Māori politicians across the political spectrum in Aotearoa New Zealand have called for immediate aid to enter Gaza following a temporary ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel.

The ceasefire, agreed yesterday, comes into effect on Sunday, January 19.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said New Zealand welcomed the deal and called for humanitarian aid for the strip.

“There now needs to be a massive, rapid, unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.“

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer echoed similar sentiments on behalf of her party, saying, “the destruction of vital infrastructure — homes, schools, hospitals — has decimated communities”.

“This ceasefire must be accompanied by a global effort to rebuild Gaza,” she said.

Teanau Tuiono, Green Party spokesperson for Foreign Affairs, specifically called on Aotearoa to increase its aid to Palestine.

‘Brutal, illegal Israeli occupation’
“[We must] support the reconstruction of Gaza as determined by Palestinians. We owe it to Palestinians who for many years have lived under brutal and illegal occupation by Israeli forces, and are now entrenched in a humanitarian crisis of horrific proportions,” he said.

“The genocide in Gaza, and the complicity of many governments in Israel’s campaign of merciless violence against the Palestinian people on their own land, has exposed serious flaws in the international community’s ability to uphold international law.

“This means our country and others have work to do to rebuild trust in the international system that is meant to uphold human rights and prioritise peace,” said the Green MP.

With tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in the 15 month war, negotiators reached a ceasefire deal yesterday in Gaza for six-weeks, after Hamas agreed to release hostages from the 7 October 2023 attacks in exchange for Palestinian prisoners — many held without charge — held in Israel.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said this deal would end the “incomprehensible human suffering”.

“The terms of the deal must now be implemented fully. Protection of civilians and the release of hostages must be at the forefront of effort.

“To achieve a durable and lasting peace, we call on the parties to take meaningful steps towards a two-state solution. Political will is the key to ensuring history does not repeat itself,” Peters said in a statement.

Tuiono called it a victory for Palestinians and those within the solidarity movement.

“However, it must be followed by efforts to establish justice and self-determination for Palestinians, and bring an end to Israeli apartheid and the illegal occupation of Palestine.

“We must divest public funds from illegal settlements, recognise the State of Palestine, and join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, just as we joined Ukraine’s case against Russia.”

Ngawera-Packer added that the ceasefire deal did not equal a free Palestine anytime soon.

“We must not forget the larger reality of the ongoing conflict, which is rooted in decades of displacement, violence, and oppression.

“Although the annihilation may be over for now, the apartheid continues. We will continue to call out our government who have done nothing to end the violence, and to end the apartheid.

“We must also be vigilant over these next three days to ensure that Israel will not exploit this window to create more carnage,” Ngarewa-Packer said.

Republished from Te Ao Māori News

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, the organisation has revealed in a landmark new investigative report.

The 294-page report documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has “unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity”.

This 14-month military offensive was launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

An Amnesty International statement made along with releasing the investigation says that the Aotearoa New Zealand government “can and should take action”, for example:

• Publicly recognise that Israeli authorities are committing the crime of genocide and commit to strong and sustained international action;
• Ban imports from illegal settlements as well as investment in companies connected to maintaining the occupation; and
• Do everything possible to facilitate Palestinian people seeking refuge to come to Aotearoa New Zealand and receive support.

Lisa Woods, advocacy and movement building director at Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand, said: “This research and report demonstrate that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.

“It’s not enough to say ‘never again’. The New Zealand government has to publicly call this what it is — genocide.

“We’re asking the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to show leadership. New Zealand has a responsibility to act.”

Ban illegal settlement products
Woods said that in addition to acknowledging that this was genocide, the New Zealand government must ban products from the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory — “and open the doors to Palestinians who are desperately seeking refuge.”

Agnès Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said about the new report:

“These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.

“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.”

Callamard said that states that continued to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are “violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide”.

She said that all states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the US and Germany — but also other EU member states, the UK and others — must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.

Population facing starvation
Over the past two months the crisis has grown particularly acute in the North Gaza governorate, where a besieged population is facing starvation, displacement and annihilation amid relentless bombardment and suffocating restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid, Callamard said.

“Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza,” she said.

“It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.

“Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent.”

Amnesty International said in its statement that it had examined Israel’s acts in Gaza closely and in their totality, taking into account their recurrence and simultaneous occurrence, and both their immediate impact and their cumulative and mutually reinforcing consequences.

The organisation considered the scale and severity of the casualties and destruction over time. It also analysed public statements by officials, finding that prohibited acts were often announced or called for in the first place by high-level officials in charge of the war efforts.

