It’s an experiment — to see what kinds of abuses the public will accept without causing significant disruption to the imperial status quo.
It’s a psychological operation – to push out the boundaries of what’s normal and acceptable in our minds so that we will consent to even more horrific abuses in the future.
It’s a symptom — of Zionism, of colonialism, of militarism, of capitalism, of Western supremacism, of empire-building, of propaganda, of ignorance, of apathy, of delusion, of ego.
It’s a manifestation — of violent racist, supremacist and xenophobic belief systems that have always been there but were previously restrained, meeting with the unwholesome nature of alliances that have long been in place but have been aggressively normalised.
It’s a mirror —– showing us accurately and impartially who we currently are as a civilisation.
It’s a genocide … Video: Caitlin Johnstone
It’s a disclosure — showing us what the Western empire we live under really is underneath its fake plastic mask of liberal democracy and righteous humanitarianism.
It’s a revelation – showing us who among us really stands for truth and justice and who has been deceiving us about themselves and their motives this entire time.
It’s a catalyst – a galvanising force and a rallying cry for all who realise that the murderous power structures we live under can no longer be allowed to stand, and a blaring alarm clock opening more and more snoozing eyes to the need for revolutionary change.
It’s a test – of who we are as a species and what we are made of, and of whether we can transcend the destructive patterning that is driving humanity to its doom.
It’s a question — asking us what kind of world we want to live in going forward, and what kind of people we want to be.
It’s an invitation — to become something better than what we are now.
It’s an experiment — to see what kinds of abuses the public will accept without causing significant disruption to the imperial status quo.
It’s a psychological operation – to push out the boundaries of what’s normal and acceptable in our minds so that we will consent to even more horrific abuses in the future.
It’s a symptom — of Zionism, of colonialism, of militarism, of capitalism, of Western supremacism, of empire-building, of propaganda, of ignorance, of apathy, of delusion, of ego.
It’s a manifestation — of violent racist, supremacist and xenophobic belief systems that have always been there but were previously restrained, meeting with the unwholesome nature of alliances that have long been in place but have been aggressively normalised.
It’s a mirror —– showing us accurately and impartially who we currently are as a civilisation.
It’s a genocide … Video: Caitlin Johnstone
It’s a disclosure — showing us what the Western empire we live under really is underneath its fake plastic mask of liberal democracy and righteous humanitarianism.
It’s a revelation – showing us who among us really stands for truth and justice and who has been deceiving us about themselves and their motives this entire time.
It’s a catalyst – a galvanising force and a rallying cry for all who realise that the murderous power structures we live under can no longer be allowed to stand, and a blaring alarm clock opening more and more snoozing eyes to the need for revolutionary change.
It’s a test – of who we are as a species and what we are made of, and of whether we can transcend the destructive patterning that is driving humanity to its doom.
It’s a question — asking us what kind of world we want to live in going forward, and what kind of people we want to be.
It’s an invitation — to become something better than what we are now.
New Zealand has joined 24 other countries in calling for an end to the war in Gaza, and criticising what they call the inhumane killing of Palestinians.
“We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.”
They said it was “horrifying” that more than 800 civilians had been killed while seeking aid, the majority at food distribution sites run by a US- and Israeli-backed foundation.
“We call on the Israeli government to immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid and to urgently enable the UN and humanitarian NGOs to do their life saving work safely and effectively,” it said.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters . . . “The tipping point was some time ago . . . it’s gotten to the stage where we’ve just lost our patience.” Image: RN/Mark Papalii
“Proposals to remove the Palestinian population into a ‘humanitarian city’ are completely unacceptable. Permanent forced displacement is a violation of international humanitarian law.”
The statement said the countries were “prepared to take further action” to support an immediate ceasefire.
Reuters reported Israel’s foreign ministry said the statement was “disconnected from reality” and it would send the wrong message to Hamas.
“The statement fails to focus the pressure on Hamas and fails to recognise Hamas’s role and responsibility for the situation,” the Israeli statement said.
Having NZ voice heard Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Morning Report, New Zealand had chosen to be part of the statement as a way to have its voice heard on the “dire” humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“The tipping point was some time ago . . . it’s gotten to the stage where we’ve just lost our patience . . . ”
Peters said he wanted to see what the response to the condemnation was.
“The conflict in the Middle East goes on and on . . . It’s gone from a situation where it was excusable, due to the October 7 conflict, to inexcusable as innocent people are being swept into it,” he said.
“I do think there has to be change. It must happen now.”
The war in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent air and ground war in Gaza has killed more than 59,000 Palestinians — including at least 17,400 children, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry, while displacing almost the entire population of more than 2 million and spreading a hunger crisis.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Israel has rejected a statement by 25 countries calling for an end to the war on Gaza as a move “disconnected from reality and sends the wrong message to Hamas.”
New Zealand has joined 24 other countries in calling for an end to the war in Gaza, and criticising what they call the inhumane killing of Palestinians.
“We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.”
They said it was “horrifying” that more than 800 civilians had been killed while seeking aid, the majority at food distribution sites run by a US- and Israeli-backed foundation.
“We call on the Israeli government to immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid and to urgently enable the UN and humanitarian NGOs to do their life saving work safely and effectively,” it said.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters . . . “The tipping point was some time ago . . . it’s gotten to the stage where we’ve just lost our patience.” Image: RN/Mark Papalii
“Proposals to remove the Palestinian population into a ‘humanitarian city’ are completely unacceptable. Permanent forced displacement is a violation of international humanitarian law.”
The statement said the countries were “prepared to take further action” to support an immediate ceasefire.
Reuters reported Israel’s foreign ministry said the statement was “disconnected from reality” and it would send the wrong message to Hamas.
“The statement fails to focus the pressure on Hamas and fails to recognise Hamas’s role and responsibility for the situation,” the Israeli statement said.
Having NZ voice heard Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Morning Report, New Zealand had chosen to be part of the statement as a way to have its voice heard on the “dire” humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“The tipping point was some time ago . . . it’s gotten to the stage where we’ve just lost our patience . . . ”
Peters said he wanted to see what the response to the condemnation was.
