More than 700 academics have this week sent an open letter demanding the university retirement savings scheme UniSaver immediately divest from companies directly linked to Israel and genocide.

This latest letter, organised by University Workers for Palestine (UW4P), has been signed by 715 people – almost double the number of 400 staff in a similar plea in August 2024.

UniSaver failed to respond to the previous letter.

The default retirement scheme for most university staff has come under mounting scrutiny for investing in companies complicit in human rights violations.

UW4P is a nationwide collective of university staff, including academics and administrators.

Its letter argues that any investment in Israeli companies renders UniSaver complicit in Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine.

“Our research shows such companies include weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems, ICL Group, linked to highly-toxic white phosphorus supply chains, Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard, and Palantir Technologies,” Dr Amanda Thomas of Te Herenga Waka Victoria University, spokesperson for the collective, said in a statement.

Israeli bonds and banks
Distinguished Professor Robert McLachlan of Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University, strongly supported the call: “Profiting from companies known to be complicit in genocide is wrong and shameful.”

UniSaver is also understood to have investments in Israeli government bonds and Israeli banks which finance illegal settlements.

Dr Rand Hazou, a Palestinian senior lecturer at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University, said: “With the destruction of Gaza’s 12 universities and killing of hundreds of academics and students, global solidarity is urgent.

“This call is a nonviolent, rightsbased approach to pressure Israel to abide by international law.”

“The letter, signed by some of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most prominent scholars, is
being released on the 108th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration,” Dr Thomas
said.

The declaration, issued by Britain, the colonising power, unilaterally — and without
consultation — advocated the imposition of a Zionist state in historic Palestine.

Professor Richard Jackson, who holds the Leading Thinker Chair in Peace Studies at
Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka Otago University, said: “It is deeply troubling that Aotearoa
New Zealand’s universities are participating in a pension scheme profiting from
genocide.

Academic boycott ended apartheid
“Academic boycott helped end apartheid in South Africa: we must follow that
example.”

The letter asks for a response by end November on two demands that UniSaver:

• Immediately divests from all companies complicit in the genocide of Palestinians; and
• Develops a divestment policy to prevent future unethical investments.

Professor Virginia Braun, Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland psychologist and co-author of the world’s third most cited academic paper this century, said: “Continued investment in funds that support Israel’s genocide is unconscionable.

“Other pension funds, like Norway’s, have divested; UniSaver must follow suit.”

The open letter warns: “If you don’t withdraw our funds from genocide, we will support a campaign to get universities in Aotearoa New Zealand to sever ties with you and seek an ethical alternative retirement scheme.”

‘Morality where our mouths are’
Tertiary Education Union incoming presidents Ti Lamusse and Garrick Cooper have endorsed the letter.

Dr Lamusse, of Te Herenga Waka Victoria University, said: “We need to put our morality where our mouths are — that means ensuring our savings scheme isn’t funding an illegal occupation.”

Associate Professor Garrick Cooper (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Whanaunga) of Te Whare
Wānanga o Waitaha Canterbury University, said: “We must hold our own financial institutions accountable to stop this genocide by reducing the flow of money to the Israeli economy and military-industrial complex.”

Drawing on composite data from Palestine government sources and the media, estimates indicate almost 200 academics have been killed since the escalation of genocidal tactics in October 2023.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A global civil society watchdog has condemned Fiji for blocking protest marches over the Palestine genocide by Israel and clamping down on a regional Pacific university demonstration with threats.

However, while the Civicus Monitor rates the state of civic space in Fiji as “obstructed” it has acknowledged the country for making some progress over human rights.

“While the government took steps in 2023 to repeal a restrictive media law and reversed travel bans on critics, the Public Order (Amendment) Act, which has been used to restrict peaceful assembly and expression and sedition provisions in the Crimes Act, remains in place,” said the Civicus Monitor in a statement on its website.

“The police have also restricted pro-Palestinian marches” — planned protests against Israel’s genocide against Gaza in which more than 44,000 people have been killed, mostly women and children.

The monitor said the Fiji government had “continued to take steps to address human rights issues in Fiji”.

In July 2024, it was reported that the Fiji Corrections Service had signed an agreement with the Fiji Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission to provide them access to monitor inmates in prison facilities.

In August 2024, a task force known as Fiji’s National Mechanism for Implementation, Reporting, and Follow-up (NMIRF) was launched by the Attorney-General Graham Leung.

The establishment of the human rights task force is to coordinate Fiji’s engagement with international human rights bodies, including the UN human tights treaty bodies, the Universal Periodic Review and the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council.

In September 2024, it was announced that a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) would be established to investigate and address human rights violations since 1987.

TRC steering committee chair and Assistant Minister for Women Sashi Kiran said that they were working on drafting a piece of legislation on this and that the commission would operate independently from the government.

