera from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta that there had been rumours about companies making such flights.

He said such flights apparently “requires Israeli permission as well as other countries’ permissions”.

“South Africa was apparently the final destination, considering it is one of the most pro-Palestine countries on the planet,” he said.

Lowenstein said there were “no names or associations” on the “incredibly strange” company website, which “almost looks like it was created by AI”, calling what it does “disaster capitalism” – a theme of one of his earlier books.

‘Making money out of misery’
“This is the concept of people making money out of other people’s misery,” Loewenstein said.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Foreign Affairs Ministry has warned against groups exploiting Gaza’s humanitarian crisis for human trafficking in the wake of the mysterious arrival of 153 people from Gaza in South Africa this week.

The ministry warned that “companies and entities that mislead our people, incite them to deportation or displacement or engage in human trafficking and exploit their tragic and catastrophic humanitarian conditions will bear the legal consequences of their unlawful actions and will be subject to prosecution and accountability.”

In a statement, the ministry also urged Palestinian families in Gaza “to exercise caution and avoid falling prey to human trafficking networks, blood merchants, and displacement agents”.

The departure of people from Gaza to South Africa was closely coordinated with Israeli authorities.

Everything started with an advertised post from the Al-Majd Europe organisation promising to safely evacuate Palestinian families outside the Gaza Strip, so many Palestinians filled in their applications and were waiting for a call from the organisation.

The situation in Gaza has pushed Palestinians to pay whatever they could to leave the Strip.

‘They lost everything’
“They have lost everything. They lost their houses, and they believe that they do not have any future here,” an Al Jazeera reporter said.

The television channel also said Gazans who used the transit company were forced to pay up to US$5000 to enable them to cross the so-called “yellow line” and be driven from Karem Abu Salem crossing to Ramon airport in southern Israel.

This is a risky move because at least 200 Palestinians have been killed since the October ceasefire for crossing the yellow line. So the operation would have required Israeli military cooperation.

The Gazans were then flown to Nairobi in Kenyan on a Romanian aircraft and transferred to a flight to Johannesburg where border officials held them for 12 hours because they reportedly did not have Israeli exit stamps in their passports.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has challenged the New Zealand government to support a move by Türkiye to vote to suspend Israeli membership of the United Nations.

Türkiye Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has told the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Riyadh that Israel should be suspended from the crucial meeting of the UN General Assembly next month, for its “genocidal aggression”.

PSNA co-chair John Minto said in a statement that New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters would have to take a stand on this issue.

• READ MORE: Türkiye says Israel should be suspended from UN General Assembly
• Israel pushes further into Gaza City, killing and displacing Palestinians
• Antony Loewenstein: Israel’s murderous killing spree against Palestinian journalists
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

“Cabinet should give him clear instructions to vote against Israeli war crimes and support Palestinian rights,” he said.

“Suspension of Israel will have a lot of backing from many countries horrified with the starvation and carnage in Gaza, and they want to do something effective, instead of just recognising Palestine as a state.

“Even if the US vetoes such a move in the Security Council, there is a precedent going back to 1974 when South Africa was suspended from the General Assembly because it practised apartheid.

“The General Assembly suspended a member then, and New Zealand should back such a move now.”

Original condition
Minto said Israel’s original condition in 1948 for joining the UN was that it allowed the 750,000 Palestinians it had expelled from Palestine to create Israel to return home.

“Israel won’t even talk about its obligations to let Palestinians return, and certainly never had any intention of allowing them to go home. Israel should pay a price for that, along with punishment for its genocide,” he said.

Minto said the escalation of the Israeli assault on Gaza called for immediate international action without waiting wait until the General Assembly debate next month.

“The Israeli ambassador in Wellington should be told to leave right now, because his government is openly committing war crimes.”

“We’ve just seen a famine declared in Gaza City. Aid is totally insufficient and deliberately so,” Minto said.

“Israel has called up its military reservists for the major assault it’s conducting on Gaza City to drive nearly a million of its inhabitants out.

“Israel’s latest dumping ground of choice is South Sudan, even though its government says it doesn’t want to have expelled Palestinians turn up there.”

“And we’ve had the news that Israel has once again killed journalists, who work for international news agencies, such as Reuters, Al Jazeera and NBC.”

“Netanyahu says it was a mistake. Who believes that?”

The word “Gaza” is taking on similar connotations to what the word “Auschwitz” meant to a previous generation. It signifies a deliberate and systematic attempt to erase an entire people from history on the basis of their ethnic identity.

As a result, Israel is isolating itself as a pariah state on the world stage. This week alone has seen Israel target and kill four Al Jazeera journalists, just as it had executed eight Red Crescent medical staff and seven other first responders back in March, and then dumped their bodies in a mass grave.

Overall 186 journalists have died at the hands of the IDF since October 7, 2023, and at least 1400 medical staff as of May 2025.

• READ MORE: Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

On Monday night a five-year-old disabled child starved to death. Reportedly, he weighed only three kilograms when he died. Muhammad Zakaria Khudr was the 101st child among the 227 Palestinians now reported to have died from starvation.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters keep on saying that with regard to New Zealand recognising a Palestinian state, it is a matter of “Not if, but when.” Yet why is “ but not now” still their default position?

At this rate, a country that used to pride itself on its human rights record — New Zealand has never stopped bragging that this is where women won the right to vote, before they did anywhere else — will be among the last countries on earth to recognise Palestine’s right to exist.

What can we do? Some options:

1. Boycott all Israeli goods and services;
2. Engage with the local Palestinian community, and support their businesses, and cultural events;
3. Donate financial support to Gaza. Here’s a reliable link to directy support pregnant Gaza women and their babies;
4. Lobby your local MP, and Immigration Minister Erika Stanford — to prioritise the inclusion of hundreds of Gazans in our refugee programme, just as we did in the wake of the civil war in Syria, and earlier, in Sudan;
5. Write and phone your local MP, and urge them to support economic sanctions against Israel. These sanctions should include a sporting and cultural boycott along the lines we pursued so successfully against apartheid South Africa
6. Contact your KiwiSaver provider and let it be known that you will change providers if they invest in Israeli firms, or in the US, German and UK firms that supply the IDF with weapons and targeting systems. Contact the NZ Super Fund and urge them to divest along similar lines;
7. Identify and picket any NZ firms that supply the US/Israeli war machines directly, or indirectly;
8. Contact your local MP and urge him or her to support Chloe Swarbrick’s private member’s bill that would impose economic sanctions on the state of Israel for its unlawful occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Swarbrick’s Bill is modelled on the existing Russian sanctions framework.If 61 MPs pledged support for Swarbrick’s Bill, it would not have to win a private members ballot before being debated in Parliament. Currently 21 MPs (the Greens and TPM) formally support it. If and when Labour’s 34 MPs come on board, this will still require another six MPs (from across the three coalition parties) to do the right thing. Goading MPs into doing the right thing got Swarbrick into a world of  trouble this week. (Those wacky Greens. They’re such idealists.);
9. We should all be lobbying our local MPs for a firm commitment that they will back the Swarbrick Bill. Portray it to them as being in the spirit of bi-partisanship, and as them supporting the several UN resolutions on the status of the occupied territories. And if they still baulk ask them flatly: if not, why not?
10. Email/phone/write to the PM’s office, and ask him to call in the Israeli ambassador and personally express New Zealand’s repugnance at Israel’s inhumane actions in Gaza and on the West Bank. The PM should also be communicating in person New Zealand’s opposition to the recently announced Israeli plans for the annexation of Gaza City, and expansion of the war in Gaza.
11. Write to your MP, to the PM, and to Foreign Minister Winston Peters urging them to recognise Palestinian statehood right now. Inquire as to what further information they may need before making that decision, and offer to supply it. We need to learn how to share our outrage; and
12. Learn about the history of this issue, so that you convince friends and family to take similar actions.

Here’s a bare bones timeline of the main historical events.

This map showing (in white) the countries that are yet to recognise Palestinian statehood speaks volumes:

Those holdout nations in white tend to have been the chief enablers of Israel’s founding in 1948, a gesture of atonement driven by European guilt over the Holocaust.

This “homeland” for the Jews already had residents known to have had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Yet since 1948 the people of Palestine have been made to bear all of the bad consequences of the West’s purging of its collective guilt.

Conditional justice
The same indifference to the lives of Palestinians is evident in the belated steps towards supporting the right of Palestinians to self-determination. Even the recognition promised by the UK, Canada, France and Australia next month is decked out with further conditions that the Palestinians are being told they need to meet. No equivalent demands are being made of Israel, despite the atrocities it is committing in Gaza.

There’s nothing new about this. Historically, all of the concessions have been made by the Palestinians, starting with their original displacement. Some 30 years ago, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) formally recognised Israel’s right to exist. In response, Israel immediately expanded its settlements on Palestinian land, a flagrant breach of the commitments it made in the Oslo Accords, and in the Gaza-Jericho Agreement.

The West did nothing, said little.  As the New York Times recently pointed out:

In a 1993 exchange of letters, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chairman, Yasir Arafat, recognized the “right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security” and committed the PLO to peaceful negotiations, renouncing terrorism and amending the Palestinian charter to reflect these commitments. In return, Israel would merely recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people — and only “in light of” Mr Arafat’s commitments. Palestinian sovereignty remained remote; Israeli occupation continued apace.