“The conflict in the Middle East goes on and on . . . It’s gone from a situation where it was excusable, due to the October 7 conflict, to inexcusable as innocent people are being swept into it,” he said.
“I do think there has to be change. It must happen now.”
The war in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent air and ground war in Gaza has killed more than 59,000 Palestinians — including at least 17,400 children, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry, while displacing almost the entire population of more than 2 million and spreading a hunger crisis.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Israel has rejected a statement by 25 countries calling for an end to the war on Gaza as a move “disconnected from reality and sends the wrong message to Hamas.”
Labour MP for Te Atatu Phil Twyford criticsed the New Zealand government today for failing to take stronger action against Israel over its genocide and starvation strategy in Gaza, saying that at the very least the ambassador should be expelled.
Speaking at a rally in Henderson organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa in West Auckland suburbs for the first time in the 88th week of protest, Twyford said: “The Israeli government is operating in an apartheid state.
“They subject the Palestinian people under their military.
“People who are under international law they are obliged to protect,” he told about 500 protesters.
“They are subjecting them to the most ruthless, most brutal system of apartheid.”
It was a story of “ethnic cleansing, dispossesion, terror routinely visited upon Palestinian people on a daily basis in their land”, said Twyford, who is Labour Party spokesperson on immigration, disarmament and foreign affairs.
“And it is being done, not only by the forces of Zionism, but by the Western world complicit, knowing, understanding and actively conniving in that dispossession and repression.”
Widely condemned move Twyford referred to the government’s move this week alongside four other countries to impose sanctions on two far-right ministers in the the Israeli cabinet, illegal settlers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, which has been widely condemned as too little and too late.
Labour MP Phil Twyford speaking at the Henderson pro-Palestinian humanitarian rally today . . . Palestinians are subjected by Israel to “the most ruthless, most brutal, system of apartheid.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
Leading British journalist Jonathan Cook this week criticised Britain, Australia, Canada and Norway along with New Zealand, saying they may have been “seeking strength in numbers” to withstand retaliation from Israel and the United States.
“But in truth, they have selected the most limited and symbolic of all the possible sanctions they could have imposed on the Israeli government.”
Israel was also condemned by speakers at the rally for its “unprovoked attack” on Iran and its strategy of forced starvation on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the repression in occupied West Bank.
The death toll in Gaza was almost 62,000 Palestinians — more than 17,000 of them children — and Israel had also killed at least 78 people in the first waves of attacks on Iran.
Meanwhile, in a statement today, the PSNA said it was appalled at the deportation of a Palestinian New Zealander from Egypt.
PSNA said it had conveyed to the Egyptian government its “shock and anger” at the deportation of Rana Hamida who had travelled to Egypt to take part in the Global March to Gaza.
“This Jew stands for Palestine” and “Sanction Israel now” placards at today’s Henderson rally. Image: APR
Egyptian deportations over ‘global march’ Egyptian authorities have deported dozens of people, including Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, Moroccan, Greek and US citizens.
The Global March to Gaza is due to start this weekend in Egypt with thousands of people from throughout the world taking part.
PSNA co-chair John Minto said the march was to “express humanity’s outrage” at the ongoing Gaza-wide bombing and starving of the Palestinian population by Israel.
“Egypt’s action in deporting activists can only be seen as assisting Israel’s attacks against the Palestinian population,” he said.
“Unfortunately, Egypt has a long history of collaboration with the US and Israel to stifle the Palestine liberation struggle. This is in sharp contrast to the Egyptian people who are as appalled and angry as the rest of humanity at Israel’s horrendous war crimes.”
Minto said the following message from Rana as she returned to New Zealand — she was due at Auckland International Airport this afternoon:
‘The more we will roar’ “The Egyptian authorities, along with other governments, think that blocking humanity from this act of solidarity will stop because of them blocking people from being there and doing the job that they continue failing to do.
“They are so mistaken — the more complicit and enabling they get in their inaction and in this case their active participation, the more we will rise, and roar.
“We are escalating as you awaken the dragons within us.
“We will sing louder and we will walk longer — with our hiking shoes in the Sinai desert, or barefoot towards your embassies.
“We will disrupt your meetings, we will crowd your phone with calls and emails, and we will be the light that blinds your robotic heart and melts it alongside the lies you stand for.
“This is not about us, it is about HUMANITY within us that is dying and being oppressed in various forms, it is about the humans enduring hell in Gaza, West Bank and Falastine as a whole.
“Muslims, Jews and Christians together.
“It is about NEVER AGAIN.
“Boycott, divest — we will not stop we will not rest.”
Pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide protesters at the Henderson rally today with Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford speaking. Image: APR
Expel Israeli ambassador call In an earlier statement in the wake of Israel’s attack on Iran, PSNA called on the government to immediately expel the Israeli ambassador from New Zealand.
Minto said Israel’s strikes on Iran were “unprovoked, unilateral and a massive threat to humanity everywhere”.
“This is such a dangerous action, that diplomatic weasel words about Israel are not acceptable. Israel is an out-of-control rogue state playing with the future of humanity. We must send it the strongest possible message.”
“Israel’s using its often repeated lies and misinformation to attempt to justify it’s unconscionable violence and aggression.”
Minto pointed to Iran’s right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.
“Even US intelligence officials have made is clear very recently that Iran is NOT on the way to produce a nuclear weapon.”
“And neither is Iran committed to the ‘annihilation’ of Israel.
‘Liberation for Palestine’ “Iran does not support Israel as a racist, apartheid state and wants to see liberation for Palestine.
“In this, Iran has, along with the overwhelming majority of countries in the world, called for an end to Israel’s military occupation of Palestine, the end of its apartheid policies directed against Palestinians and the return of Palestinian refugees.”
New Zealand had the same policies, Minto said.
However, he condemned NZ’s “appeasement of this apartheid state, as our government and other Western countries have done over 20 months”.
A “Save the world from evil Zionism” placard at the Henderson rally today. Image: APR
The genocide is almost complete. When it is concluded it will have exposed the moral bankruptcy of Western civilisation, writes Chris Hedges.
ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges
This is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide.
It will be over soon. Weeks. At most.