“Taking into account  the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and unlawful military occupation in which these acts have been committed, we could find only one reasonable conclusion: Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, whether in parallel with, or as a means to achieve, its military goal of destroying Hamas,” Callamard said.

Atrocities ‘can never justify Israel’s genocide’
“The atrocity crimes committed on 7 October 2023 by Hamas and other armed groups against Israelis and victims of other nationalities, including deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking, can never justify Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”

According to the statement, international jurisprudence recognises that the perpetrator does not need to succeed in their attempts to destroy the protected group, either in whole or in part, for genocide to have been committed.

The commission of prohibited acts with the intent to destroy the group, as such, was sufficient.

The report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024.

Amnesty International interviewed 212 people, including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza, healthcare workers, conducted fieldwork and analysed an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery.

It also analysed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, and official Israeli bodies.

On multiple occasions, the organisation shared its findings with the Israeli authorities but had received no substantive response at the time of publication.

Unprecedented scale and magnitude
The organisation said Israel’s actions following Hamas’s deadly attacks on 7 October 2023 had brought Gaza’s population to the brink of collapse.

Its brutal military offensive had killed more than [44,000] Palestinians, including more than 13,300 children, and wounded or injured more than 97,000 others by 7 October 2024, many of them in direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families.

Israel had caused unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, levelling entire cities and destroying critical infrastructure, agricultural land and cultural and religious sites, Amnesty International said.

It thereby rendered large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Aotearoa Caravan For a Free Palestine arrived in Auckland at the weekend and was greeted and supported by a large rally and march downtown before heading for Hamilton on the next stage.

“260 days of wives becoming widows.  260 days of mothers becoming children-less.  260 days of schools being bombed, of mosques being bombed, of churches being bombed,  260 days of hunger, of starvation, of deprivation of necessities,” said a speaker at the rally describing the human cost of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Green Party MP Steve Abel condemned the weak role of both politicians and news media in New Zealand over the war, saying a major problem was a “lack of political analysis and lack of media analysis”.

He called on the Fourth Estate to do better in informing the public about the “truth of the war – it’s not a war, it’s genocide”.

A solidarity organiser, Reverend Chris Sullivan, said the caravan of protesters were travelling from Cape Reinga to Parliament to urge the New Zealand government to take stronger action to end the war and unfolding genocide in Gaza.

The caravan participants also hope to help build a lasting peace based on a just solution to the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Last night they were welcomed to Auckland by local solidarity acitivists with shared kai at the Whānau Maria in Ponsonby.

The caravan called on the government to:

• Issue a clear public statement condemning Israel’s war crimes and affirming the ICJ ruling on the plausibility of genocide. Demand that Israel adhere to international law, including the Genocide Convention which recognises Palestinians’ right to protection from genocide; and demand an end to the illegal occupation and apartheid.

• Sanction Israel until it complies with international law and respects Palestinian rights. Following the precedent set by the Russia Sanctions Act 2022, New Zealand should act with similar resolve against Israel and any entity aiding its war crimes and genocide.
• Recognise Palestinian Statehood: This is a vital step towards ensuring justice for Palestinians and is the foundation for full equitable participation in international relations. While New Zealand endorses its support for a two-state solution, it does not recognise Palestine as a state, only Israel. This lack of recognition leaves Palestinians who are living under illegal occupation, vulnerable to ongoing settler violence.
• Grant visas to Palestinian New Zealanders’ families: Allow the families of Palestinian New Zealanders in Gaza to reunite in safety. Similar visas were granted to Ukrainians within a month of Russia’s invasion. Palestinians deserve the same consideration.
• Increase UNRWA funding: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) provides critical humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza and surrounding regions and the New Zealand government should meet its legal and humanitarian responsibilities by increasing aid funding to a level that reflects the severity of the humanitarian crisis. 

Reverend Sullivan drew attention to a statement on June 20 by the Irish Catholic Bishops that called for “courageous world leadership” to stop the war in the Holy Land:

“This war is an attack on all of humanity.  When people are deprived of basic human dignity and of necessary humanitarian aid, we are all made poorer,” the statement said.

“Efforts by the United Nations to address the humanitarian crisis are welcome.  But, the people of the Holy Land — and around the globe — need clear and courageous leadership from world leaders.

“Who is prepared to put the plight of people and the dignity of every human person as the overriding priority in bringing this outrage to an end?

“In the words of Pope Francis during his Angelus address on June 2, ‘it takes courage to make peace, far more courage than to wage war.’  Let us pray that leaders will show courage now at this vital moment.”