This double standard persists:

This fundamental unfairness has informed every diplomatic effort since. The rump Palestinian government built the limited institutions it was permitted under the Oslo Accords, co-operated with Israeli security forces and voiced support for a peace process that had long been undermined by Israel. Led by then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority’s statehood campaign in the 2000s was entirely based on playing the game according to rules set by Israel and the Western-dominated international community. Yet recognition remained stalled, the United States blocked Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations — and still, no conditions were placed on the occupying power.

That’s where we’re still at. Luxon, Peters and David Seymour are demanding more concessions from the Palestinians. They keep strongly denouncing the Hamas October 7 atrocities — which is valid — while weakly urging Israel to abide by the international laws and conventions that Israel repeatedly breaches.

When a state deploys famine as a strategic weapon, doesn’t it deserve to be condemned, up front and personal?

Instead, the language that New Zealand uses to address Israel’s crimes  is almost invariably, and selectively, passive. Terrible things are “happening” in Gaza and they must “stop.” Children, mysteriously, are “starving.” This is “intolerable.”

It is as if there is no human agent, and no state power responsible for these outcomes. Things are just somehow “happening” and they must somehow “cease.” Enough is enough, cries Peters, while carefully choosing not to name names, beyond Hamas.

Meanwhile, Israel has announced its plans to expand the war, even though 600 Israeli ex-officials (some of them from Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent to the SIS) have publicly said that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel.

As mentioned, Israel is publicly discussing its plans for Gaza’s “voluntary emigration” and for the permanent annexation of the West Bank. Even when urged to do so by Christopher Luxon, it seems that Israel is not actually complying with international law, and is not fulfilling its legal obligations as an occupying power. Has anyone told Luxon about this yet?

Two state fantasy, one state reality
At one level, continuing to call for a “two state” solution is absurd, given that the Knesset formally rejected the proposal a year ago. More than once, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly denounced it while also laying Israel’s claim to all of the land west of Jordan, which would include the West Bank and Gaza.

Evidently, the slogan “ from the river to sea” is only a terrorist slogan when Hamas uses it. Yet the phrase originated as a Likud slogan.Moreover, the West evidently thinks it is quite OK for Netanyahu to publicly call for Israeli hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Basic rule of diplomacy: bad is what they do, good is what we do, and we have always been on Team Israel.

Over the course of the three decades since the Oslo Accords were signed, the West has kept on advocating for a two state solution, while acting as if only one of those states has a right to exist. On what land do Luxon and Peters think that a viable Palestinian state can be built?

One pre-condition for Palestinian statehood that Luxon cited to RNZ last week required Israel to be “not undermining the territorial integrity that would then undermine the two state solution.” Really? Does Luxon not realise that this is exactly what Israel has been doing for the past 30 years?

Talking of which . . .  are Luxon and Peters genuinely expecting Israel to retreat to the 1967 borders? That land was agreed at Oslo and mandated by the UN as the territory needed for a viable Palestinian state. Yet on the relatively small area of the West Bank alone, 3.4 million Palestinians currently subsist on disconnected patches of land under occupation amid extreme settler violence, while contending with 614 Israeli checkpoints and other administrative obstacles impeding their free movement.

Here’s what the land left to the Palestinians looks like today:

A brief backgrounder on Areas A, B and C and how they operate can be found here.  Obviously, this situation cannot be the template for a viable Palestinian state.

What is the point?
You might well ask . . . in the light of the above, what is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? Given the realities on the ground, it can only be a symbolic gesture. The reversion to the 1967 borders (a necessary step towards a Palestinian state) can happen only if the US agreed to push Israel in that direction by withholding funds and weaponry.

That’s very hard to imagine. The hypocrisy of the Western nations on this issue is breath-taking. The US and Germany continue to be Israel’s main foreign suppliers of weapons and targeting systems. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership as well, the UK sales of military equipment to Israel have sharply increased.

New export licensing figures show that the UK approved licenses for £127.6 million worth of military equipment to Israel in single issue licenses between October to December 2024. This is a massive increase, with the figure in this three-month period totaling more than 2020-2023 combined.

Thanks to an explicitly enacted legal exemption, the UK also continues to supply parts for Israel’s F-35 jets.

UK industry makes 15% of every F-35 in contracts [estimated] to be worth at least £500 million since 2016, and [this] is the most significant part of the UK arms industry [relationship]with Israel . . . at least 79 companies [are] involved in manufacturing components.

These are the same F-35 war planes that the IDF has used to drop 2000 pound bombs on densely populated residential neighbourhoods in Gaza. Starmer cannot credibly pose as a man of peace.

So again . . . what exactly is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? No doubt, it would boost Palestinian morale if some major Western powers finally conceded that Palestine has a right to exist. In that narrow sense, recognition would correct a historical injustice.

There is also optimistic talk that formal Palestinian statehood would isolate the US on the Security Council (Trump would probably wear that as a badge of honour) and would make Israel more accountable under humanitarian law. As if.

Theoretically, a recognition of statehood would also enable people in New Zealand and elsewhere to apply pressure to their governments to forthrightly condemn and sanction Israel for its crimes against a fellow UN member state. None of this, however, is likely to change the reality on the ground, or prevent the calls for Israel’s “accountability” and for its “compliance with international law” from ringing hollow.

As the NYT also says:

After almost two years of severe access restrictions and the dismantling of the UN-led aid system in favour of a militarised food distribution that has left more than 1300 Palestinians dead, [now 1838 dead at these “aid centres”  since late May, as of yesterday] . . . The 15 nations [at a UN meeting in late July that signed a declaration on Gaza] still would not collectively say “Israel is responsible for starvation in Gaza”. If they cannot name the problem, they can hardly hope to resolve it.

In sum . . . the world may talk the talk of Palestinian statehood being a matter of “not if, but when” and witter on about the “irreversible steps” being taken toward statehood, and finally — somewhere over the rainbow — towards a two state solution.  Faint chance:

“For those who are starving today, the only irreversible step is death. Until statehood recognition brings action — arms embargoes, sanctions, enforcement of international law — it will remain a largely empty promise that serves primarily to distract from Western complicity in Gaza’s destruction.

Exactly. Behind the words of concern are the actions of complicity. The people of Gaza do not have time to wait for symbolic actions, or for sanctions to weaken Israel’s appetite for genocide. Consider this option: would New Zealand support an intervention in Gaza by a UN-led international force to save Gaza’s dwindling population, and to ensure that international humanitarian law is respected, however belatedly?

Would we be willing to commit troops to such a force if asked to do so by the UN Secretary-General? That is what is now needed.

Footnote One: On Gaza, the Luxon government has a high tolerance for double standards and Catch 22 conditions. We are insisting that the Palestinians must release the remaining hostages unconditionally, lay down their arms and de-militarise the occupied territories. Yet we are applying no similar pre-conditions on Israel to withdraw, de-militarise the same space, release all their Palestinian prisoners, allow the unrestricted distribution of food and medical supplies, and negotiate a sustainable peace.

Understandably, Hamas has tied the release of the remaining hostages to the Israeli cessation of their onslaught, to unfettered aid distribution, and to a long-term commitment to Palestinian self-rule.  Otherwise, once the Israeli hostages are home, there would be nothing to stop Israel from renewing the genocide.

We are also demanding that Hamas be excluded from any future governing arrangement in Gaza, but – simultaneously – Peters told the House recently that this governing arrangement must also be “representative.” Catch 22. “Representative” democracy it seems, means voting for the people pre-selected by the West. Again, no matching demands have been made of Israel with respect to its role in the future governance of Gaza, or about its obligation to rebuild what it has criminally destroyed.

Footnote Two: There is only one rational explanation for why New Zealand is currently holding back from joining the UK, Canada, France and Australia in voting next month to recognise Palestine as a full UN member state. It seems we are cravenly hoping that Australia’s stance will be viewed with such disfavour by Donald Trump that he will punish Canberra by lifting its tariff rate from 10%, thereby erasing the 5% advantage that Australia currently enjoys oven us in the US market.

At least this tells us what the selling price is for our “independent” foreign policy. We’re prepared to sell it out to the Americans – and sell out the Palestinians in the process – if, by sitting on the fence for now, we can engineer parity for our exports with Australia in US markets. ANZAC mates, forever.

The 1981 Springbok Tour was one of the most controversial events in Aotearoa New Zealand’s history. For 56 days, between July and September, more than 150,000 people took part in more than 200 demonstrations in 28 centres.

It was the largest protest in the country’s history.

It caused social ruptures within communities and families across the country. With the National government backing the tour, protests against apartheid sport turned into confrontations with both police and pro-tour rugby fans — on marches and at matches.

• READ MORE: 100 children killed or wounded every day since Gaza ceasefire broken
• Other war on Palestine reports

The success of these mass protests was that this was the last tour in either country between the two teams with the strongest rivalry among rugby playing nations.

This deeply rooted antipathy towards the racism of apartheid helps provide context to today’s growing opposition by New Zealanders to the horrific actions of another apartheid state.

Understanding apartheid
Apartheid is a humiliating, repressive and brutal legislated segregation through separation of social groups. In South Africa, this segregation was based on racism (white supremacy over non-whites; predominantly Black Africans but also Asians).