Two million people are camped out amongst the rubble or in the open air. Dozens are killed and wounded daily from Israeli shells, missiles, drones, bombs and bullets.
They lack clean water, medicine and food. They have reached a point of collapse. Sick. Injured. Terrified. Humiliated. Abandoned. Destitute. Starving. Hopeless.
In the last pages of this horror story, Israel is sadistically baiting starving Palestinians with promises of food, luring them to the narrow and congested nine-mile ribbon of land that borders Egypt. Israel and its cynically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), allegedly funded by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Mossad, is weaponising starvation.
It is enticing Palestinians to southern Gaza the way the Nazis enticed starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to board trains to the death camps. The goal is not to feed the Palestinians. No one seriously argues there is enough food or aid hubs. The goal is to cram Palestinians into heavily guarded compounds and deport them.
What comes next? I long ago stopped trying to predict the future. Fate has a way of surprising us. But there will be a final humanitarian explosion in Gaza’s human slaughterhouse. We see it with the surging crowds of Palestinians fighting to get a food parcel, which has resulted in Israeli and US private contractors shooting dead at least 130 and wounding over seven hundred others in the first eight days of aid distribution.
We see it with Benjamin Netanyahu’s armingISIS-linked gangs in Gaza that loot food supplies. Israel, which has eliminated hundreds of employees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), doctors, journalists, civil servants and police in targeted assassinations, has orchestrated the implosion of civil society.
I suspect Israel will facilitate a breach in the fence along the Egyptian border. Desperate Palestinians will stampede into the Egyptian Sinai. Maybe it will end some other way. But it will end soon. There is not much more Palestinians can take.
We — full participants in this genocide — will have achieved our demented goal of emptying Gaza and expanding Greater Israel. We will bring down the curtain on the live-streamed genocide. We will have mocked the ubiquitous university programmes of Holocaust studies, designed, it turns out, not to equip us to end genocides, but deify Israel as an eternal victim licensed to carry out mass slaughter.
The mantra of never again is a joke. The understanding that when we have the capacity to halt genocide and we do not, we are culpable, does not apply to us. Genocide is public policy. Endorsed and sustained by our two ruling parties.
There is nothing left to say. Maybe that is the point. To render us speechless. Who does not feel paralyzed? And maybe, that too, is the point. To paralyse us. Who is not traumatised? And maybe that too was planned. Nothing we do, it seems, can halt the killing. We feel defenceless. We feel helpless. Genocide as spectacle.
I have stopped looking at the images. The rows of little shrouded bodies. The decapitated men and women. Families burned alive in their tents. The children who have lost limbs or are paralyzed. The chalky death masks of those pulled from under the rubble. The wails of grief. The emaciated faces. I can’t.
This genocide will haunt us. It will echo down history with the force of a tsunami. It will divide us forever. There is no going back.
Palestinians under the rubble in 2023 after Israeli airstrike of homes in the Gaza Strip. Image: Ashraf Amra /United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East/ Wikimedia Commons /CC BY-SA 4.0
And how will we remember? By not remembering.
Once it is over, all those who supported it, all those who ignored it, all those who did nothing, will rewrite history, including their personal history. It was hard to find anyone who admitted to being a Nazi in post-war Germany, or a member of the Klu Klux Klan once segregation in the southern United States ended.
A nation of innocents. Victims even. It will be the same. We like to think we would have saved Anne Frank. The truth is different. The truth is, crippled by fear, nearly all of us will only save ourselves, even at the expense of others. But that is a truth that is hard to face. That is the real lesson of the Holocaust. Better it be erased.
“Should a drone vaporize some nameless soul on the other side of the planet, who among us wants to make a fuss? What if it turns out they were a terrorist?
“What if the default accusation proves true, and we by implication be labeled terrorist sympathisers, ostracised, yelled at? It is generally the case that people are most zealously motivated by the worst plausible thing that could happen to them.
“For some, the worst plausible thing might be the ending of their bloodline in a missile strike. Their entire lives turned to rubble and all of it preemptively justified in the name of fighting terrorists who are terrorists by default on account of having been killed. For others, the worst plausible thing is being yelled at.”
You cannot decimate a people, carry out saturation bombing over 20 months to obliterate their homes, villages and cities, massacre tens of thousands of innocent people, set up a siege to ensure mass starvation, drive them from land where they have lived for centuries and not expect blowback.
The genocide will end. The response to the reign of state terror will begin. If you think it won’t you know nothing about human nature or history. The killing of two Israeli diplomats in Washington and the attack against supporters of Israel at a protest in Boulder, Colorado, are only the start.
Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described how, armed with a knife, he attacked a guard in the camp.
“It’s not a decision,” Engel explained years later. “You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, ‘Let us to do, and go and do it.’ And I went.
“I went with the man in the office and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, ‘That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.’”
The Sobibor extermination camp gate in the spring of 1943. The pine branches, braided into the fence to make it difficult to see in from the outside. Image: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
Does anyone expect Palestinians to act differently? How are they to react when Europe and the United States, who hold themselves up as the vanguards of civilisation, backed a genocide that butchered their parents, their children, their communities, occupied their land and blasted their cities and homes into rubble? How can they not hate those who did this to them?
What message has this genocide imparted not only to Palestinians, but to all in the Global South?
It is unequivocal. You do not matter. Humanitarian law does not apply to you. We do not care about your suffering, the murder of your children. You are vermin. You are worthless. You deserve to be killed, starved and dispossessed. You should be erased from the face of the earth.
“To preserve the values of the civilised world, it is necessary to set fire to a library,” El Akkad writes:
“To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures.
“To level universities. To loot jewelry, art, food. Banks. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones.
“To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a man’s teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. “Otherwise, the uncivilised world might win.”
There are people I have known for years who I will never speak to again. They know what is happening. Who does not know? They will not risk alienating their colleagues, being smeared as an antisemite, jeopardising their status, being reprimanded or losing their jobs.
They do not risk death, the way Palestinians do. They risk tarnishing the pathetic monuments of status and wealth they spent their lives constructing. Idols.
They bow down before these idols. They worship these idols. They are enslaved by them.