“In recent months, the police once again blocked an application by civil society groups to hold a march for Palestine, while university unions were threatened with a pay dock for their involvement in a strike,” the Civicus Monitor said.

Police deny Palestine solidarity march
“The authorities have continued to restrict the right to peaceful assembly, particularly around Palestine.”

On 7 October 2024, the police denied permission for a march in the capital Suva by the NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji.

The Fiji Police Force ACP Operations Livai Driu was quoted as saying: “The decision was made based on security reasons.”

“The march was intended to express solidarity with the Palestinian people amidst the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The coalition’s application to hold the march was met with repeated delays and questioning by government authorities,” said the Civicus Monitor.

“The coalition said that this was ‘reminiscent of a dictatorial system of the past’.

The coalition added: “It is shameful that the Fiji Coalition Government which has lauded itself internationally and regionally as being a promoter of human rights and peace has continued to curtail the rights of its citizens by denying permit applications calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza.”

Activists also pointed out the double standards by the police, as permits were provided to a group in support of Israel to march through Suva and wave the Israeli flag, said the Civicus Monitor.

Today, a group was given a permit to march through Suva in support of Israel + wave Israeli flag but Fijians calling for an end to #GazaGenocide for 1 year gathered @ the FWCC compound due to ongoing arbitrary restrictions on marches on #GazaGenocide & the use of Palestine flags pic.twitter.com/hOvG5y8Bwj

— Fiji Women (@CommsFWCC) October 17, 2024

“The restriction around protests on Palestine and waving the Palestinian flag has persisted for over a year.

“As previously documented, the activists have had to hold their solidarity gatherings in the premises of the FWCC office as the police have restricted solidarity marches, under the Public Order (Amendment) Act 2014.

“The law allows the government to refuse permits for any public meeting or march deemed to prejudice the maintenance of peace or good order.

“It has often been misused by the authorities to restrict or block peaceful gatherings and demonstrations, restricting the right to peaceful assembly and association.

“Protest gatherings at FWCC have also faced intimidation.”

The UN Human Rights Council and human rights groups have called for the repeal of restrictive provisions in the law, including the requirement for a police permit for protests, which is inconsistent with international standards.

These restrictions on solidarity marches for Palestine are inconsistent with Fiji’s international human rights obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which guarantees freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

These actions also contravene Fiji’s constitution that guarantees these rights.

University threatens union members
In October 2024, members of the Association of the University of the South Pacific (USP) and the University of the South Pacific Staff Union who went on strike were reportedly threatened by the university, reported the Civicus Monitor.

The human resource office said they would not be paid if they were not in office during the strike.

The unions commenced strike action on 18 October 2024 in protest against the alleged poor governance and leadership at the university by vice-chancellor Pal Ahluwalia and the termination of former staff union (AUSPS) president Dr Tamara Osborne Naikatini, calling for her to be reinstated.

“The unions expressed dissatisfaction following the recent release of the Special Council meeting outcome, which they say misleadingly framed serious grievances as mere human resource issues to be investigated rather than investigating [Professor] Ahluwalia.

“The unions say they have been raising concerns for months and called for Ahluwalia to be suspended and for a timely investigation.”

Alongside the staff members currently standing in protest were also several groups of students.

On 24 October 2024, the students led a march at the University of the South Pacific Laucala campus that ended in front of the vice-chancellor’s residence. The students claimed that Professor Ahluwalia did not consider the best interests of the students and called for his replacement.

The USP is owned by 12 Pacific nations, which contribute a total 20 percent of its annual income, and with campuses in all the member island states.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Sorry Palestinian women and children. It seems Australia’s leading women’s media company has more pressing issues to cover than the seemingly endless human rights atrocities committed against you.

It’s been seven months of almost complete silence from Mamamia and their most popular writers and podcast hosts.

I’ve respected and appreciated their work in the past, which is why it’s truly disheartening to see.

Mamamia Out Loud has found time and scope to speak about me personally in two recent episodes (both sadly devoid of context and riddled with inaccuracies) yet can’t seem to find the words to report on or reflect on the man made famine in Gaza.

The murdered and orphaned children. The women having c-sections with no anaesthesia. The haunting screams from mothers hugging their lifeless babies bodies for the last time.

Faux feminism? Or is it all still “too complex”? I can’t answer that, except to say it’s dispiriting and disappointing to witness given Mamamia’s tagline.

What we’re talking about
Because Gaza is what millions of Australian women “are actually talking about”. It’s what’s waking countless Australian women up at night. It’s what’s making Australian women tremble in tears watching children’s body parts dug out from beneath the rubble.

Mamamia’s audience is being let down, they deserve better.