For nearly three centuries before 1948, Africans had been dispossessed and exploited by Dutch and British colonists. In 1948, this oppression was upgraded to an official legal policy of apartheid.

Apartheid does not have to be necessarily by race. It could also be religious based. An earlier example was when Christians separated Jews into ghettos on the false claim of inferiority.

In August 2024, Le Monde Diplomatic published article (paywalled) by German prize-winning journalist and author Charlotte Wiedemann on apartheid in both Israel and South Africa under the heading “When Apartheid met Zionism”:

She asked the pointed question of what did it mean to be Jewish in a country that saw Israel through the lens of its own experience of apartheid?

It is a fascinating question making her article an excellent read. Le Monde Diplomatic is a quality progressive magazine, well worth the subscription to read many articles as interesting as this one.

Relevant Wiedemann observations
Wiedemann’s scope is wider than that of this blog but many of her observations are still pertinent to my analysis of the relationship between the two apartheid states.

Most early Jewish immigrants to South Africa fled pogroms and poverty in tsarist Lithuania. This context encouraged many to believe that every human being deserved equal respect, regardless of skin colour or origin.

Blatant widespread white-supremacist racism had been central to South Africa’s history of earlier Dutch and English colonialism. But this shifted to a further higher level in May 1948 when apartheid formally became central to South Africa’s legal and political system.

Although many Jews were actively opposed to apartheid it was not until 1985, 37 years later, that Jewish community leaders condemned it outright. In the words of Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris to the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

“The Jewish community benefited from apartheid and an apology must be given … We ask forgiveness.”

On the one hand, Jewish lawyers defended Black activists, But, on the other hand, it was a Jewish prosecutor who pursued Nelson Mandela with “extraordinary zeal” in the case that led to his long imprisonment.

Israel became one of apartheid South Africa’s strongest allies, including militarily, even when it had become internationally isolated, including through sporting and economic boycotts. Israel’s support for the increasingly isolated apartheid state was unfailing.

Jewish immigration to South Africa from the late 19th century brought two powerful competing ideas from Eastern Europe. One was Zionism while the other was the Bundists with a strong radical commitment to justice.

But it was Zionism that grew stronger under apartheid. Prior to 1948 it was a nationalist movement advocating for a homeland for Jewish people in the “biblical land of Israel”.

Zionism provided the rationale for the ideas that actively sought and achieved the existence of the Israeli state. This, and consequential forced removal of so many Palestinians from their homeland, made Zionism a “natural fit” in apartheid South Africa.

Nelson Mandela and post-apartheid South Africa
Although strongly pro-Palestinian, post-apartheid South Africa has never engaged in Holocaust denial. In fact, Holocaust history is compulsory in its secondary schools.

Its first president, Nelson Mandela, was very clear about the importance of recognising the reality of the Holocaust. As Charlotte Wiedemann observes:

“Quite the reverse . . .  In 1994 Mandela symbolically marked the end of apartheid at an exhibition about Anne Frank. ‘By honouring her memory as we do today’ he said at its opening, ‘we are saying with one voice: never and never again!’”

In a 1997 speech, on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Mandela also reaffirmed his support for Palestinian rights:

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

There is a useful account of Mandela’s relationship with and support for Palestinians published by Middle East Eye.

Mandela’s identification with Palestine was recognised by Palestinians themselves. This included the construction of an impressive statue of him on what remains of their West Bank homeland.

Comparing apartheid in South Africa and Israel
So how did apartheid in South Africa compare with apartheid in Israel. To begin with, while both coincidentally began in May 1948, in South Africa this horrendous system ended over 30 years ago. But in Israel it not only continues, it intensifies.

Broadly speaking, this included Israel adapting the infamously cruel “Bantustan system” of South Africa which was designed to maintain white supremacy and strengthen the government’s apartheid policy. It involved an area set aside for Black Africans, purportedly for notional self-government.

In South Africa, apartheid lasted until the early 1990s culminating in South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994.

Tragically, for Palestinians in their homeland, apartheid not only continues but is intensified by ethnic cleansing delivered by genocide, both incrementally and in surges.

Apartheid Plus: ethnic cleansing and genocide
Israel has gone further than its former southern racist counterpart. Whereas South Africa’s economy depended on the labour exploitation of its much larger African workforce, this was relatively much less so for Israel.

As much as possible Israel’s focus was, and still is, instead on the forcible removal of Palestinians from their homeland.

This began in 1948 with what is known by Palestinians as the Nakba (“the catastrophe”) when many were physically displaced by the creation of the Israeli state. Genocide is the increasing means of delivering ethnic cleansing.

Ethnic cleansing is an attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas by deporting or forcibly displacing people belonging to particular ethnic groups.

It can also include the removal of all physical vestiges of the victims of this cleansing through the destruction of monuments, cemeteries, and houses of worship.

This destructive removal has been the unfortunate Palestinian experience in much of today’s Israel and its occupied or controlled territories. It is continuing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Genocide involves actions intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

In contrast with civil war, genocide usually involves deaths on a much larger scale with civilians invariably and deliberately the targets. Genocide is an international crime, according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).

Today the Israeli slaughter and destruction in Gaza is a huge genocidal surge with the objective of being the “final solution” while incremental genocide of Palestinians speeds up in the occupied West Bank.

Notwithstanding the benefits of the recent ceasefire, it freed up Israel to militarily focus on repressing West Bank Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Israel’s genocide in Gaza during the current vulnerable hiatus of the ceasefire has shifted from military action to starvation.

The final word
One of the encouraging features has been the massive protests against the genocide throughout the world. In a relative context, and while not on the same scale as the mass protests against the racist South African rugby tour in 1981, this includes New Zealand.

Many Jews, including in New Zealand and in the international protests such as at American universities, have been among the strongest critics of the ethnic cleansing through genocide of the apartheid Israeli state.

They have much in common with the above-mentioned Bundist focus on social justice in contrast to the dogmatic biblical extremism of Zionism.

Amos Goldberg, professor of genocidal studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is one such Jew. Let’s leave the final word to him:

“It’s so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained.”

This is a compelling case for the New Zealand government to join the many other countries in formally recognising the state of Palestine.

Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

A South African company is reported to be the most probable bidder for shares in New Caledonia’s Prony Resources.

As part of an already advanced takeover of the ailing southern plant of Prony Resources, the most probable bidder is reported to be South African group Sibaneye-Stillwater, local new media report.

Just like the other two major mining plants and smelters in New Caledonia, Prony Resources is facing acute hardships due to the emergence of Indonesia as a major player on the world market, compounded with New Caledonia’s violent unrest that broke out in May.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia mining reports

Prony Resources has been trying to find a possible company to take over the shares held by Swiss trader Trafigura (19 percent).

The process was recently described as very favourable to a “seriously interested” buyer.

Citing reliable sources, daily newspaper Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes yesterday named South Africa’s Sibanye-Stillwater.

The Johannesburg-based entity is a significant player on the minerals world market (including nickel, platinum and palladium) and owns, amongst other assets, a hydro-metallurgic processing plant in Sandouville (near Le Havre, western France) with a production capacity of 12,000 tonnes per year of high-grade nickel which it bought in February 2022 from French mining giant Eramet for 85 million euros (NZ$153 million).

The ultimate goal would be, for the South African player, to become a leader on the production market for innovative electric vehicles batteries, especially on the European market.

Southern Province President Sonia Backès had already hinted last week that one buyer had now been found and that one bidder had successfully reached advanced stages in the due diligence process.

If the deal eventuated, the new entity would take over the shares held by Swiss trader Trafigura (19 percent) and another block of shares held by the Southern Province to reach a total of 74 percent participation in Prony Resources stock, as part of a major restructuration of the company’s capital.

Prony Resources, in full operation mode, employs about 1300 staff.

Another 1700 are employed indirectly through sub-contractors.

It has paused its production to retain only up to 300 staff, in safety and maintenance mode, partly due to New Caledonia’s current unrest.

New Caledonian consortium’s surprise bid for mothballed Northern plant
Meanwhile, a local consortium of New Caledonian investors is reported to have made an 11-hour offer to take over and restart activity for the now mothballed Koniambo (KNS) nickel plant.

The plant’s furnaces were placed in “cold care and maintenance” mode at the end of August, six months after major shareholder Anglo-Swiss Glencore announced it wanted to withdraw and sell the 49 percent shares it has in the project.

This caused close to 1200 job losses and further 600 among sub-contractors.

Other bidders still interested
KNS claimed at least three foreign investors were still interested at this stage, but none of these have so far materialised.

Talks were however reported to continue behind the scenes, with interested parties even ready to travel and visit on-site, KNS Vice-President and spokesman Alexandre Rousseau told Reuters news agency earlier this month.

‘Okelani Group One’
But a so-called “Okelani Group One” (OGO), made up of three local partners, said their offer could revive the project with a different business model.

They say they have made an offer to KNS’s majority shareholder SMSP (Société Minière du Sud Pacifique, New Caledonia’s Northern province financial arm).

OGO president Florent Tavernier told public broadcaster NC la 1ère much depended on what Glencore intended to do with the staggering debt of some US$13.7 billion which KNS had accumulated over the past 10 years.

Another OGO partner, Gilles Hernandez, explained: “We would be targeting a niche market of very high quality nickel used in aeronautics and edge-cutting technologies, especially in Europe, where nickel is now classified as ‘strategic metal’.”