At the feet of these idols lie tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.This article was first published in Scheerpost.
“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.”
This statement was made not by a foreign or liberal critic of Israel but by the former Prime Minister and former senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party, Ehud Olmet.
Nightly, we witness live-streamed evidence of the truth of his statement — lethargic and gaunt children dying of malnutrition, a bereaved doctor and mother of 10 children, nine of them killed by an Israeli strike (and her husband, another doctor, died later), 15 emergency ambulance workers gunned down by the IDF as they tried to help others injured by bombs, despite their identity being clear.
Statistics reflect the scale of the horror imposed on Palestinians who are overwhelmingly civilians — 54,000 killed, 121,000 maimed and injured. Over 17,000 of these are children.
This can no longer be excused as regrettable collateral damage from targeted attacks on Hamas.
Israel simply doesn’t care about the impact of its military attacks on civilians and how many innocent people and children it is killing.
Its willingness to block all humanitarian aid- food, water, medical supplies, from Gaza demonstrates further its willingness to make mass punishment and starvation a means to achieve its ends. Both are war crimes.
Influenced by the right wing extremists in the Coalition cabinet, like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s goal is no longer self defence or justifiable retaliation against Hamas terrorists.
Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Making life unbearable The Israeli government policy is focused on making life unbearable for Palestinians and seeking to remove them from their homeland. In this, they are openly encouraged by President Trump who has publicly and repeatedly endorsed deporting the Palestinian population so that the Gaza could be made into a “Middle East Riviera”.
This is not the once progressive pioneer Israel, led by people who had faced the Nazi Holocaust and were fighting for the right to a place where they could determine their own future and be safe.
Sadly, a country of people who were themselves long victims of oppression is now guilty of oppressing and committing genocide against others.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters called Israel’s actions “ intolerable”. He said that we had “had enough and were running out of patience and hearing excuses”.
While speaking out might make us feel better, words are not enough. Israel’s attacks on the civilian population in Gaza are being increased, aid distribution which has restarted is grossly insufficient to stop hunger and human suffering and Palestinians are being herded into confined areas described as humanitarian zones but which are still subject to bombardment.
People living in tents in schools and hospitals are being slaughtered.
World must force Israel to stop Like Putin, Israel will not end its killing and oppression unless the world forces it to. The US has the power but will not do this.
The sanctions Trump has imposed are not on Israel’s leaders but on judges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) who dared to find Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of war crimes.
New Zealand’s foreign policy has traditionally involved working with like-minded countries, often small nations like us. Two of these, Ireland and Sweden, are seeking to impose sanctions on Israel.
Both are members of the European Union which makes up a third of Israel’s global trade. If the EU decides to act, sanctions imposed by it would have a big impact on Israel.
These sanctions should be both on trade and against individuals.
New Zealand has imposed sanctions on a small number of extremist Jewish settlers on the West Bank where there is evidence of them using violence against Palestinian villagers.
These sanctions should be extended to Israel’s political leadership and New Zealand could take a lead in doing this. We should not be influenced by concern that by taking a stand we might offend US president Donald Trump.
Show our preparedness to uphold values In the way that we have been proud of in the past, we should as a small but fiercely independent country show our preparedness to uphold our own values and act against gross abuse of human rights and flagrant disregard for international law.
We should be working with others through the United Nations General Assembly to maximise political pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing killing of innocent civilians.
Moral outrage at what Israel is doing has to be backed by taking action with others to force the Israeli government to end the killing, destruction, mass punishment and deliberate starvation of Palestinians including their children.
An American doctor working at a Gaza hospital reported that in the last five weeks he had worked on dozens of badly injured children but not a single combatant.
He noted that as well as being maimed and disfigured by bombing, many of the children were also suffering from malnutrition. Children were dying from wounds that they could recover from but there were not the supplies needed to treat them.
Protest is not enough. We need to act.
Phil Goff is Aotearoa New Zealand’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs. This article was first published by the Stuff website and is republished with the permission of the author.
Since the onset of its genocide, Israel has persistently pushed a narrative that the famine devastating Gaza is not of its own making, but the result of “Hamas looting aid”.
This claim, repeated across mainstream media and parroted by officials, has been used to deflect responsibility for what many human rights experts have called a deliberate starvation campaign.
But that narrative has now been discredited by Israel’s internal reporting. Last week, the Israeli military admitted internally that out of 110 looting incidents they documented, none were carried out by Hamas.
Instead, the looting was done by “armed gangs, organised clans” and, to a lesser extent, starved civilians.
Those very gangs and clans are backed by Israel; they enjoy full Israeli army protection and operate in areas Israel deems “extermination zones”, where any Palestinian trying to enter would be killed or kidnapped on the spot.
The gangs had vanished during the two-month ceasefire but conveniently re-emerged as soon as Israel was pressured into allowing a limited trickle of aid to enter. The timing is no coincidence; Israeli policy has deliberately weaponised anarchy to preserve the conditions for starvation.
This pushed even the UAE to strongly condemn Israel after the army forced an Emirati aid convoy to drive through a “red zone” where Israel-backed gangs looted 23 out of 24 trucks.
So why does Israel continue to cling to a demonstrably false narrative while openly engineering a looting crisis through its proxies? Because the myth of “Hamas looting” serves a critical strategic purpose: to whitewash and legitimise a new plan that institutionalises starvation for blackmail, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, and mass internment through a shell Israeli organisation.
This is coupled with another alarming tactic of recruiting warlords, drug dealers, and criminals to create a puppet “anti-terror” force.
Israel’s looting myth The “looting” talking point is devoid of any logic, as Hamas would be able to do very little with thousands of tons of looted aid.
Israel and US Ambassador Mike Huckabee both claim Hamas uses the looted aid to buy new weaponry. But where would they buy such weapons from when Gaza is fully sealed off by Israel, and Rafah — the city of smuggling tunnels — is under full Israeli control?
Israel claims Hamas sells looted aid on the black market. But, again, what would they do with the money? Virtually nothing is allowed into Gaza except a trickle of food.
Israel also claims Hamas uses looted aid to recruit new militants, but Hamas doesn’t operate this way. The group depends on utmost secrecy and discipline in its operations.