As for the innocent women and girls of Palestine — tragically “let down” doesn’t even begin to describe it. They deserve so much more.

I’m utterly heartbroken witnessing such disregard for their lives.

So I fixed the Mamamia headline in the above photo.

Antoinette Lattouf is an Australian-Lebanese journalist, host, author and diversity advocate. She has worked with a range of mainstream media, and as a social commentator for various online and broadcast publications. This commentary was first published on her Facebook page.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A Fiji human rights advocacy coalition has condemned Fiji’s “profoundly troubling” stance as being one of only two countries supporting continued illegal occupation by Israel of the Palestinian territories.

The Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights (NGOCHR) said the occupation had been widely recognised by the international community — including the United Nations — as a “violation of international law” and an impediment to peace and self-determination of the Palestinian people”.

It called on Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition government to withdraw support for Israel and back a “just and lasting peace in Palestine” in its oral submissions before the International Court of Justice hearings in The Hague next Monday.

Fiji is the only country apart, from the United States, backing Israel after its genocidal war against the Palestinians over the past four months. Fifty countries and three international organisations are supporting Palestine.

“By supporting the Israeli occupation, the Fijian government not only isolates itself from the international community but also from the very principles of justice and human dignity it purports to uphold,” said NGOCHR chair Shamima Ali.

“Such a position undermines Fiji’s reputation and casts a shadow over its commitment to the values enshrined in international law.

“The decision to support the genocidal, violent occupation raises serious questions about the processes and considerations behind Fiji’s foreign policy choices. It is imperative that the Fijian government demonstrates accountability and transparency in its decision-making.”

Transparency demanded
The coalition demanded that Prime Minister Rabuka, a former military officer who led Fiji’s first two military coups in 1987 and who is also Foreign Minister, publicly reveals who had drafted the submissions on Fiji and why the country was taking such a position.

In a statement, the coalition said that NGOCHR “and our allies, as staunch advocates for human rights and justice, expresses its profound dismay and unequivocal condemnation of the Fijian government’s decision to submit a written statement in support of the Israeli genocidal occupation of Palestine, including East Jerusalem.”

“This submission, made to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the context of hearings on the legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territor[ies], places Fiji alongside the United States as one of the only two countries endorsing such a stance.”

In September 2023, said the statement, the Israeli occupation, which had been enduring and marked by efforts to annex Palestinian land both legally and in practice, had been unequivocally deemed unlawful by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel.

In October 2023, the commission concluded that the permanence of the occupation and Israel’s annexation measures rendered it unlawful — a stance echoed by leading human rights organisations worldwide, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

“The global consensus on this matter, formed by UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing and a host of international human rights NGOs, underscores the severity of the occupation’s impact on the Palestinian people,” Ali’s statement said.

“These reports detail egregious violations of human rights and international law, painting a stark picture of the suffering endured by countless individuals under the occupation.

Serious questions raised
“The decision to support the genocidal, violent occupation raises serious questions about the processes and considerations behind Fiji’s foreign policy choices.

“It is imperative that the Fijian government demonstrates accountability and transparency in its decision-making.

“The public has a right to understand how such positions, which significantly impact [on] Fiji’s standing on the global stage and its moral compass, are determined. We call upon the government to disclose the rationale and any consultations or analyses that led to this stance.

“This call for clarity is not just about ensuring governmental transparency; it’s about reaffirming Fiji’s dedication to principles that respect human dignity and international law.

“Without this openness, the trust between the Fijian people and their government risks being eroded, especially on matters of international significance that reflect on the entire nation.”

The coalition called on the Fiji government to reconsider its position and to align its international engagements with the “principles of human dignity, justice, and respect for international law”.

‘Advocate for justice, rights’
“We urge the Fijian government to demonstrate its commitment to human rights and justice by advocating for the rights of all people, including the Palestinian people, to live in peace, security, and dignity.

“We stand in solidarity with those advocating for peaceful resolution of conflicts and upholding human rights worldwide. The NGOCHR will continue to monitor this situation closely and support Fiji in adopting a foreign policy that reflects the values of its people and the principles of international law.”

The Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights represents the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC), Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM), Citizens Constitutional Forum (CCF), femLINKPacific, Social Empowerment and Education Programme (SEEP) and DIVA for Equality Fiji (DIVA).

The Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is also an observer (PANG).

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Supremacism is a cultural belief that an in-group of humanity is inherently superior to other groups, and that those other groups have lesser human rights as a consequence of their presumed inferiority or corruption.