Although KNS was designed to produce 60,000 tonnes of nickel a year, that target was never reached.

OGO said it would only aim for 15,000 tonnes per year and would only re-employ 400 of the 1200 laid-off staff.

New Caledonia’s third nickel plant, owned by historic Société Le Nickel (SLN, a subsidiary of French mining giant Eramet), which is also facing major hardships for the same reasons, is said to currently operate at minimal capacity.

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

A West Papuan pro-independence leader has accused Indonesia of new human rights atrocities this week while the republic has apparently elected a new president with a past record of violations in Timor-Leste and West Papua.

Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto has declared victory in the presidential election on Wednesday after unofficial vote counts showed him with a significant lead over his rivals, reports Al Jazeera.

The 72-year-old former Kopassus special forces commander, who had run unsuccessfully for president twice before, was given a dishonourable discharge in 1998 after claims that his force kidnapped and tortured political opponents of Soeharto as his regime crumbled.

• READ MORE: Prabowo Subianto claims victory in Indonesian presidential election
• Other West Papua reports

He has also been accused of human rights abuses in East Timor, which won independence from Indonesia amid the collapse of the Soeharto regime, and also in West West Papua.

On the day that Indonesia went to the polls — Valentine’s Day, February 14 — Benny Wenda, president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), accused Jakarta’s military of continuing its “reign of terror” in rural West Papua.

“The latest tragedy they have inflicted on my people occurred in the Puncak regency,” Wenda said in a statement.

“Military raids on the February 3 and 4 devastated a number of highland villages.

‘Villagers tortured, houses burnt’
“Numerous houses were burnt to the ground, villagers were tortured, and at least one Papuan died from his wounds — though Indonesian control of information makes it difficult to know whether others were also killed.”

Wenda said that “as always”, the military had claimed the victims were TPNPB resistance fighters — “a grotesque lie, immediately denied by the villagers and their relatives”.

Wenda also accused Indonesia of “hypocrisy” over Israel’s war on Gaza.

“We have complete sympathy with [Palestinians over their suffering] in what is happening in Gaza,” he said.

“But Indonesian hypocrisy on Palestine cannot be ignored. They are bringing a legal case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about Israel’s occupation of Palestine while intensifying their own brutal and bloody military occupation of West Papua.

“They are supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ while conducting their own genocide in West Papua.

Denying West Papuan rights
“They are crying about Palestinians’ right to self-determination while continuing to deny West Papuans that same right.”

More than 500,000 West Papuans have been killed since the occupation began in 1963, says the ULMWP.

In the past six years, more than 100,000 Papuans were estimated to have been displaced, made refugees in their own land as a result of Indonesian military operations.

“Genocide, ecocide, and ethnic cleansing — West Papuans are victims of all three. The world must pay attention to our plight.”

There were no reports of reaction from the Jakarta authorities.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled against Israel and determined that South Africa successfully argued that Israel’s conduct plausibly could constitute genocide. The court has imposed several injunctions against Israel and reminds Israel that its rulings are binding, according to international law.

In its order, the court fell short of South Africa’s request for a ceasefire, but this ruling, however, is overwhelmingly in favour of South Africa’s case and will likely increase international pressure for a ceasefire as a result.

On the question of whether Israel’s war in Gaza is genocide, that will still take more time, but today’s news will have significant political repercussions. Here are a few thoughts.

• READ MORE: ICJ ruling an ‘indirect’ order for Israeli ceasefire in genocidal war, says legal analyst
• World Court or­ders Is­rael to take steps to pre­vent acts of geno­cide in Gaza

This is a devastating blow to Israel’s global standing. To put it in context, Israel has worked ferociously for the last two decades to defeat the BDS movement — Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions — not because it will have a significant economic impact on Israel, but because of how it could delegitimiSe Israel internationally.

However, the ruling of the ICJ that Israel is plausibly engaged in genocide is far more devastating to Israel’s legitimacy than anything BDS could have achieved.

Just as much as Israel’s political system has been increasingly — and publicly — associated with apartheid in the past few years, Israel will now be similarly associated with the charge of genocide.

As a result, those countries that have supported Israel and its military campaign in Gaza, such as the US under President Biden, will be associated with that charge, too.

Significant implications for US
The implications for the United States are significant. First because the court does not have the ability to implement its ruling.

Instead, the matter will go to the UN Security Council, where the Biden administration will once again face the choice of protecting Israel politically by casting a veto, and by that, further isolate the United States, or allowing the Security Council to act and pay a domestic political cost for “not standing by Israel.”

I have deleted my previous posts on the ICJ ruling to ensure accurate representation of their decision.

Having read and listened to expert analysis of the ruling, it remains the case that the New Zealand government, a signatory to the Genocide Convention, now has a clear duty… pic.twitter.com/GOulkTJ4Kv

— Donna Miles دانا مجاب (@UnPressed) January 26, 2024

So far, the Biden administration has refused to say if it will respect ICJ’s decision. Of course, in previous cases in front of the ICJ, such as Myanmar, Ukraine and Syria, the US and Western states stressed that ICJ provisional measures are binding and must be fully implemented.

The double standards of US foreign policy will hit a new low if, in this case, Biden not only argues against the ICJ, but actively acts to prevent and block the implementation of its ruling.

It is perhaps not surprising that senior Biden administration officials have largely ceased using the term “rules-based order” since October 7.

It also raises questions about how Biden’s policy of bear-hugging Israel may have contributed to Israel’s conduct.

Biden could have offered more measured support and pushed back hard against Israeli excesses — and by that, prevented Israel from engaging in actions that could potentially fall under the category of genocide. But he didn’t.

Unconditional support, zero criticism
Instead, Biden offered unconditional support combined with zero public criticism of Israel’s conduct and only limited push-back behind the scenes. A different American approach could have shaped Israel’s war efforts in a manner that arguably would not have been preliminarily ruled by the ICJ as plausibly meeting the standards of genocide.

This shows that America undermines its own interest as well as that of its partners when it offers them blank checks and complete and unquestionable protection. The absence of checks and balances that such protection offers fuels reckless behavior all around.

As such, Biden’s unconditional support may have undermined Israel, in the final analysis.

This ruling may also boost those arguing that all states that are party to the Genocide Convention have a positive obligation to prevent genocide. The Houthis, for instance, have justified their attacks against ships heading to Israeli ports in the Red Sea, citing this positive obligation.

What legal implications will the court’s ruling have as a result on the US and UK’s military action against the Houthis?

The implications for Europe will also be considerable. The US is rather accustomed to and comfortable with setting aside international law and ignoring international institutions. Europe is not.

International law and institutions play a much more central role in European security thinking. The decision will continue to split Europe. But the fact that some key EU states will reject the ICJ’s ruling will profoundly contradict and undermine Europe’s broader security paradigm.

Moderated war conduct
One final point: The mere existence of South Africa’s application to the ICJ appears to have moderated Israel’s war conduct.

Any plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and send its residents to third countries appear to have been somewhat paused, presumably because of how such actions would boost South Africa’s application.

If so, it shows that the court, in an era where the force of international law is increasingly questioned, has had a greater impact in terms of deterring unlawful Israeli actions than anything the Biden administration has done.

Trita Parsi is the co-founder and executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. First published at Responsible Statecraft.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Israel to take steps to prevent acts of genocide in South Africa’s case over the war on the Gaza Strip.

But it stopped short of ordering a ceasefire in what is being seen as a historical ruling on emergency measures requested by the South African government which analysts say will put pressure on Tel Aviv and its Western backers.

The ICJ, also known as the World Court, ordered Israel to take measures to prevent and punish direct incitement of genocide, and also to take immediate, effective measures to enable provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance in the besieged enclave.

• READ MORE: ICJ fails to order ceasefire, but says Israel must prevent genocide in Gaza

Hailing the emergency measures as a victory for international law, South African Minister of International Relations Dr Naledi Pandor said outside the court in The Hague that Israel would have to halt fighting in Gaza if it wanted to adhere to the orders of the United Nations’ top court.

“How else is it going to comply with the ruling?” she asked, adding that it was up to the global community to ensure the measures were applied to “stop the suffering of the Palestinian people”.

“How do you provide aid and water without a ceasefire?” Dr Pandor said.

“If you read the order, by implication a ceasefire must happen.”

In South Africa, government officials welcomed the ruling.

“It’s a watershed judgment for all those who want to see peace in Palestine,” Fikile Mbalula, secretary-general of the ruling African National Congress party, told reporters.

Palestinian human rights attorney @dianabuttu reacts to the ICJ ruling on Gaza: “This court has overwhelmingly decided in favor of South Africa, has overwhelmingly determined that there is plausible risk of genocide, and it becomes imperative upon the world community to now act.” pic.twitter.com/eXQuyIBlbA

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 26, 2024

Years to decide
The ICJ judges have not yet ruled on the merits of the genocide allegations, which may take years to decide. However, a big majority of the judges ruled that South Africa had presented a “plausible case” with its genocide allegations that led to the emergency measures.

Since October 7 when Hamas launched a deadly raid on Israel, Tel Aviv’s military campaign has killed at least 26,083 people and wounded 64,487 others, according to officials in Gaza. Thousands more are missing under the rubble, most of them presumed dead.