Each new member passes through a long process of vetting, training, and tests to minimise the risk of infiltration. It would compromise Hamas to recruit people openly, whose only attachment to the group is bread rather than ideological commitment.
Perhaps most damning is that Israel has never captured a single instance of Hamas looting aid, despite subjecting Gaza to the most meticulous surveillance on earth. Israeli predator drones cover every inch of the enclave every minute of the day, yet there is nothing to show for Israel’s claims.
Hamas is also aware that hijacking and looting aid trucks could lead to Israel bombing the vehicles and diverting them from their predetermined route.
The Israeli army has done this on countless occasions when it fired at or bombed humanitarian convoys under the pretext that Hamas policemen came near the trucks. Ironically, those law enforcement officials were actually trying to prevent looting when they were targeted.
Israel’s allies reject the narrative Israel’s strongest supporters have refuted the “Hamas looting” claim. President Joe Biden’s humanitarian envoy, David Satterfield, admitted in February of last year that “no Israeli official has . . . come to the administration with specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance delivered by the UN”.
Satterfield reiterated last Tuesday that Israel has never privately alleged or offered evidence of Hamas stealing aid from the UN and INGO channels. Israel’s ambassador to the EU, Haim Regev, said in mid-October 2023 that “there’s no evidence EU aid went to Hamas”.
Cindy McCain, World Food Programme’s chief and widow of one of the most pro-Israeli GOP senators, forcefully rejected Israel’s narrative on Sunday, saying that looting “doesn’t have anything to do with Hamas . . . it has simply to do with the fact these people are starving to death”.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported last week that “Israel has never presented evidence publicly or privately to humanitarian organisations or Western government officials to back up claims that Hamas had systematically stolen aid brought into Gaza”.
An internal memo jointly drafted by UN agencies and 20 INGOs in April, and viewed by The New Arab, stated that “there is no evidence of large-scale aid diversion”.
Gangs and scarcity are responsible for looting While Israel failed to show any evidence of Hamas stealing aid, the only documented organised systematic looting happening in Gaza right now is by Israeli-backed criminal gangs who enjoy full protection from the Israeli army, according to the Washington Post, Financial Times, Ha’aretz, and the UN.
A UN memo said these gangs established a “military complex” in the heart of Rafah after Israel fully depopulated the city. Humanitarian officials say the looting often happens right in front of Israeli troops and tanks, less than 100m away, who take no action until the local police arrive, with Israeli troops then opening fire at them.
Israel not only provides protection and backing to these criminal gangs but has created the perfect conditions for looting to thrive through scarcity and a collapsing state of law and order.
Currently, a single bag of wheat flour sells for about 1,500 NIS ($425), which makes it profitable for gangs to loot and sell on the market. These astronomical prices are driven by scarcity after Israel banned all food from entering Gaza for nearly 80 days, then allowed less than 20 percent of what Gaza needs on a normal day for basic survival after intense international pressure.
During the ceasefire, however, when Israel was allowing 600 trucks to enter per day, prices went back to normal and looting disappeared because it was no longer profitable due to the abundance of food, and because the police were able to resume their work.
Manufactured crisis to advance genocide The engineered looting crisis has long served as a convenient excuse to cover up the deliberate weaponisation of starvation against Gaza’s entire population, allowing Israel to distract from its restrictions on the entry of aid and the spread of famine by saying Hamas is to blame for stealing aid.
But now, this manufactured crisis is serving a second objective: to justify a dystopian ‘aid plan’ Israel is implementing in Gaza that has been condemned and boycotted by every UN agency and humanitarian organisation working in the enclave, as well as donor countries.
A joint UN-INGO memo warned that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation would facilitate the use of aid for forcible expulsion, by telling Gazans the only way they can receive food is by moving south to Rafah on Egypt’s border.
GHF, which Israeli opposition leaders said was an Israeli shell funded by Mossad, began its operations last Tuesday after being rocked by two scandals in one day.
GHF’s CEO had resigned on Sunday in protest of the organisation violating the principles of humanitarianism, while the organisation shut down its registered headquarters in Switzerland as soon as Swiss authorities launched an investigation.
Images coming out of the GHF’s militarised aid distribution site were immediately likened to concentration camps, where hundreds of emaciated Gazans were crowded into metal cages like cattle under the boiling sun, surrounded by armed US mercenaries, Israeli troops, and sand dunes.
Alarmingly, people who received aid noted the presence of Arabic speakers in addition to American mercenaries. Last week, the Israel-backed Islamic State-linked gang leader Yasser Abu Shabab emerged in Rafah again after a long disappearance.
Abu Shabab, a drug dealer and wanted criminal previously arrested multiple times by the local police, was the primary suspect in the systematic looting of aid under Israeli protection. This time, however, he emerged in a brand new uniform and military gear and started a Facebook page promoting himself in English and Arabic to mark a new “anti-terror” force operating in Israel-controlled Rafah.
Additional pictures viewed by The New Arab showed multiple armed men dressed in the same uniform as Abu Shabab armed with M-16s standing in front of a humanitarian convoy.
The unravelling of Israel’s “Hamas looting” narrative lays bare a chilling truth: starvation in Gaza is not collateral damage — it is a calculated weapon in a broader campaign of collective punishment and displacement.
By cultivating chaos, empowering criminal gangs, and then manipulating the humanitarian crisis they manufactured, Israel seeks to maintain extreme restrictions on aid, while externalising blame and avoiding accountability.
It is the machinery of genocide disguised in bureaucratic language and carried out under the watchful eyes of the world.
Muhammad Shehada is a Palestinian writer and analyst from Gaza and the European Union affairs manager at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. The article was first published by The New Arab. On X at: @muhammadshehad2
“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.”
This statement was made not by a foreign or liberal critic of Israel but by the former Prime Minister and former senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party, Ehud Olmet.
Nightly, we witness live-streamed evidence of the truth of his statement — lethargic and gaunt children dying of malnutrition, a bereaved doctor and mother of 10 children, nine of them killed by an Israeli strike (and her husband, another doctor, died later), 15 emergency ambulance workers gunned down by the IDF as they tried to help others injured by bombs, despite their identity being clear.