The Jewish religion does have texts which can be understood as supremacist. That doesn’t make Judaism a supremacist faith, though it does mean that it is a religion vulnerable to supremacist interpretations within that faith; including such interpretations within that faith community. This interpretation manifests today as giving Jewish extremists – neozionists – a priority claim over a piece of real estate which may be called the Southern Levant; especially the lands of the Post WW1  British Mandate Palestine, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and between the Sinai Peninsula and the lands of ancient Phoenicia which we now call Lebanon. (Levant is most meaningfully understood as the relatively fertile lands of the eastern Mediterranean, extending from Gaza in the south to a small strip of modern Türkiye in the north.) The present government of Israel is dominated by neozionists; especially those ministers representing the small parties to the political right of Likud. They represent an ultra-extremist tail wagging a willing Likud dog in a divided Israel; a divided nation in which opposition forces only this year waged mass protests against the suppression of judicial independence (refer Listening Post 29 July 2023, second story; quote: “Israelis are describing the fight over judicial reform as a looming civil war”).

Referencing Amalek as a call to Genocide

The following two programmes on Al Jazeera (among others, including other media) – episodes of Listening Post (about the international media) and Inside Story – showed and cited clips from Israeli domestic sources of Prime Minister Netanyahu making biblical references in what amounts to a call to genocide. Over and above the actual content of these clip, clips that are not fake news, my concern is the degree of self-censorship on the part of the media outlets which western audiences have most access to. In some ways New Zealand is even worse than the United States. Clips about Netanyahu’s Amalek comments have circulated in United States media, unlike New Zealand media (although I did see this by Eugene Doyle: The Holocaust Should be a Lesson not a Template, Scoop 7 Nov 2023).

The Wikipedia page for Amalek refers in the second paragraph to “The Biblical commandments to kill all Amaleks”. (And see dictionary.com.) Benjamin Netanyahu speaks: “‘Remember what Amalek has done to you’ says our holy bible. We do remember. And we wage war.” That bible passage goes on to say: “Now go and smite Amalek … kill both man and woman, infant”. Hamas, the present administrators and ‘defenders’ of Gaza, is the new Amalek. The Palestinians – and, for the moment, especially the Gazans – are the Amalekites. Netanyahu goes on to refer to “this chain of Jewish heroes” from Joshua “3,000 years ago” to “the heroes of 1948”. The audience Netanyahu is speaking to knows the texts referred to and the analogies being spun. The reference to the terrorist militias in the years upto and including 1948 is particularly informative. I’ll return to that.

(And we note that, whereas the United States, hidebound by a constitution drawn up in the pre-industrial 1780s, a colonial state which took for granted a deeply racist version of slavery, modern Israel is – or claims to be – a colonising state culturally informed by episodes of violence in the human past which date further back than the iron age. Have we, as a species, not moved on? Is modernity little more than a veneer, a figleaf no longer able to hide our innate savageness? And are our liberal elites, who think of themselves as the most civilised among us, in fact our least noble savages?)

Before coming back to the formation of modern Israel, I’ll elaborate on the biblical references, noting that Netanyahu might also have mentioned the legendary David and Goliath story; indeed both the Philistines and the Amalekites, neighbours in the Southeast Mediterranean, to the Israelites were inferior less-deserving peoples. To be a ‘philistine’ today means to be an uncultured person. Goliath was a Philistine, and Philistia was an ancient version of Gaza; the words ‘Philistine’ and ‘Palestine’ have the same etymology. [Note Philistia, and the adjacent Amalec, in this Wikipedia entry for Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy); and Philistine City States in this Wikipedia entry for Kingdom of Israel (Samaria).]

(Also, before returning to modern Israel, I want to look at the issue of supremacist ideology and theology more generally.)

Ancestry and Race in the Bible

Because the Christian bible incorporates the Jewish bible, the origin stories of the Israelite tribe are very familiar in our Christian-dominated global culture. Further, Muslims have the same origin story. Pedigree is an important feature of the Jewish bible – the Old Testament – with the divergence of correct peoples from corrupt peoples linked to fraternal disputes and ex-nuptial hereditary lines. I will never forget the word ‘begat’.

The place of Amalek (a tribal leader) is comparable in Zionism to the place of Islam (a religion); both follow allegedly ‘inferior’ lines of descent. In Islamic texts Muhammed is descended from Ishmael, the ‘illegitimate’ older son of Abraham/Ibrahim. (Abraham was an immigrant to Canaan from the area we today call Iraq. Abraham’s people were not indigenous to Southern Levant.) The Israelites, on the other hand, trace their genealogy from Ishmael’s younger ‘legitimate’ brother Isaac; or, strictly, through Abraham’s grandson Jacob. Amalek, also descended from Isaac, was descended through Jacob’s bother Esau.

Esau and Jacob were fraternal twins. Esau, the elder, was impulsive and feckless while Jacob was clever, cunning and focussed. Esau was tricked by Jacob into giving up his rights as elder brother. Later, Esau contracted two exogamous marriages; tantamount to, in a community which strongly favoured endogamy, an egregious sin. So, Esau’s descendancy was corrupted; God chose Jacob’s ‘superior’ descendancy as the foundational line for Israel and Judaism.

Amalek was Esau’s illegitimate grandson. At least one classical scholar, Flavius Josephus, considered that Amalek was a ‘bastard’ in the derogatory sense (ref. Wikipedia). We may apply that same ‘inferior line’ or ‘corrupted line’ sentiment to unreconstructed Jewish perceptions of Arabic ancestry, and a certain conflation of the concepts of Arabism with Islam. There is also the sense that, on purely ancestral grounds, the Jewish tradition sees Islam as a ‘bastard’ Abrahamic religion, and that in itself is indicative of inferiority.

This is supremacism based on ancestral disdain, which – in that thought mode – confers the right of the righteous collective to inflict arbitrary mistreatment upon people belonging to the ancestrally ‘corrupted’ collectives. In the Israel case, we might call this example of supremacism ‘Semitism’, because it’s the counterpoint to the misused term ‘anti-semitism’ (used to mean either anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli). This language is inaccurate and problematic; the widespread use of ‘Semite’ in lieu of either ‘Jew’ or ‘Israeli’ should be discontinued by those who should know better. (We might note that the Jewish supremacism seen in present times is better called neozionism, which characterises only a minority of adherents to Judaism and a minority of Israeli citizens.)

Before Abraham

The ancestral demarcations in Genesis did not begin with Abraham’s sons. (And we note that Old Testament genealogy is heavily patriarchal, with daughters mainly absent from the storylines and ‘misbehaving’ mothers often a source of corruption.)

The story of Cain and Abel, the elder sons of Adam and Eve, is widely known. Cain killed his younger brother in a fit of jealousy. So Abel was not able to establish a line of descent. ‘Fortunately’ for humanity, Adam and Eve subsequently had a third son, Seth. So we have two lines of descent, Cain’s line and Seth’s line. Cain’s collective line, however, was corrupted by Cain’s egregious behaviour.

As the story goes, generations later Cain’s line would be subject to divine genocide, the original ‘Act of God’ which remains as legal terminology today. Noah was the uncorrupted man, allowed to live, and he was descended from Seth. (Presumably other descendants of Seth were corrupted in other ways, establishing lines of descent which would in the main also become victims of divine genocide. The exceptions were Noah’s daughters-in-law.)

The Flood – presented as the first genocide, as retribution upon those corrupted – created a new second start for humanity; a second start that contained the raw material for three new bloodlines.  (We learned this story of divine genocide at Sunday School, as if the ‘wicked’ citizens of Gomorrah and other places somehow deserved to die.) The ‘raw material’ for the new races was of course Noah’s daughters-in-law, though the racial bloodlines are named after Noah’s three sons: Shem, Japheth, and Ham.

The known world in Old Testament times comprised West Asia (including Arabia), Northeast Africa, and Southeast Europe (including the Caucasus). The descendants of Shem became Semites, and populated Asia. The descendants of Japheth became Europeans (aka Caucasians, a term used by police as a racial descriptor for Europeans). The descendants of Ham became Hamites – Africans – corrupted on account of the Curse of Ham. The Judeo-Christian biblical tradition thus gained a predisposition to anti-hamitism; a problem which clearly exists today, and which this decade has inspired the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement.

Anti-semitism

Anti-semitism is a form of prejudice, which literally should target all persons of West Asian descent, not just people of Israelite descent. (And we should stop calling West Asians ‘Middle Easterners’. The term Middle East is itself a supremacist name, reflecting the perspective of Western Europe in recent centuries.  We don’t call East Asian people ‘Far Easterners’. We have already switched to the widespread use of the term ‘South Asian’, in line with the established ‘East Asian’ in preference to ‘oriental’. Rishi Sunak is a British citizen of South Asian heritage. We should replace the term ‘Middle Eastern’ with ‘West Asian’, forthwith.)

This linguistic problem, the continued partial use of archaic racial constructs, is particularly problematic when we try to apply the European construct of ‘anti-semitic’ to groups of Arabs or Muslims. In the traditions from which the term derived, Arabs were themselves very much Semites. Further, the whole ‘hatred of Jews’ tradition which came to be called anti-semitism is a Christian European thing, and only has meaning in a Christian European context. There is no comparable racial or religious prejudice in the Arab world, although there is an aversion to supremacist behaviours perpetrated by Zionist (and other) colonists.

The present hatred in West Asia is a hatred of the Zionist and Neozionist behaviours that led to the ethnic clearances in the Southern Levant in the twentieth century; clearances which continue in the twentyfirst century. Anti-Neozism is a valid political position, as was Anti-Nazism in the World War 2 era; neither are hate crimes. These sentiments are anti-ideology, not anti-identity.

While the traditional Jewish texts may predispose some followers of Judaism to adopt a supremacist ideology, that hardly makes someone a supremacist if they identify as Jewish or because they descend in a patrilinear manner from Isaac. (In a strict endogamy, where Judaism is understood as a closed ethnicity as well as a religious faith, all Jews today would descend patrilineally from Jacob. However, given the realities of relationship formation and the biological advantages of exogamy, based on the laws of probability and descent, and assuming that Jacob was a genuine historical person, every person today of European or West Asian descent would be descended from him several times over. If we go back 100 generations, we should each have approximately 1,267,650,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ancestors. Clearly there has been some doubling up!)

While anti-Jewish sentiments are unacceptable (an ‘identity offence’ if you will; I don’t like the expression ‘hate-crime’), being anti the politics of the Israeli government is acceptable. And, if we want to accuse people of being anti-Jewish, we should say ‘anti-Jewish’ rather than the archaic racial euphemism ‘antisemitic’. There can be little doubt that Israel at present has a neozionist government, and that it is right and proper to oppose that ideology on ethical grounds; yet without wishing harm on people – without hating people – because they happen to be Jewish by birth or by choice. And we should never hate people; including people who openly espouse a supremacist ideology.

While neozionist supremacism is derived from genealogy rather than ethnicity or theodicy, to some extent these amount to the same thing in this case, thanks to the historical self-segregationist proclivities of the Jewish people. Some genealogical websites treat Jewish as an ethnicity, including the Israel-based site My Heritage.

I will now look at two other fateful versions of supremacy, one based on religion, the other on ethnicity: Calvinism and Collective Darwinism.

The Reformation and Dutch/Calvinist Theo-Supremacism

The medieval Christian churches (Orthodox and Catholic) had their own versions of supremacy, in particular the ideas around hierarchy and priestly absolution. (While I am more familiar with Catholic than Orthodox doctrine, Peter Turchin details Orthodox supremacism in War and Peace and War, 2007.) But the Reformation took this to a substantively different level, especially the Calvinist variation of Protestantism which preached the doctrine of predestination; indeed double-predestination, under which damnation as well as salvation was predetermined. Under predestination, certain groups of people were born into supremacy; and belief in one’s own in-group’s supremacy had to be sustained by faith, even at the risk of being martyred (especially in the religious wars which peaked in West Europe in the third quarter of the 16th century).

The Calvinist doctrines were particularly attractive to Europe’s mercantile communities; with the ‘Low Countries’ – the Netherlands – already having Europe’s most developed mercantile culture. These mercenary sub-cultures (numismaphiles? lovers of money) were attracted to any doctrine for which money-accruing was a virtue, not a sin. In this sense, Calvinism had aspects in common with Judaism; and it is on the matter of moneylending that Judaism differs significantly from both Islam and historical Catholicism.

The Netherlands were riven by the Reformation, which created decades of severe sectarian violence amongst people who were ethnically pretty-much identical. This was the genesis of the split between the peoples of the provinces we now call Netherlands and those we call Belgium. In the culture wars of that time, Calvinist yahoos would terrorise Antwerp and Brussels and other places, inciting violence by calling the Pope the Anti-Christ. Devil-allegers and alleged Devils were everywhere.

The outcome was a 17th century in which Calvinist Netherlands – the successfully rebellious northern United Provinces – changed the world. As the Dutch global presence expanded, the inferior ‘other’ were decreasingly white Catholics, and increasingly black Africans (in South Africa, the South Caribbean, and New York) and brown Austronesians (in what became the Dutch East Indies, and Indonesia). The Dutch dominated world seaborne trade in the 17th century, creating ‘Dutch lakes’ in the North Sea and the Indian Ocean. One such Dutch voyage resulted in the extraordinary tragedy of the East-Indiaman ship ‘Batavia’ (see the actual ship, in Perth); another resulted in the European discoveries of Tasmania and Nieuw Zeeland.

Re the origins of white supremacism in the United States, it is important to note the rise of Calvinism in Scotland and Northern Ireland, under the name of the Presbyterian church. Various neo-Calvinisms followed, such as the Baptist church. It was subsequent settlement in the southeastern states of the United States; settlement – as in Cape Town in South Africa, rich in calvinist values – which created the United States ‘Bible Belt’, and the secessionist and segregationist Confederacy which brought about the United States Civil War. And we note that the sectarian-apartheid which underpinned the twentieth-century troubles in Northern Ireland is very much a manifestation of calvinist doctrine.

The theme of Dutch/Calvinist supremacism in the eastern Indian Ocean is particularly evocative of the Dutch project of global capitalism described by Amitav Ghosh as ‘omnicide’ (refer his The Nutmeg’s Curse, 2021). Well worth reading, also, for New Hollanders (Australians) and New Zealanders is Peter Fitzsimons’ 2011 book Batavia.

Afrikaner Calvinism formed the philosophical basis for the Apartheid state in South Africa, from 1948 to 1991. And not the starting date for that Apartheid regime.

Darwinism, secular European Supremacism, and Neoliberalism

We understand German Naziism as an extreme form of Teutonic supremacism. But this was the eventual tip of a very large iceberg. Further, the supremacism wasn’t particularly targeted at Jews. The Nazis scapegoated Jews as cunning, mercenary, and somewhat conspiratorial. But they were more inclined to see – or wanted to see – Hamitic people than Semitic people as inferior. Hence the deep frustration with the success of African-Americans at the Berlin Olympic games in 1936.

The more important though understated supremacism was the belief throughout northwest Europe in the superiority of the Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon race. In the 1920s, for example, this ran deep (see The Great Interwar Crisis by Robert Boyce, 2009). It manifested as a division of Europe into a hierarchy of three principal ‘races’: from superior to inferior, the sequence was the Germanic peoples, the Latin peoples, and the Slavic peoples. Indeed, in both World Wars One and Two, the principal fight was between Germany and Slavic Eastern Europe. The first war was largely about the break-up of the two formerly great empires in the east: the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, and the contest for the oil reserves around the Caspian Sea. The second war was principally about Lebensraum, a supremacist grab for the lands and labour of the Slavs. The German Nazis were more interested in sidelining the British than defeating them. Jews became a scapegoat.

The anti-Judaism in Germany was more pretext than text. Less so in the Slavic lands – especially the Russian empire – where anti-Jewish Pogrom-culture developed. (This was not Slavic supremacism; more like anti-supremacist hate; and, in line with Peter Turchin’s arguments, possibly linked to Orthodox Christianity.) It was from these Eastern European lands that most Jewish emigration to the Southern Levant before 1940 took place, and which formed the breeding grounds for subsequent neozionism. Pogrom-culture spread into Central Europe in the interwar years, and ultimately was the genesis of the Holocaust of 1942 to 1945; a super-pogrom which was anti-Jewish but not only anti-Jewish. (There were earlier iterations of pogrom-culture in Europe, the most notorious being in the 13th and 14th century; culminating in the accusations that the Black Death was the result of Jews poisoning the water-wells. Many terrible retributions followed.)

Before 1948, many Jews lived relatively prosperous lives in other territories in which the predominant populations were Arabic and/or Muslim; those mainly African territories were not the seedbed of anti-Jewish hatred.

Charles Darwin should not be blamed for collective or ethno- Darwinism – supremacism linked to race rather than religion – although his social milieu played a substantial role in the propagation of ethno-supremacist ideas. Herbert Spencer‘s Social Darwinism – first published as Social Statics – preceded Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species by 8 years. (And for a literary take on Social Darwinist versions of supremacism, try Jack London’s Martin Eden – written in 1909 when these ideas were especially prominent – or the 2019 Italian movie based on that book.) Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton is regarded as having been the ‘father’ of Eugenics, a philosophy which became influential in New Zealand, especially in association with the founder of the Plunkett Society, Sir Truby King.

We should also contrast these collective identity supremacisms (Neozionism, Calvinism, Social Darwinism) with individualist supremacisms, such as those of Friedrich Nietzsche on the one hand and Ayn Rand on the other. These philosophies, though problematic, are different.

(Rand was particularly influential amongst the generation of men, mainly born in the 1930s and 1940s, who sequestered the 1970s’ inflation crisis to give ‘the west’ neoliberalism in the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed neoliberalism, a revival of the monetary supremacism of the 1920s, is so cemented into today’s ‘liberal’ narratives that the pragmatist economic insights of John Maynard Keynes, developed in the 1920s and 1930s, cannot even get onto the agenda of policy discussions around governance, inflation, and the cost of living. Public finance, in New Zealand at least, has become an excruciating zero-sum game; an elite intellectual closed shop.)

Al Nakba (‘The Catastrophe’): 1948 and all that; Ethnic Clearances

The Israel neozionists have told us and shown us what they see as the long-term solution to their ‘Palestinian problem’ – at best ethnic clearance in Gaza and surveillance control in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank; at worst, genocide – and have the will and the means to carry out that solution. (Having the means depends, though, on United States’ cooperation.) Further, their predecessors – as Zionists – have already done what today’s neozionists wish to do. The re-creation of Israel was always going to be a ‘game of two halves’. 1948 was the first half. The 1967 Six-Day War might have been the beginning of the second half, but it wasn’t to be. Circumstances have come together once again, in 2023, to make it possible for the Israeli regime to return to the 1948 playbook, and complete their modern-era refoundation project.