Al Jazeera’s senior analyst Marwan Bishara told the network that “Israel is on trial for genocide”, saying that the provisional ruling would cause a seismic split between the Global North and South depending on which side people aligned, even if the ICJ had not called for an immediate ceasefire.

He said Israel’s major backer, the United States, which had vetoed three UN Security Council resolutions seeking a ceasefire in recent months, now needed to “look in the mirror”.

“The UK, Germany and other countries who supported Israel in the past three months unconditionally also need to look in the mirror and reconsider their decision because the World Court has taken up the case of genocide against Israel for its actions in the past three months,” Bishara said.

The principle outcome was that the ICJ would take on the case and had put Israel “on notice” and demand that the state carry out a number of steps.

“I think that legally and morally sends a strong message to Israel and its backers that they need to cease and desist — even if the court did not spell it out.”

International Court of Justice preliminary ruling: “Israel’s actions in Gaza may constitute genocide.” pic.twitter.com/ArtpoFbZ3M

— PALESTINE ONLINE (@OnlinePalEng) January 26, 2024

Plausible case of genocide
Thomas Macmanus, director of international state crime initiative at Queen Mary University of London, stressed that the court had said there “is a plausible case of genocide in Gaza”.

“So, we now have a serious risk of genocide,” he said, noting that the law stipulated that once there is “a serious risk”, then states needed to do “everything they can to stop enabling that genocide and to start taking all action in their capacity to prevent it”.

Riyadh al-Maliki, Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs, issued a statement welcoming the ICJ’s provisional measures “in light of the incontrovertible evidence presented to the court about the unfolding genocide”.

“The ICJ ruling is an important reminder that no state is above the law or beyond the reach of justice. It breaks Israel’s entrenched culture of criminality and impunity, which has characterised its decades-long occupation, dispossession, persecution, and apartheid in Palestine.”

Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir mocked the ICJ after the court ended its reading.

“Hague shmague,” the minister wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in the first comments by an Israeli official.

All of those genocidal statements including that of Palestinians being human animals. Well here they are being quoted again to the world by Judge Donoghue at the ICJ. #ICJGazaGenocide pic.twitter.com/RmBQRBInU3

— Ayesha Omar (@DrAyeshaOmar) January 26, 2024

A Palestinian advocate has appealed to the New Zealand government to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to back the South African genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

“A sovereign state like New Zealand that has historically stood for what is morally correct must not bend to foreign pressure, and must reject policies aligned with the United Kingdom of Israel and the United States of Israel which blindly endorse and support the apartheid regime,” said Billy Hania of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

He was speaking at the pro-Palestinian rally and march in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau yesterday as the Gaza death toll rose above 25,000 dead, mostly women and children.

• READ MORE: ‘Criminal complaints’ filed against Israeli President Herzog in Switzerland
• War on Gaza: The US plan to revamp Palestinian Authority is doomed
• ‘Bombing all around us’ — Israeli assault hospital in Khan Younis

Belgium is among the latest of 61 countries — and the first European nation — to support the genocide case and a growing number of other lawsuits are also being brought against Israel.

Chile and Mexico have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate crimes against civilians in the war and Indonesia has filed a new lawsuit in the ICJ against Israel for its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

Swiss prosecutors have also confirmed that a “crimes against humanity” case has been filed against Israeli President Isaac Herzog during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. No further details were given.

“The Zionist project is failing in Palestine — the apartheid entity with 75 years of colonial terror has achieved nothing for the Jewish people, oppressing and killing Palestinians through a violent settler colonial approach,” Hania said.

“Mass killing of Palestinians will achieve nothing for the Jewish people. Without respect for Palestinian rights and respect for life in Palestine, there will be no peace period.”

‘One holocaust not enough?’
Constrasting the shrinking support for Israel with massive citizen protests “in their millions” taking place around the world, Hania criticised Germany’s intervention in the genocide case supporting Tel Aviv while also planning to provide 10,000 tank munitions to “the apartheid regime with which to massacre Palestinians — as if one holocaust was not enough”.

“We are calling on the New Zealand government to support the South African ICJ case in addition to supporting the recent Chile-Mexico ICC war crimes initiative. This initiative is technically important with Israel being a signatory to the ICC,” Hania said.

He also thanked Indonesia for its legal initiative.

“More than 100 days of targeting Palestinian civilians and civilian infrastructure to exterminate Palestinian life is committing genocide, the crime of all crimes and with total impunity,” Hania said.

“More than 60,000 tons of explosives dropped over Gaza in 100 days equals three nuclear bombs, more than the infamous nuclear tragedy on Japan that led to its immediate surrender. It’s fundamentally different for Gaza as surrendering does not exist in Palestine vocabulary.”

He said the more than 100 Israel hostages would remain in Gaza until the “thousands of Palestinian hostages are freed”.

“The Gaza siege must end, West Bank Israeli settler extremist violence must end, there must be respect for worshippers and Muslim religious sites attacks by Israeli extremists is well documented and must end.”

24 massacres cited
Hania stressed that the current war did not start on October 7 with the deadly Hamas resistance movement attack on southern Israel as claimed by the Israeli government.

He cited a list of 24 massacres of Palestinians by Zionist militia that began at Haifa in 1937 and Jerusalem the same year, including the Nakba – “the Catastrophe” — in 1948 when 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes and lands with the destruction of towns and villages.

Hania also referred to a recent New York Times article that warned Israel was in a strategic bind over its failed military policies, saying Israel’s objectives were “mutually incompatible”.

“Israel’s limited progress in dismantling Hamas has raised doubts within the military’s high command about the near-term feasibility of achieving the country’s principal wartime objectives: eradicating Hamas and also liberating the Israeli hostages still in Gaza,” wrote the authors Ronen Bergman and Patrick Kingsley.

Israel had established control over a smaller part of Gaza at this stage of the war than originally envisaged in battle plans from the start of the invasion, which were reviewed by The Times.

Citing Dr Andreas Krieg, a war analyst at King’s College London, from the article, Hania quoted:

“It’s not an environment where you can free hostages.

“It is an unwinnable war.

“Most of the time when you are in an unwinnable war, you realise that at some point — and you withdraw.

“And they didn’t.”

In 2023, the world witnessed a sustained attack on the very foundations of the international legal order.

Russia, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, continued its illegal invasion in Ukraine. Israel’s response to the deadly October attack by Hamas exceeded its legitimate right to self-defence. And Venezuela threatened force against Guyana over an oil-rich area of disputed territory.

But is it all bad news for the international legal order?

• READ MORE: South Africa has made its genocide case against Israel in court. Here’s what both sides said and what happens next
• Myanmar charged with genocide of Rohingya Muslims: 5 essential reads

There are six ongoing international court cases initiated by states or organisations seeking to clarify the law and hold other states to account on behalf of the international community.

These cases offer smaller countries, such as New Zealand, an opportunity to have a significant role in strengthening the international legal order and ensuring a pathway towards peace.

A departure from the legal norm?
Normally, cases are brought to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) when a state’s direct interests are impacted by the actions of another state.

However, six recent court cases reflect a significant departure from this tradition and mark an important development for international justice.

These cases argue the international community has a collective interest in certain issues. The focus of the cases range from Israel’s actions in Gaza (brought by South Africa) through to the responsibility of states to ensure the protection of the climate system (brought by the United Nations General Assembly).

South Africa’s justice minister Ronald Lamola outlined the country’s genocide case against Israel, as a landmark hearing opened at the International Court of Justice pic.twitter.com/AvlM8BwhQI

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 11, 2024

Holding states accountable for genocide
Three of the six cases seek to hold states accountable for genocide using Article IX of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Put simply, Article IX says disputes between countries can be referred to the ICJ.

In late December, South Africa asked the court to introduce provisional measures — a form of international injunction — against Israel for genocidal acts in Gaza.

These proceedings build on the precedent set by a 2019 case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar for its treatment of the Rohingya people.

In 2022, the ICJ concluded it had jurisdiction to hear The Gambia’s case on the basis that all parties to the Genocide Convention have an interest in ensuring the prevention, suppression and punishment of genocide.

According to the ICJ, The Gambia did not need to demonstrate any special interest or injury to bring the proceedings and, in effect, was entitled to hold Myanmar to account for its treatment of the Rohingya people on behalf of the international community as a whole.

South Africa has made the same argument against Israel.

In the third case, Ukraine was successful in obtaining provisional measures calling on Russia to suspend military operations in Ukraine (a call which has been reiterated in several United Nations General Assembly resolutions).

While Ukraine is directly impacted by Russia’s actions, 32 states, including New Zealand, have also intervened. These countries have argued there is an international interest in the resolution of the conflict.

In November 2023, following the example of intervention in Ukraine v Russia, seven countries — Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (jointly) and the Maldives — filed declarations of intervention in The Gambia v Myanmar, in support of The Gambia and the international community.

States can apply for permission to intervene in proceedings where they have an interest of a legal nature that may be affected by the decision in the case (in the case of the ICJ, under Article 62 of the ICJ Statute). That said, intervening in judicial proceedings in support of the legal order or international community more generally was relatively rare until 2023.

South Africa is taking Israel to the ICJ, accusing it of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s @nabilabana explains what’s behind the case pic.twitter.com/Hv9R4orEa8

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 11, 2024

Climate change obligations under international law
But it is not just acts of genocide that have attracted wider international legal involvement.

In 2023, three proceedings seeking advisory opinions on the legal obligations of states in respect of climate change under international law have been introduced before the ICJ, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

These cases can be similarly characterised as having been brought on behalf of the international community for the international community. New Zealand has intervened in the Law of the Sea case.

Collectively, these six cases comprise actions taken on behalf of the international community with the overarching purpose of strengthening the international legal order.

They demonstrate faith in and support for that legal order in the face of internal and external challenges, and constitute an important counter-narrative to the prevailing view that the international legal order is no longer robust.

Instituting proceedings does not guarantee a positive outcome. But it is worth noting that less than three years after the ICJ issued an advisory opinion condemning the United Kingdom’s continued occupation of the Chagos Archipelago, the UK is quietly negotiating with Mauritius for the return of the islands.

New Zealand’s support for the global legal order in 2024
The international legal order underpins New Zealand’s security and prosperity. New Zealand has a strong and internationally recognised track record of positive intervention in judicial proceedings in support of that order.

In 2012 New Zealand intervened in the case brought by Australia against Japan for whaling in the Antarctic. Following our contributions to cases before the ICJ and ITLOS in 2023, we are well placed to continue that intervention in future judicial proceedings.

Calls have already been made for New Zealand to intervene in South Africa v Israel. Contributing to this case and to The Gambia v Myanmar proceeding provides an important opportunity for New Zealand to make a proactive and substantive contribution to strengthening the international legal order.

Dr Karen Scott is professor in Law, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Pacific Media Watch

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara says Israel’s legal team “started off weak” but made a few strong points near the end.

Bishara said the lawyers’ efforts at the genocide hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague yesterday to deflect blame for Israel’s attacks and ignore the context of Israel’s 75-year occupation of Palestine came across as “illogical”, the Al Jazeera video clip reports.

Their claims that Israel’s forces are “trying to protect, rather than harm”, civilians were also unconvincing, he said, given the toll of the war: 23,357 Palestinians, including 9,600 children, since October 7.

• READ MORE: South Africa’s genocide case against Israel over Gaza ‘chilling’ in detail
• ICJ genocide case: What are Israel’s arguments and do they hold up?

However, Bishara said Israel’s lawyers did well to zero in on the jurisdiction of the ICJ — pointing out that the court must specifically prove Israel was guilty of genocidal intent, not any other violations.

“You can claim Israel has committed heinous crimes, but if they do not fall under the framework of genocide, the court has no jurisdiction,” Bishara said.

Speaking to reporters outside the ICJ in The Hague, Palestinian Foreign Ministry official Ammar Hijazi said Israel’s legal team was not “able to provide any solid arguments on the basis of fact and law”.

“What Israel has provided today are many of the already debunked lies,” he added, referring to, among others, Israeli clams that hospitals in Gaza were being used as military bases.

“Additionally, we think that what the Israeli team today has tried to provide is the exact thing that South Africa came to the court for — and that is, nothing at all justifies genocide.”

Thomas MacManus, a senior lecturer in state crime at Queen Mary University of London, said the ICJ was likely to see a “massive disconnect” between the picture Israel painted of its humanitarian concern for Gaza and “the reality on the ground where UN agencies say people are starving, lacking water, and seeing attacks on hospitals, schools, and universities.”

‘Nothing can ever justify genocide’
South Africa’s Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola told media “Self-defence is no answer to genocide”.

Here are the main points from his interaction:

• “”Israel failed to disprove South Africa’s compelling case that was presented;
• Israel tells the court that statements read out by senior Israeli political, military and civilian society leaders are simply rhetorical, and we shall not ascribe them any importance;
• “There is no debate about what Prime Minister Netanyahu’s term ‘Amalek’ means and how it is understood by soldiers fighting on the ground and by the Israelis;
• “How can you ignore Netanyahu’s statement, the statement of the defence minister and the ground forces? That is a clear implementation of policy.
• “Israel chose to focus extensively on the events of October 7. South Africa has not ignored this event as Israel alleged because it has unequivocally condemned and continues to condemn October 7; and
• “Self-defence is no answer to genocide. Nothing can ever justify genocide.”

Marwan Bishara comments on the Israeli ICJ defence. Video: Al Jazeera

Two years ago New Zealand joined 22 other countries in supporting the Ukrainian case against Russia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its invasion of Ukraine.

We sent a legal team to The Hague where the ICJ is based and our representatives spoke directly to the court on New Zealand’s behalf. We used international law to argue the Russian invasion was illegal and warranted sanction by the ICJ.

Successive New Zealand governments for as long as I can remember have said we believe in an “international rules-based order” of which the ICJ and the ICC are an important part.

• READ MORE: War on Gaza: A textbook case of genocide
• Jordan backs South Africa ICJ genocide file against Israel over Gaza atrocities
• War on Gaza: The fate of global justice hangs on South Africa’s ICJ case

This makes sense because we are a small country without the economic or military clout to take unilateral action to protect our interests. Like other small countries we rely on international rules to provide a measure of protection when bigger countries, like Russia in this case, break the rules.

We have used such rules ourselves by making applications to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) when our trade interests have been threatened. Without such rules the biggest bully will win every time.

Last week South Africa filed papers at the ICJ alleging Israel’s actions in Gaza over the past 12 weeks amount to genocide.

South Africa said it “is gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants”.

It described its case saying “acts and omissions by Israel . . .  are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . .  to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”.

Their court papers go on to claim that, “the conduct of Israel — through its state organs, state agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence — in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention”.

This case is important because Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and South Africa are all signatories of the Genocide Convention and are bound to abide by any decision made by the court.

The most important part of South Africa’s case is its application for an interim injunction to stop Israel’s indiscriminate killing immediately. If this interim injunction is successful it could put in place an immediate ceasefire to end the war and Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinians.

It would allow unfettered humanitarian aid to enter Gaza where the need for food, water, fuel, medicine and vaccinations is desperate.

This is the outcome the majority of people in New Zealand, and across the world, want to see. New Zealand should back up the South African case which is most likely to get a first hearing on January 11.

So far, Bolivia, Ireland, Jordan, Malaysia, Maldives, Namibia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Palestine, Turkey, Venezuela and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation have supported the South African legal action.

Those who have been paying attention will not be surprised at claims of genocide.

Genocide always begins with words and there is a wealth of reporting on the dehumanising language being used by Israel’s political and military leaders to set the scene for what has followed.

For example, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible”, and two days after the attack Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant spelt out genocidal intentions saying:

“We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.”

Israelis more generally have taken up this talk across social media with calls for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased” or “destroyed”. More tragic is a social media post showing Israeli children singing “we will annihilate everyone” in Gaza.

Israel’s Defence Minister’s statement matches the UN Convention closely to the point where Israeli scholar of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Raz Segal, has described Israel’s rhetoric and actions as “a textbook case of genocide”.

It is clear Israel’s political and military leaders have a case to answer before the International Court of Justice, just as Russia does for its invasion of Ukraine.

South Africa has filed a case at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. International law expert Francis Boyle, who has argued successfully at the ICJ, says he believes “South Africa will win an order against Israel.” pic.twitter.com/4Ebz02vxVc

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 2, 2024

As well as backing South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice we should also call for a swift, well-resourced International Criminal Court investigation into war crimes committed in the October 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli response.

This investigation should include examining the crimes of genocide and apartheid.

Palestinians deserve our support as much as the people of Ukraine.

John Minto is the national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by The Post and is republished with the author’s permission.

Flying Fijians head coach Simon Raiwalui says facing England in the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals will be different from when they met last month in Twickenham.

The match in London saw Fiji topple the tier one nation 30-22 for the first time, two weeks away from the World Cup and was described as one of the lowest moments in English rugby history.

The two sides will face-off at Stade de Marseille in a week’s time at 3am.

• READ MORE: Fiji scrapes through to Rugby World Cup quarterfinal despite loss to Portugal
• Other Rugby World Cup reports

“They [England] play rugby to win. They’re very talented. They’ll put a lot of pressure on us at set-piece time as well,” Raiwalui said.

“Tactically, they’ll look to take advantage of some of the things we’ve been doing, so they’re a very good team. It’s going to be a big challenge.”

He said he expected England to change their game a little bit.

“It’s a totally different match [to when Fiji beat England in August], playing a different team. There will be aspects of how they play that are similar but they will bring new stuff as well.

“It’s about us being efficient and doing the things we do well and giving ourselves the best chance to compete.

“We’ve played the team, the boys are comfortable. It’s not the first time, so I think it will be a good match.”

Pacific RWC results
Fiji just scraped into the quarter-finals losing to Portugal 24-23 in their final and deciding pool match in Toulouse on Monday morning.

Other quarter-finals will see Wales battle Argentina in Marseille on Sunday morning, before Ireland and New Zealand clash in Saint Denis the same day.

The fourth semi-final will be between France and South Africa in Saint Denis on Monday morning.

Samoa are out of the World Cup after Sunday’s 18-17 defeat to England and Tonga also had an early exit after ‘Ikale Tahi scored seven tries for a bonus point 45-24 win in Lille to record their only cup win.

Republished with permission.

The Fijiana are one step away from reaching the quarterfinals of the Women’s Rugby World Cup — but they have to beat favourite France first.

To qualify, they need to overcome the in-form French team at the Northland Events Centre in Whangārei on Saturday.