Catholics, and all people of good will, were invited to pray and to lobby members of Parliament for the New Zealand government to provide that “clear and courageous leadership” for peace and justice in the Holy Land.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pro-Palestinian protesters today condemned Google for sacking protesting staff and demanded that the New Zealand government immediately “cut ties with Israeli genocide”.

Wearing Google logo masks and holding placards saying “Google complicit in genocide” and “Google drop Project Nimbus”, the protesters were targeting the global tech company for sacking more than two dozen employees following protests against its US$1.2 billion cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government.

The workers were terminated earlier this month after a company investigation ruled they had been involved in protests inside the tech giant’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California.

Nine demonstrators were arrested, according to the protest organisers of No Tech for Apartheid.

In Auckland, speakers condemned Google’s crackdown on company dissent and demanded that the New Zealand government take action in the wake of both the UN’s International Court of Justice, or World Court, and separate International Criminal Court rulings last week.

“On Friday, the ICJ made another determination — stop the military assault on Rafah, something that Israel ignores,” Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott said.

Earlier in the week, the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was also seeking arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders.

‘Obvious Israel is committing genocide’
“That brings us to our politicians,” said Scott.

“It is obvious that Israel is committing genocide. We all know that Israel is committing genocide.

“It is obvious that the Israeli leadership is committing crimes against humanity.”

Scott said the New Zealand government — specifically Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters — “must now be under the spotlight in the court of public opinion here in Aotearoa”.

“They have done nothing but mouth platitudes about Israeli behaviour. They have done nothing of substance.

“They could cut ties with genocide.”

Two demands of government
Scott said the protests — happening every week in New Zealand now into eight months, but rarely reported on by media  — had made a raft of calls, including the blocking of Rakon supplying parts for Israeli “bombs dropped on Gaza” and persuading the Superfund to divest from Israeli companies.

He said that today the protesters were calling for the government to do two things given the Israeli genocide:

• End “working holiday” visas for young Israelis visiting Aotearoa, and
• Expelling the Israeli ambassador and shut the embassy

At least 35,903 people have been killed and 80,420 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Greenpeace Aotearoa has condemned New Zealand for “standing by” while “deep wounds are inflicted on its Pacific neighbours” by silence over deep sea mining.

Greenpeace’s seabed mining campaigner James Hita made the critical statement today after a dramatic shift at the UN Oceans conference in Lisbon this week when several Pacific governments formed an alliance to oppose deep sea mining in international waters.

The environmental movement said the continued silence from the New Zealand government on the issue was “deafening”.

To standing ovations, Fiji and Samoa joined the alliance opposing deep sea mining announced by Palau on Monday.

The following day Tuvalu, Tonga, and Guam announced their support for a halt to deep sea mining and France is now also calling for a legal and robust framework to ban deep sea mining in the high seas.

But so far the New Zealand government has not taken a stance on the issue.

“New Zealand risks standing by while deep wounds are inflicted on its Pacific neighbours if it continues to stay silent on deep sea mining,” James Hita said.

‘Ruthless corporations’
“This move by ruthless corporations to begin deep sea mining in the Pacific is the latest example of colonisation in a region that has already suffered so much from nuclear testing, overfishing and resource extraction by the developed world.

“It’s a sad irony that when French nuclear testing threatened the Pacific, Norman Kirk’s Labour government sent a frigate in protest, but now, when corporate seabed mining threatens the Pacific, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government does nothing while Macron’s French government speaks out to protect the Pacific.

“New Zealand has a golden opportunity right now to show real solidarity and leadership in the Pacific and we call on Prime Minister Ardern, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta and Minister of Oceans and Fisheries David Parker to seize the day and make us proud.

“To maintain respect in the Pacific, the Ardern government needs to start standing up for the things that matter to the Pacific.

“Palau, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa are all calling for a moratorium on seabed mining but so far the New Zealand government is sitting on its hands,” said Hita.

Deep sea mining is a destructive and untested industry where minerals are sucked up from the ocean floor and waste materials pumped back into the ocean.

A sediment plume smothers marine life, threatening vulnerable ecosystems, fisheries and the people’s way of life.

Ocean floor disruptions
Scientists say that disruptions to the ocean floor may also reduce the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon, adding to the climate crisis.

Without action from governments to stop it, mining of the deep seas in the Pacific could begin as early as mid-2023.

• Greenpeace Aotearoa launched a petition in June calling on the NZ government and Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta to support a ban on deep sea mining in the Pacific and around the world. More than 9000 people have signed.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz