On June 3 last year, the Christchurch Press reported on an alleged assault in Christchurch on an IDF soldier on holiday from the genocide in Gaza:

“According to police, the man confronted the Israeli visitor in a public space, and yelled that he was a “child killer, a murderer, and Israeli scum”. It is alleged he punched the man before he was restrained by other members of the public.

“Police commented he seemed proud that he had skinned his knuckles in punching the victim.

“Duty lawyer Phillip Allan took issue with police’s comments about it being a “hate crime”, and the allegation that the man was a racist because of the comments he had made about the Israeli Defence Forces’ actions in Gaza.

“‘Many people have strongly held views about the crisis in Gaza and the Israeli military’s actions there. Those people include judges, lawyers, police officers, and upstanding members of the community. They would all take issue with the idea that they were [called] racists because they held those views,’ said Allan.

“Allan said the man had no issues with Israelis, or Jewish people, but he did have issues with the actions of the Israeli military.”

The alleged assailant was denied bail after police argued hard against it.

Behind the scenes
There was no follow up in New Zealand’s mainstream media but on December 3 last year Ynetnews reported the outcome of the case and the shocking behind the scenes story:

“A New Zealand man has been sentenced to two years and four months in prison for assaulting an Israeli tourist in Christchurch last year, in an unusually severe punishment for a street attack.

“The conviction, announced this week by New Zealand’s Justice Ministry, came after months of diplomatic and police coordination that began when the victim, 29-year-old Yuval Shekel, filed a complaint the day after the incident. Shekel had been traveling in New Zealand with his girlfriend following more than 200 days of reserve duty in Gaza and Lebanon.

“According to Shekel, the assault occurred in a Christchurch bar after a local man asked where he was from. ‘I said I was from Israel and felt something strange in the air,’ he recalls. The man then asked whether he had served in the army — a common question for travellers abroad — and, seconds later, punched him in the face.

“Bystanders restrained the attacker, who shouted antisemitic slurs, including that Shekel was a ‘baby killer’, before fleeing the scene. Police did not arrive before he left.

“The blow shattered three of Shekel’s teeth, requiring hospital treatment and months of dental reconstruction. ‘It was a nightmare of a week,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in recovery for three months, and my teeth still haven’t fully healed. And the humiliation stays.’

“After Shekel filed a police report, his father contacted the Israeli Embassy in Wellington. Embassy officials, who said they were shocked by the case, alerted the Israel Police attaché in Asia visiting New Zealand at the time and pressed local authorities to pursue the suspect. New Zealand police later took Shekel’s full testimony and opened a criminal investigation.

“The attacker was arrested and charged under an expedited legal proceeding. Prosecutors sought a seven-year sentence, but the court handed down a term of two years and four months — still considered severe for a first-time assault conviction.

“Shekel said he felt justice had been done. ‘You can’t give up when Israelis are attacked abroad,’ he said. ‘The embassy and the Israel Police really can help. It’s hard not to feel ashamed that we’re Israelis sometimes, but we have to remember there are people who hate us.'”

Direct pressure from Israel
So the New Zealand police recorded the complaint of assault the day after it happened and were presumably following their normal processes when they came under direct pressure from the Israeli Embassy and Israeli officials to do more.

What followed was “months of diplomatic and police coordination”, “pressing local authorities to pursue the suspect”, an “expedited legal proceeding” under which police sought a “seven year prison sentence” with the court handing down a two year four month sentence.”

It’s clear the police responded to direct pressure from the Israeli Embassy and Israeli officials to abandon their normal procedures and launch a criminal investigation which they vigorously prosecuted on behalf of a soldier fresh from a genocide.

Some important questions we need the answers to:

• Who in the police was contacted by the Israeli Embassy to apply this pressure?
• How was this conveyed to the police investigating the assault?
• Did any NZ politicians contact the police to apply pressure by “asking about progress in the case”?
• Were any government ministers or MPs involved?
• Were the police told “Israel and the US are watching us” so make sure you go hard on this one?
• Why was the usual police procedure overridden with an “expedited legal proceeding”?
• Why did the police seek a seven-year sentence for a punch by a first time offender?
• Have the police ever sought such a sentence before in any circumstances? If so give us the details of the case?
• Why have the police and the courts allowed their roles to be politicised on behalf of a racist apartheid state whose leader is wanted for trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity?

Let’s compare the police and courts response to an attack on an Israeli soldier fresh from genocide with their responses to violent attacks on Palestinians and Palestine supporters in New Zealand. A few examples:

• A Palestinian teenager speaking on a microphone was knocked to the ground in Auckland — video evidence and lots of witnesses — no action from police.
• A marshal on a march in Christchurch was kicked in the chest by a genocide supporter and knocked over — the police refused to investigate for “lack of evidence” and refused to get video of the incident from the Christchurch City Council (it took place in a highly surveilled area).
• The police prosecuted a pro-Israel thug in Wellington who punched and kicked a Palestine supporter and although the crime was proven the judge refused to enter a conviction
• In Auckland an ex-IDF soldier attacked a woman holding a Palestinian flag and flailed the pole around cutting here face. The police prosecuter and the judge tells the assailant to pay the woman $1000 but refuses to convict him and gives him permanent name suppression.
• Nine attacks against New Plymouth activists Kate and Grant Cole — car tyres slashed several times, their fence spray-painted with an Israeli flag, a rock hurled through a window, vile lies about them letterboxed around their neighbourhood the police response is to tell them to improve their home security

The rule is clear: “Hit an Israeli and it’s reported as a hate crime and you go to jail – but hit a Palestinian and the police and the courts will look the other way”.

This politicisation and corruption of the police and courts will not be surprising to many when our police and intelligence agencies are so tightly tied to the US-dominated Five Eyes network and Western colonialism.