It is an opportunity that has arisen as a result of a thrilling 21-17 last-gasp upset over favourites South Africa last weekend, with Fijiana stealing the game with a try scored in the final minute.

• READ MORE: France lose star half back Laure Sansus
• Fijiana survive scare from South Africa to win 21-17 in dying seconds
• Other Rugby World Cup reports

Most commentators did not expect Fijiana to win, having entered the game off the back of an 84-19 thrashing at the hands of England in their opening game.

“I have no words for it. I am just so grateful for the girls. We talked about leaving everything on the field and playing with our hearts,” Fijiana captain Asinate Serevi said.

“One thing that Fijians are known for is that even with three or one minute left on the clock, we can still win a game — and that’s what we did,” Asinate added.

“As a captain they made me look good, so I’m forever grateful for the game they put on.”

First Pacific qualifier
Being the first Pacific Island nation to qualify for the Women’s Rugby World Cup is an accomplishment, but for Fijiana, qualifying for the quarterfinals is the driving goal.

Despite a disheartening loss to England, Senirusi Serivakula said Fijiana’s winning ambitions have never faltered.

“The message was clear from the beginning, which was that we must beat South Africa. That was the message, that we are not going to walk away without a win over South Africa,” coach Senirusi Seruvakula said.

“I’m proud that the girls stuck to it, and they played as a team to the last minute.”

That message was delivered in a stunning fashion, with a last-minute try scored right between the posts by forward Karalaini Naisewa. The number eight had to crash through three tacklers to get the ball over the line.

That try has since gone viral and Fijiana players have now become overnight celebrities in Fiji.

The star of the team, prop forward Siteri Rasolea, was awarded player of the match. She relentlessly ploughed through South Africa’s forwards from beginning to end.

Public admiration
Rasolea had already won public admiration in Fiji after she turned down an offer to play for her home nation Australia, opting to represent her heritage nation Fiji.

Rasolea said the team were still coming to terms with their accomplishment.

“Our girls had to dig deep and really fight for each other,” said Rasolea.

“I’m still in awe of it now. I want to dedicate this to everyone who supported me at home. It wasn’t easy leaving Australia to go to Fiji, so I fulfil my dreams.”

Like Rasolea, many of Fijiana’s players flocked from overseas with the purpose of representing their heritage.

Fijiana captain Asinate Serevi, who is the daughter of 7s legend Waisele Serevi, represented the United States for three years before switching to Fiji.

“It means the whole world to me. I can’t thank God enough for all the support. My plan was just to play for Fiji and represent my country. And being named captain is honestly beyond dreams,” Serevi said.

‘Huge step to win’
“It’s a huge step for us to win one game in the World Cup means to us like we’ve won the world cup already. We know France is going to be tougher and we have things to work on.”

Regardless of Fijiana’s big win, France remains the overwhelming favourite, having easily defeated South Africa 40-5 and narrowly losing to England 13-7.

However, they have been weakened by the loss of their staff halfback Laure Sansus, who is out if the World Cup due to a knee injury in the first quarter of the game against England.

Sansus, the 2022 Women’s Six Nations Player of the Championship tore her anterior cruciate ligament and will be replaced by centre Marie Dupouy. However, she will stay on in New Zealand as France’s “chief fan”.

Coach Seruvakula is optimistic that Fijiana can win if they play a perfect game.

“I believe in the girls, that they’ll play to the last minute,” said Seruvakula.

“If we want to play in the quarterfinals, we have to do right during training and through the process everything will take care of itself come game day against France.”

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

The Fijiana 15s defeated 13th ranked South Africa 21-17 today to get their first win at the Women’s Rugby World Cup.

Fiji struck first through winger Ilisapeci Delaiwau in the 12th minute after some broken play and her try was successfully converted by Lavena Cavuru.

A couple of missed opportunities where the 16th ranked Fijiana could have extended their lead, but luckily the South Africans were not able to capitalise on this.

• READ MORE:  Red Roses hot favourite to win 2022 Women’s Rugby World Cup
• Other Rugby World Cup reports

Zintle Mpupha sliced through the Fijiana defence and dotted down between the sticks making the conversion easy for Janse van Rensburg to level the score.

Akanisi Sokoiwasa cruised over for a try on the stroke of half-time with Cavuru getting the conversion to take a 14-7 lead at the break.

In the 59th minute, South Africa won a penalty and they powered over on their second attempt after recycling the ball quickly with Aseza Hele diving over to level the score 14-all.

Janse van Rensburg struck with a penalty goal to give the South Africans the lead with 40 seconds left, but the Fijianas had the last say with No 8 Karalaini Naisewa brushing aside the defence to score under the sticks.

Fijiana will face France at Northland Events Centre, Whangarei, next Saturday at 6.15pm in their final pool game.

Alipate Narawa is a Fiji Village reporter.

The Blacks Ferns 41-17 win over the Wallaroos on the field at Auckland’s Eden Park last night was good, but the one off it was better.

There had been a lot of conjecture going into the Rugby World Cup about just how people would respond, given the team’s recent history and the fact that women’s rugby has never really been a priority for those running the game in Aotearoa New Zealand.

But it took a World Cup to finally get one thing right.

• READ MORE: Red Roses hot favourite to win 2022 Women’s Rugby World Cup
• Black Ferns overcome horror start to beat Australia 41-17
• Favourites England hand Fiji 14-try mauling at World Cup
• France score six tries to win Rugby World Cup 2021 opener

The people in charge knew that the most important ones at a sporting event aren’t the players. They’re not the volunteers, or the entertainers, or even the guy cooking Fritz’s Wieners.

It’s the ones who are there for the first time ever, most usually children but occasionally adults who are giving something new a go.

They’re the most important because their entire experience could well mean they come back next time, and again and again until they call themselves true fans. They will bring their friends, their family and eventually their own children.

If the sporting event can get it right, they lock in that person for life.

Lacklustre experiences
It’s something rugby hasn’t been very good at lately. Lacklustre game day experiences have played a huge role in crowds for everything below (and sometimes including) the All Blacks gradually declining, to the point where NPC attendances are pretty much non-existent. There is nothing unique, very little that’s special.

Last night at Eden Park flipped that notion on its head. While there is a conversation to be had around just exactly how many fans were in attendance (43,000) and whether a clearly not full stadium can be described as “sold out”, in the end it didn’t really matter.

Looking around showed a different sight than an All Black test match, far more children and families. Groups of people who were clearly drawn to women’s rugby and its World Cup for reasons they’d arrived at themselves.

It was up to the day itself to carry them further.

If it was their first time at a rugby game, what they got most definitely ensured that they’d be coming back. The wave ridden by new fans of a fixture that, for a while there, the Black Ferns had no right to win, is a wonderful and unique experience of its own.

It was an evening of making sure the fan experience was paramount: from Rita Ora’s performance to affordable tickets to the Black Ferns making sure every single kid got a photo after the game – even if it meant they didn’t get into the sheds until well after 10pm.

The energy of the crowd was clearly different too to one usually found at Eden Park. For a start, there were no massive howls of protest at refereeing decisions. No one was getting rotten drunk either, despite it being Saturday night.

Happy and safe
The general feel was that this was an environment that you could feel happy and safe in, something that is less directly quantifiable than numbers but infinitely more valuable in the broader context.

Does it mean that every Black Ferns test can be assured of a big crowd if they are held in a big stadium? Probably not, as the World Cup factor plays a huge role in getting people along.

But it’s a new dawn for women’s rugby, this time with an actual professional NZ Rugby competition to follow it up and a commitment by World Rugby to continue the momentum in test matches. It is proof that if you do things right and invest properly, people will show up in numbers.

From an elite level perspective, this all makes sense as it should have all happened years ago. But there was a sign during the week that the penny had finally dropped in regard to what it will mean in the long term.

When asked about how the Black Ferns would inspire player numbers, coach Wayne Smith said that “the future generations will be inspired to play rugby, be fans and follow the game”.

That’s the nail on the head, because it’s not going to matter whether those future fans are girls or boys. They will grow up and fill the seats at Eden Park and other stadiums.

While the World Cup opener should rightfully be held up as a celebration of women’s rugby right now, years from now it will be remembered as an important day for the national game of New Zealand in general.

• In the first two games of the World Cup yesterday, France beat South Africa 40-5 and England crushed Fiji 84-19 at Eden Park. Today Italy beat USA 22-10, Canada overwhelmed Japan 41-5 and Wales beat Scotland 18-15 at Whangārei’s Northland Events Centre.

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

A Gisborne councillor has called into question the mayor’s ability to lead the region forward, saying her background makes it hard to understand issues affecting Māori.

Third-term councillor Meredith Akuhata-Brown made the comments about Mayor Rehette Stoltz following questions about her intention to stand for the top position at the next election.

Akuhata-Brown, who unsuccessfully contested the mayoralty in 2019, said she was not sure if she would run against Stoltz in October.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Māori leadership

Part of the reason was she felt her chances were impacted on by not fitting the stereotype of what power looked like.

“When Rehette first ran for council, she was elected duly based on ‘that’s what councils look like across the nation’,” Akuhata-Brown said.

“She’s the deputy mayor within a couple of terms … she’s formidable … she’s young. There’s no fight for the position, it’s handed to her.”

First elected to council in 2010, Stoltz was appointed deputy mayor by Meng Foon in 2013.

Made interim mayor
When Foon left his position to become the Race Relations Commissioner in 2019, she was made mayor in the interim.

Stoltz then cruised to mayoral victory later that year with 10,589 votes, ahead of second-placed Akuhata-Brown who secured 3845 votes.

Akuhata-Brown believes the mayor had an easy run because she fit the bill of what people were used to in the make-up of councils around the country.

“We go through an election campaign when the position has already been filled.”

On her website, South African-born Stoltz shares her journey to the top elected position at Gisborne District Council.

Arriving in New Zealand in 2001 for her OE, she took a “holiday job” as the laboratory manager for a wine business before deciding to commit to Tairāwhiti long term with partner Deon.

It wasn’t until a conversation with former councillor Kathy Sheldrake in 2009 that she decided to run for council the following year.

Little debate over mayoralty
Her background is in cardiovascular physiology and she also ran a recruitment business.

Akuhata-Brown argues Stoltz was handed the mayoral chains without much debate among councillors when Foon left prematurely.

“It’s really easy for people from overseas. They come to our place highly qualified, and they are looked upon favourably, and they get the position without fighting for it.

“If you are a certain look, that is particularly not Māori, you are highly probable to get that position.”

Akuhata-Brown said she was being a “vocal local” because she was invested in the region and wanted to highlight the issues that came with integrating governance styles from overseas.

Tairāwhiti was still fraught with racial inequalities and relationships were key for connecting with those who were still trying to eek out a living in the middle and lower classes, she said.

“Those who have money and wealth and governance roles, they can just get on with their lives and not be bothered by any of that because they can just put up higher fences.

No voice for Māori and Pasifika
“For Māori and Pasifika, the voice hasn’t been there for centuries.”

Akuhata-Brown’s final criticism of Stoltz’s leadership was she had been left alone with no extra jobs and it felt like there were low expectations.

Hoping to be made a committee chair in her third term, Akuhata-Brown said positions had instead gone to people who supported the mayor 100 percent.

“There’s a real sense that to get position and acknowledgement you have to be very much on side.

“We don’t even talk, it’s just a non-relationship.”

Mayor Rehette Stoltz responded to the criticisms, saying Gisborne had been her home for 21 years and she had made a concerted effort to get a deeper understanding of the multicultural community.

Tikanga Māori course
That included completing a year-long Tikanga Māori course and becoming a member of the council’s waiata group.

She said that under her leadership, Māori wards had been unanimously voted in and memorandums of understanding signed with hapū.

“I have good working relationships with our iwi leaders and regularly meet to discuss and make decisions in regard to issues that are important to us as a region.”

Appointment to committees and chair positions were made on interest expressed by councillors, experience and merit, she said.

“I won the mayoralty with more than a 7000-vote majority. Mayoralties are not handed down, they are voted on by the community.”

The upcoming local body election is set for October 8.

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

Palestine has lost a champion of the struggle against Israeli apartheid with the death of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, aged 90.

Tutu is known internationally as a leader of the struggle against white minority rule in South Africa and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work reconciling South Africans after the end of its brutal apartheid regime.

He was the moral conscience of the country and sometimes highly critical of South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC)-led government, saying that some in the ANC leadership had stopped the apartheid gravy train “just long enough to jump on”.

• READ MORE: South Africa’s anti-apartheid icon Desmond Tutu dies at 90
• Rest in peace Archbishop Desmond Tutu – West Papua’s Benny Wenda

Relationship with New Zealand
Archbishop Tutu was a warm friend of New Zealand and many New Zealanders across our political divides will feel a deep sadness at his passing.

In the early 1980s when Tutu faced court action from the South African authorities, a delegation of church leaders from New Zealand, led by former Anglican Archbishop of Aotearoa New Zealand, the late Sir Paul Reeves, went to South Africa in an act of international solidarity.

This was deeply appreciated by Archbishop Tutu.

During the protests against the 1981 Springbok rugby tour, one of the three Auckland protest squads was called Tutu Squad in his honour.

Later he came to New Zealand and at one point gave evidence as an expert witness on apartheid during a trial arising from 1981 tour protests.

Such was his charisma, his mana and the deep respect he commanded everywhere that when he was called to the witness stand by Hone Harawira, the entire courtroom stood.

In this case all the activists on trial were acquitted after the jury deliberated.

Support for Palestinians
Tutu was outspoken against injustices all around the world and in particular he condemned the racist policies faced by Palestinians from the Israeli regime. He frequently described Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as “worse” than that suffered by black South Africans.

He said international solidarity with Palestinians such as through BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) was critical to ending injustices like apartheid.

“I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing in the Holy Land that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under apartheid,” said Tutu.

“We could not have achieved our democracy without the help of people around the world, who through… non-violent means, such as boycotts and disinvestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the apartheid regime.”

In relation to Israeli policies towards Palestinians, Tutu said the world should “call it apartheid and boycott!”

In honouring Tutu’s legacy, freedom-loving people around the world should follow his advice and spurn Israel till everyone living in historic Palestine has equal rights.

Aotearoa New Zealand, the Palestinian struggle and the world have lost a dear friend and a great humanitarian.

John Minto is national chair of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and former national chair of HART (Halt all Racist Tours).

After his release from prison in South Africa and he became inaugural president of the majority rule government with the abolition of apartheid, Nelson Mandela declared in a speech in 1997: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Founding Halt All Racist Tours (HART) leader John Minto invoked these words again several times in Hamilton on Sunday as veterans and supporters of the 1981 Springbok Rugby Tour anti-apartheid protests gathered to mark the 40th anniversary of the historic events.

Starting at the “1981” tour retrospective exhibition at the Hamilton Museum – Te Whare Taonga o Waikato, the protesters gathered for a luncheon at Anglican Action and then staged a ceremonial march to FMG Stadium – known back then as Rugby Park – where they had famously breached the perimeter fence and invaded the pitch.

• READ MORE: 1981 Springbok Tour 40 years on: How Hamilton became a city of rage
• 1981 Springbok tour 40 years on: John Minto weighs up the legacy of the Rugby Park pitch invasion
• Stories told about violence: Hamilton during the 1981 Springbok tour

The exhibition features photographs by Geoffrey Short, Kees Sprengers and John Mercer of that day on 25 July 1981 when about 2000 protesters halted the second match of the tour.

“The Kirikiriroa protests were the outcome of months of planning, counter-planning and public discontent,” said curator Nadia Gush.

“1981 documents a period of unrest, with New Zealanders of all ages expressing their solidarity with marginalised black South Africans.”

PSNA’s John Minto talks about the ongoing apartheid struggle over Palestine. Video: David Robie/APR

Their courage and determination led to a tense stand-off in the middle of the park with about 500 protesters huddled together with linked arms and defiantly facing both police squads and a 30,000 crowd baying for their blood.

Match called off
The match was called off by the authorities – interrupting the first ever live broadcast of a South African rugby match from New Zealand. And this triggered unprecedented violent scenes when rugby enthusiasts attacked protesters.

“Amandla Ngawethu!” – “power to the people!” (the cry of the African National Congress) – chanted John Minto, who has lost none of his powerful protest voice, amplified by a megaphone, as the crowd left Garden Place 40 years on.

“Remember racism… Remember Soweto… Remember Mandela,” came other cries from march marshals.

And a fresh addition this time was “Remember Palestine … Remember Gaza. … Freedom for Palestine” in recognition of the new struggle over Israeli apartheid in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and Gaza under military siege.

Marchers were decidedly much slower than in the original protest four decades ago and a cloudburst dampened the straggling ex-protesters. However, they were revived by the sight of a Tristram Street mural at the stadium devoted to the Springbok tour and the cancellation of the game.

Among the stragglers was Invercargill mayor Sir Tim Shadbolt who described the protests against 1981 Springbok Tour as an important historical event for Aotearoa New Zealand.

“I’ll remember those days for the rest of my life,” Shadbolt told Stuff reporter Aaron Leaman.

‘Victory for better NZ’
“It was a victory in a way and changed New Zealand for the better.”

Stuff also quoted Angeline Greensill, who along with her mother, the late Eva Rickard, was among the group of anti-tour protesters who made their way onto the pitch at Rugby Park.

Standing up to the “icon of rugby” took courage, Greensill said.

The group passed around three sides of the stadium in the rain as Minto pointed out the “safe house” across the road – “opened up by a courageous man, Dr Anthony Rogers” – where he, Mike Law, Dick Cuthbert and many others were bashed by rugby supporters. A makeshift ambulance driving injured people to hospital was also attacked.

Twenty three people were treated for injuries in Waikato Hospital and police arrested 73 people.

Minto praised the Waikato Rugby Union for recognising this vital event in New Zealand history.

Then the entourage moved into the stadium’s Bronze Room for speeches and sharing of memories of that fateful day.

Cheered loudly
They cheered loudly as they marked 3.10pm – the exact time that the match between the touring Boks and Waikato had been called off.

Speakers, including Minto, spoke about both apartheid and the 1981 Springbok tour and 70 years of apartheid and Israeli oppression in Palestinian.

“Both Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu said, ‘Our freedom in South Africa will not be complete without the freedom of the Palestinians’,” declared Minto.

“It’s unfinished business.”

“This is the new anti-apartheid struggle,” added Minto, who is also national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSN). He challenged participants to join him in this ongoing campaign.