Statistics reflect the scale of the horror imposed on Palestinians who are overwhelmingly civilians — 54,000 killed, 121,000 maimed and injured. Over 17,000 of these are children.
This can no longer be excused as regrettable collateral damage from targeted attacks on Hamas.
Israel simply doesn’t care about the impact of its military attacks on civilians and how many innocent people and children it is killing.
Its willingness to block all humanitarian aid- food, water, medical supplies, from Gaza demonstrates further its willingness to make mass punishment and starvation a means to achieve its ends. Both are war crimes.
Influenced by the right wing extremists in the Coalition cabinet, like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s goal is no longer self defence or justifiable retaliation against Hamas terrorists.
Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Making life unbearable The Israeli government policy is focused on making life unbearable for Palestinians and seeking to remove them from their homeland. In this, they are openly encouraged by President Trump who has publicly and repeatedly endorsed deporting the Palestinian population so that the Gaza could be made into a “Middle East Riviera”.
This is not the once progressive pioneer Israel, led by people who had faced the Nazi Holocaust and were fighting for the right to a place where they could determine their own future and be safe.
Sadly, a country of people who were themselves long victims of oppression is now guilty of oppressing and committing genocide against others.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters called Israel’s actions “ intolerable”. He said that we had “had enough and were running out of patience and hearing excuses”.
While speaking out might make us feel better, words are not enough. Israel’s attacks on the civilian population in Gaza are being increased, aid distribution which has restarted is grossly insufficient to stop hunger and human suffering and Palestinians are being herded into confined areas described as humanitarian zones but which are still subject to bombardment.
People living in tents in schools and hospitals are being slaughtered.
World must force Israel to stop Like Putin, Israel will not end its killing and oppression unless the world forces it to. The US has the power but will not do this.
The sanctions Trump has imposed are not on Israel’s leaders but on judges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) who dared to find Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of war crimes.
New Zealand’s foreign policy has traditionally involved working with like-minded countries, often small nations like us. Two of these, Ireland and Sweden, are seeking to impose sanctions on Israel.
Both are members of the European Union which makes up a third of Israel’s global trade. If the EU decides to act, sanctions imposed by it would have a big impact on Israel.
These sanctions should be both on trade and against individuals.
New Zealand has imposed sanctions on a small number of extremist Jewish settlers on the West Bank where there is evidence of them using violence against Palestinian villagers.
These sanctions should be extended to Israel’s political leadership and New Zealand could take a lead in doing this. We should not be influenced by concern that by taking a stand we might offend US president Donald Trump.
Show our preparedness to uphold values In the way that we have been proud of in the past, we should as a small but fiercely independent country show our preparedness to uphold our own values and act against gross abuse of human rights and flagrant disregard for international law.
We should be working with others through the United Nations General Assembly to maximise political pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing killing of innocent civilians.
Moral outrage at what Israel is doing has to be backed by taking action with others to force the Israeli government to end the killing, destruction, mass punishment and deliberate starvation of Palestinians including their children.
An American doctor working at a Gaza hospital reported that in the last five weeks he had worked on dozens of badly injured children but not a single combatant.
He noted that as well as being maimed and disfigured by bombing, many of the children were also suffering from malnutrition. Children were dying from wounds that they could recover from but there were not the supplies needed to treat them.
Protest is not enough. We need to act.
Phil Goff is Aotearoa New Zealand’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs. This article was first published by the Stuff website and is republished with the permission of the author.
When I despairingly contemplate the horrors and cruelty that Palestinians in Gaza are being subjected to, I sometimes try to put this in the context of where I live.
I live on the Kāpiti Coast in the lower North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Geographically it is around the same size as Gaza. Both have coastlines running their full lengths. But, whereas the population of Gaza is a cramped two million, Kāpiti’s is a mere 56,000.
The Gaza Strip . . . 2 million people living in a cramped outdoor prison about the same size as Kāpiti. Map: politicalbytes.blog
I find it incomprehensible to visualise what it would be like if what is presently happening in Gaza occurred here.
The only similarities between them are coastlines and land mass. One is an outdoor prison while the other’s outdoors is peaceful.
New Zealand and Palestine state recognition Currently Palestine has observer status at the United Nations General Assembly. In May last year, the Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of Palestine being granted full membership of the United Nations.
To its credit, New Zealand was among 143 countries that supported the resolution. Nine, including the United States as the strongest backer of Israeli genocide outside Israel, voted against.
However, despite this massive majority, such is the undemocratic structure of the UN that it only requires US opposition in the Security Council to veto the democratic vote.
Notwithstanding New Zealand’s support for Palestine broadening its role in the General Assembly and its support for the two-state solution, the government does not officially recognise Palestine.
While its position on recognition is consistent with that of the genocide-supporting United States, it is inconsistent with the over 75 percent of UN member states who, in March 2025, recognised Palestine as a sovereign state (by 147 of the 193 member states).
NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon . . . his government should “correct this obscenity” of not recognising Palestinians’ right to have a sovereign nation. Image: RNZ/politicalbytes.blog/
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s government does have the opportunity to correct this obscenity as Palestine recognition will soon be voted on again by the General Assembly.
In this context it is helpful to put the Hamas-led attack on Israel in its full historical perspective and to consider the reasons justifying the Israeli genocide that followed.
7 October 2023 and genocide justification The origin of the horrific genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the associated increased persecution, including killings, of Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank (of the River Jordan) was not the attack by Hamas and several other militant Palestinian groups on 7 October 2023.
This attack was on a small Israeli town less than 2 km north of the border. An estimated 1,195 Israelis and visitors were killed.
The genocidal response of the Israeli government that followed this attack can only be justified by three factors:
The Judaism or ancient Jewishness of Palestine in Biblical times overrides the much larger Palestinian population in Mandate Palestine prior to formation of Israel in 1948;
The right of Israelis to self-determination overrides the right of Palestinians to self-determination; and
The value of Israeli lives overrides the value Palestinian lives.
The first factor is the key. The second and third factors are consequential. In order to better appreciate their context, it is first necessary to understand the Nakba.
Understanding the Nakba Rather than the October 2023 attack, the origin of the subsequent genocide goes back more than 70 years to the collective trauma of Palestinians caused by what they call the Nakba (the Disaster).
The foundation year of the Nakba was in 1948, but this was a central feature of the ethnic cleansing that was kicked off between 1947 and 1949.
During this period Zionist military forces attacked major Palestinian cities and destroyed some 530 villages. About 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres.
The Nakba – the Palestinian collective trauma in 1948 that started ethnic cleansing by Zionist paramilitary forces. Image: David Robie/APR
During the Nakba in 1948, approximately half of Palestine’s predominantly Arab population, or around 750,000 people, were expelled from their homes or forced to flee. Initially this was through Zionist paramilitaries.
After the establishment of the State of Israel in May this repression was picked up by its military. Massacres, biological warfare (by poisoning village wells) and either complete destruction or depopulation of Palestinian-majority towns, villages, and urban neighbourhoods (which were then given Hebrew names) followed
By the end of the Nakba, 78 percent of the total land area of the former Mandatory Palestine was controlled by Israel.
Genocide to speed up ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing was unsuccessfully pursued, with the support of the United Kingdom and France, in the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. More successful was the Six Day War of 1967, which included the military and political occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Throughout this period ethnic cleansing was not characterised by genocide. That is, it was not the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group with the aim of destroying them.
Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians began in May 1948 and has accelerated to genocide in 2023. Image: politicalbytes.blog
In fact, the acceptance of a two-state solution (Israel and Palestine) under the ill-fated Oslo Accords in 1993 and 1995 put a temporary constraint on the expansion of ethnic cleansing.
Since its creation in 1948, Israel, along with South Africa the same year (until 1994), has been an apartheid state. I discussed this in an earlier Political Bytes post (15 March 2025), When apartheid met Zionism.
However, while sharing the racism, discrimination, brutal violence, repression and massacres inherent in apartheid, it was not characterised by genocide in South Africa; nor was it in Israel for most of its existence until the current escalation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Following 7 October 2023, genocide has become the dominant tool in the ethnic cleansing tool kit. More recently this has included accelerating starvation and the bombing of tents of Gaza Palestinians.
The magnitude of this genocide is discussed further below.
The Biblical claim Zionism is a movement that sought to establish a Jewish nation in Palestine. It was established as a political organisation as late as 1897. It was only some time after this that Zionism became the most influential ideology among Jews generally.
Despite its prevalence, however, there are many Jews who oppose Zionism and play leading roles in the international protests against the genocide in Gaza.
Zionist ideology is based on a view of Palestine in the time of Jesus Christ. Image: politicalbytes.blog
Based on Zionist ideology, the justification for replacing Mandate Palestine with the state of Israel rests on a Biblical argument for the right of Jews to retake their “homeland”. This justification goes back to the time of that charismatic carpenter and prophet Jesus Christ.
The population of Palestine in Jesus’ day was about 500,000 to 600,000 (a little bigger than both greater Wellington and similar to that of Jerusalem today). About 18,000 of these residents were clergy, priests and Levites (a distinct male group within Jewish communities).
Jerusalem itself in biblical times, with a population of 55,000, was a diverse city and pilgrimage centre. It was also home to numerous Diaspora Jewish communities.
In fact, during the 7th century BC at least eight nations were settled within Palestine. In addition to Judaeans, they included Arameans, Samaritans, Phoenicians and Philistines.
A breakdown based on religious faiths (Jews, Christians and Muslims) provides a useful insight into how Palestine has evolved since the time of Jesus. Jews were the majority until the 4th century AD.
By the fifth century they had been supplanted by Christians and then from the 12th century to 1947 Muslims were the largest group. As earlier as the 12th century Arabic had become the dominant language. It should be noted that many Christians were Arabs.
Adding to this evolving diversity of ethnicity is the fact that during this time Palestine had been ruled by four empires — Roman, Persian, Ottoman and British.
Prior to 1948 the population of the region known as Mandate Palestine approximately corresponded to the combined Israel and Palestine today. Throughout its history it has varied in both size and ethnic composition.
The Ottoman census of 1878 provides an indicative demographic profile of its three districts that approximated what became Mandatory Palestine after the end of World War 1.
Group
Population
Percentage
Muslim citizens
403,795
86–87%
Christian citizens
43,659
9%
Jewish citizens
15,011
3%
Jewish (foreign-born)
Est. 5–10,000
1–2%
Total
Up to 472,465
100.0%
In 1882, the Ottoman Empire revealed that the estimated 24,000 Jews in Palestine represented just 0.3 percent of the world’s Jewish population.
The self-determination claim Based on religion the estimated population of Palestine in 1922 was 78 percent Muslim, 11 percent Jewish, and 10 percent Christian.
By 1945 this composition had changed to 58 percent Muslim, 33 percent Jewish and 8 percent Christian. The reason for this shift was the success of the Zionist campaigning for Jews to migrate to Palestine which was accelerated by the Jewish holocaust.
By 15 May 1948, the total population of the state of Israel was 805,900, of which 649,600 (80.6 percent) were Jews with Palestinians being 156,000 (19.4 percent). This turnaround was primarily due to the devastating impact of the Nakba.
Today Israel’s population is over 9.5 million of which over 77 percent are Jewish and more than 20 percent are Palestinian. The latter’s absolute growth is attributable to Israel’s subsequent geographic expansion, particularly in 1967, and a higher birth rate.
Palestine today (parts of West Bank under Israeli occupation). Map: politicalbytes.blog
The current population of the Palestinian Territories, including Gaza, is more than 5.5 million. Compare this with the following brief sample of much smaller self-determination countries — Slovenia (2.2 million), Timor-Leste (1.4 million), and Tonga (104,000).
The population size of the Palestinian Territories is more than half that of Israel. Closer to home it is a little higher than New Zealand.
The only reason why Palestinians continue to be denied the right to self-determination is the Zionist ideological claim linked to the biblical time of Jesus Christ and its consequential strategy of ethnic cleansing.
If it was not for the opposition of the United States, then this right would not have been denied. It has been this opposition that has enabled Israel’s strategy.
Comparative value of Palestinian lives The use of genocide as the latest means of achieving ethnic cleansing highlights how Palestinian lives are valued compared with Israeli lives.
While not of the same magnitude appropriated comparisons have been made with the horrific ethnic cleansing of Jews through the means of the holocaust by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Per capita the scale of the magnitude gap is reduced considerably.
Since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry (and confirmed by the World Health Organisation) more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed. Of those killed over 16,500 were children. Compare this with less than 2000 Israelis killed.
Further, at least 310 UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) team members have been killed along with over 200 journalists and media workers. Add to this around 1400 healthcare workers including doctors and nurses.
What also can’t be forgotten is the increasing Israeli ethnic cleansing on the occupied West Bank. Around 950 Palestinians, including around 200 children, have also been killed during this same period.
Time for New Zealand to recognise Palestine The above discussion is in the context of the three justifications for supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians strategy that goes back to 1948 and which, since October 2023, is being accelerated by genocide.
First, it requires the conviction that the theology of Judaism in Palestine in the biblical times following the birth of Jesus Christ trumps both the significantly changing demography from the 5th century at least to the mid-20th century and the numerical predominance of Arabs in Mandate Palestine;
Second, and consequentially, it requires the conviction that while Israelis are entitled to self-determination, Palestinians are not; and
Finally, it requires that Israeli lives are much more valuable than Palestinian lives. In fact, the latter have no value at all.
Unless the government, including Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, shares these convictions (especially the “here and now” second and third) then it should do the right thing first by unequivocally saying so, and then by recognising the right of Palestine to be an independent state.
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.
Since last Thursday, intensified Israeli air strikes on Gaza have killed more than 500 Palestinians, and a prolonged Israeli aid blockade has led to widespread starvation among the territory’s two million residents.
Meanwhile, the IDF is intensifying its air and ground attacks on the civilian population and on the few remaining health services. Al Jazeera is also reporting that the IDF has issued “a forward displacement order” for the entirety of Khan Younis, the second largest city in Gaza.
The escalation of the Israeli onslaught has been condemned by UN human rights chief Volker Türk, who has likened the IDF campaign as an exercise in ethnic cleansing:
“This latest barrage of bombs … and the denial of humanitarian assistance underline that there appears to be a push for a permanent demographic shift in Gaza that is in defiance of international law and is tantamount to ethnic cleansing,” he said.
If the West so wished, it could be putting more economic pressure on Israel to cease committing its litany of atrocities. Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war has been sparking mass demonstrations across Europe.
In the Netherlands at the weekend, a massive demonstration culminated in calls for the Netherlands government to formally ask the EU to suspend its free trade agreement with Israel.
Until now, the world’s relative indifference to the genocide in Gaza has been mirrored by Palestine’s Arab neighbours. As Gaza burned yet again, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates were lavishly entertaining US President Donald Trump — Israel’s chief enabler — and showering him with gifts.
In all, economic joint ventures worth hundreds of billions of dollars were signed and sealed last week between the US and the Middle East region, despite the misery being inflicted right next door.
Footnote: Directly and indirectly, Big Tech firms such as Microsoft and Intel continue to enable and enhance the IDF war machine’s actions in Gaza. This is an extension of the long time support given to Israel by Silicon Valley firms via the supply of digital infrastructure, advanced chips, software and cloud computing facilities.
The extinction of hope As the Ha’aretz newspaper reported this week, “The three pillars of hope for the Palestinians have collapsed: armed struggle has lost legitimacy, state negotiations have stalled, and faith in the international community has faded. Now, they face one question: ‘Where do we go from here?’
As Ha’aretz concluded, the Palestinians seem to have vanished into a diplomatic Bermuda Triangle. What would it take, one wonders, for the New Zealand government — and Foreign Minister Winston Peters — to wake up from their moral slumber?
Whenever the Luxon government does talk about this conflict, it still calls for a “two state solution” even though, as a leading Israeli journalist Gideon Levy says, this ceased to be a viable option more than 25 years ago.
“We crossed the point of no return a long time ago. We crossed the point at which there was any room for a Palestinian state, with 700,000 settlers who will not be evacuated, because nobody will have the political power to do so. The West Bank is practically annexed for many, many years . . . Nobody can take this discourse seriously anymore. But, you know, those who want to believe in it, believe in it.”
Conveniently, the two state waffle does provide Peters and Luxon with cover for their reluctance to — for example — call in, or expel the Israeli ambassador. Or impose a symbolic trade boycott. Or impose targeted sanctions on the extremists within the Netanyahu Cabinet who are driving Israeli policy.
Instead of those options, the “negotiated two state” fantasy has been encouraged to take on a life of its own. Yet do we really think that Israel would entertain for a moment the expulsion of the hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers illegally occupying the land on the West Bank required for a viable Palestinian state?
The Netanyahu government has long had plans to double that number, with the settler influx growing at a reported rate of about 12,000 a year.
The backlash Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon is finally creating a backlash, in Europe at least. The public outrage being expressed in demonstrations in the UK, France and Germany finally seems to be making some governments feel a need to be seen to be doing more.
Not before time. At the drop of a hat, Western nations — New Zealand included — will bang on endlessly about the importance of upholding the norms of international law. So you have to ask . . . why have we/they chosen to remain all but mute about the repeated violations of human rights law and the Geneva Conventions being carried out by the IDF in Gaza on a daily basis?
“In [Khan Younis’] Nasser Hospital, Safaa Al-Najjar, her face stained with blood, wept as the shroud-wrapped bodies of two of her children were brought to her: [18 month old] Motaz Al-Bayyok and [six weeks old] Moaz Al-Bayyok.
“The family was caught in the overnight airstrikes. All five of Al-Najjar’s other children, ranging in ages from 3 to 12, were injured, while her husband was in intensive care. One of her sons, 11-year-old Yusuf, his head heavily bandaged, screamed in grief as the shroud of his younger sibling was parted to show his face.
Ultimately, Israel’s moral decline will be for its own citizens to reckon with, in future. For now, New Zealand is standing around watching in silence, while a blood-soaked campaign of ethnic cleansing unmatched in recent history is being carried out.