This blatant bias of the police will be welcomed by the pro-Israel lobby whose supporters can rest assured their violent attacks on Palestinians and Palestinian rights supporters will be all but ignored while the police will go hard after anyone assaulting an Israeli soldier fresh from a spell in the genocidal IDF.

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

Two open letters on the genocidal Israeli war against Palestine sent to The Press for publication have been ignored in the continued Aotearoa New Zealand media silence over 11 months of atrocities.

Both letters have been sent to the Christchurch morning daily newspaper by the co-presenter of the Plains FM community radio programme Earthwise, Lois Griffiths.

The first letter had been “sent . . .  in time for it to be published on 29 August 2024. the anniversary of the Palestinian political cartoonist Naji al-Ali‘s murder”, Griffiths said.

• READ MORE: How Naji al-Ali’s cartoon ‘Handala’ became an emblem of Palestinian resistance
• Handala, a pivotal ship in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla
• The Earthwise programme on Plains FM

A protest boat aimed at breaking the illegal Israeli siege of Gaza, Handala, is named after a cartoon boy created by the cartoonist.

On board the Handala, currently in the Mediterranean ready to break the siege with humanitarian aid for the Palestinians, are two New Zealand-Palestinian crew, Rana Hamida and Youssef Sammour.

Yet even this fact doesn’t make the letter newsworthy enough for publication.

Griffiths sent Naji al-Ali’s cartoon figure Handala with the letter to The Press. The open letter:

Dear Editor,

The situation in Gaza is so very very disturbing . . .  those poor people . . . those poor men, women and CHILDREN.

How many readers are aware that 2 New Zealanders are on a boat that hopes to take aid to Gaza. Maybe the brave actions of those 2 Kiwis, joined by other international volunteers, of trying to break the siege of Gaza, will rally the rest of the world to finally stop looking away.

They are on a very special boat, a boat with a name chosen to fit the occasion, the Handala.

Handala is the name chosen by the Palestinian political cartoonist Naji al-Ali, for a cartoon refugee boy who stands with his back to the reader, in the corner of his political cartoons.

Handala witnesses the suffering inflicted on his people.

We have a book of al-Ali’s drawings, A Child in Palestine.

Naji al-Ali was well-loved by the Palestinians for using his skills to share, with the world, stories of what the people had to endure.

On 29 August 1987, the cartoonist died after being shot in London by an unknown assailant.

Yet the memory of Naji al-Ali survives.

The memory of Handala survives. He represents the Palestinian children. And the boat named Handala is sailing for the children of Gaza.

Yours
Lois Griffiths

When Governments Fail, We Sail.         Video: Push Pull/Gaza Freedom Flotilla

South Africa then, why not Israel now?
In the other letter sent to The Press a week ago, Lois Griffiths, in time for the opening of the UN General Assembly on September 8, she urged the New Zealand government to call for the suspension of Israel.

Not published, yet another example of New Zealand mainstream newspapers’ blind responses and hypocrisy over community views on the Gaza genocide?

Dear Editor,

Tuesday of this week, 08 September, is the date for the opening of UNGA, the UN General Assembly.

In 1974, South Africa was suspended from the UN General Assembly after being successfully charged by the ICJ, International Court of Justice, of apartheid. This move isolated South Africa and was very effective in leading to the collapse of the apartheid regime.

Now, the democratic regime of South Africa has taken a case to the ICJ [International Criminal Court] charging Israel with genocide. In an interim judgment, the ICJ has broadly supported South Africa’s case.

The situation in Gaza is so vile now: the bombing, the targeting of residences, schools and hospitals, the lack of protection from disease, the huge numbers of bodies lying under rubble. And now, violence against the Palestinians in the West Bank is on the increase.

Where is humanity? What does it mean to be human?

A step that would certainly help to slow down the genocide, would be for Israel to be suspended from the UN General Assembly.

Please New Zealand. Call for the suspension of Israel from the UNGA.

NOW!!

Yours,
Lois Griffiths

This unpublished “heartfelt” letter sent to The Press this week criticising its April 6 editorial about a “turning point” in the deadly war on Gaza by Earthwise co-presenter Lois Griffiths is published here in the public interest.

• READ MORE: A turning point in Gaza – The Press
• Israeli suffering is not comparable to Palestinian suffering – Caitlin Johnstone
• Poet, professor and writer, Refaat Alareer killed in Israeli strike

Dear editor,

Historian Howard Zinn stressed the importance of historical background if one wants to understand today’s world. The past cannot be changed. But learning about the past makes it easier to understand the present and how to strive for a better future.

Every Gaza war article, including the [6 April 2024] Press editorial “A turning Point in Gaza”, begins with Hamas attacking Israel last October and then Israel retaliating. No historical background is needed.

Yet UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that “October 07 did not happen in a vacuum”.

Maybe, just maybe, he reads history. Maybe he is thinking of the Nakba of 1948, the regular Israel bombing campaigns with names like “Operation Cast Lead”.

If Israel has the right to retaliate, maybe Palestinians do too?

The same Press article refers to “Western media and its consumers” not being able to identify with “faceless, nameless Palestinians” .

Palestinians aren’t “faceless or nameless”. I’ve read about and seen pictures of some of the Palestinian journalists targeted. Refaat Alareer, a well-loved Gazan academic, writer, and story-teller, was targeted.

Our commitment to humanity challenges us to follow Howard Zinn’s advice and believe that another, kinder, world is possible.

Quoting Bethlehem Lutheran Pastor Munther Isaac, “Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world.”

Lois Griffiths
Christchurch

In the Press yesterday pic.twitter.com/zJn6rDhnjN

— John Minto (@JohnJohnminto) April 11, 2024