Basically, after World War II, groups of Zionist settlers waged a terrorist campaign against the United Kingdom, which had a continued mandate to administer the Southern Levant; a British mandate which began as an outcome of World War 1. This campaign of terror was known as the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine. The insurgents had different factions. The relatively moderate faction was Haganah; the more extreme factions were Irgun and the Stern Gang (aka Lehi).

All three militias were involved in the 1947 Deir Yassin massacre, though it was lead by Irgun. Before 1948 Irgun was the Jewish equivalent of Hamas pre-2006. (In addition to being a sectarian resistance movement, Hamas today is the elected administration of the semi-state of Gaza.) It was Irgun who in 1946 blew up the King David Hotel, British administrative headquarters, although Irgun sought to implicate Haganah (NY Times, 27 July 1947). Further, Irgun can be understood as the institutional forerunner of Israel’s ruling Likud Party.

Israel’s founding fathers were linked to either Haganah or Irgun. Founding mother ‘Golda Meir’ was linked to the political wing of Haganah; she was heavily involved in fundraising in United States for the Israeli cause.

As soon as the new United Nations was formed, the United Kingdom couldn’t leave quickly enough. The Zionist insurgency was the exemplar for a successful terror campaign. (The father of my first wife served in the British Army during the 1945-1948 mandate. She mentioned to me that, when he was travelling on the back of an army truck, the man next to him was shot in the chest by a sniper, dying instantly. Such is the randomness of life and death, under fire.) The United Nations took over responsibility for Mandatory Palestine (the Southern Levant west of the Jordan River) from Britain, noting that the United Kingdom had various other postcolonial obligations to unravel.

The 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight involved a mass ethnic clearance; it was a land-grab. Gaza became a refugee ‘camp’, with responsibility held by both the United Nations (in the form of UNWRA) and Egypt. Most of the dispossessed fled to Gaza, though still claiming rights to the lands they had previously occupied and farmed. A substantial territory to the east of Mandatory Palestine – the ‘West Bank’ of the Jordan River – was not included in Israel, and was conjoined to Jordan after the 1948 post-independence Arab-Israeli war. This conjoined territory included East Jerusalem.

(This is an authorised American version of the foundation of modern Israel. And this is a summary of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.)

Partition of Mandatory Palestine, in Six Maps

Both the Washington Post and the BBC have sites showing six critical maps of the formation of Israel to date. The first map shows Mandatory Palestine from 1922. This is essentially the combined area which modern Israel possesses and occupies. (Additionally today, Israel possesses and occupies a little more area around the Syrian border; the Golan Heights.)

Each second map shows the United Nations’s November 1947 partition plan. The BBC map shows more clearly that the Palestinian partition is in fact three disjoint territories, although the ‘joins’ are very close. (It’s important to note that Jerusalem/Bethlehem is specified separately as an ‘international city’.)

This was the essence of the ‘two-state’ ethno-sectarian solution which has been revived today, and was a solution very much in the mould of Britain’s partition solution for India earlier that year. The Palestinians rejected the United Nations’ two-state solution, and no wonder given what was happening in the then dividing India. In the South Asia case, the partition created two ethno-sectarian nation states; with Pakistan located in two detached and culturally different parts. This created two major episodes of catastrophic violence, and many minor episodes. (See Why Pakistan and India remain in denial 70 years on from partition, Guardian, 6 August 2017; review of The Great Divide by William Dalrymple, New Yorker 22 June 2015; Violence against women during the Partition of India, Wikipedia; and 1950 East Pakistan riots, Wikipedia; Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, Wikipedia.) That ethno-sectarian India problem has rekindled since around 2010 with the accession to power of Narendra Modi, with the interesting (and worrying) pro-Zionist sympathy of the ruling Hindu nationalists (see the third story of the 11 Nov 2023 episode of The Listening Post). And ethno-sectarian violence against women remains a big problem in India.

The third map shows the outcome of the 1948/49 Arab/Israeli War, with the two parts we today think of as Palestine under occupation by Egypt (Gaza) and recently independent Jordan (West Bank; Jordan had been the British-mandated Trans-Jordan; see BBC first map). This 1949 map has a distinctly modern look.

The fourth map shows Israel’s annexation of Gaza, Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six-Day War. This could have been the completion of the Israeli project, but for the complications relating to Sinai, Egypt, and the closure of the Suez Canal. Eventually Egypt was able to reopen the Suez Canal in 1975, and its repossession of Sinai was formalised in 1982 (fifth map) following the 1978 Camp David Accords.

The Washington Post fifth map also mentions that Southern Lebanon was occupied by Israel from 1982 to 2000. The 1982 events were particularly nasty, though barely mentioned today because there is just so much other context to the present events. (Though we should note that present events include substantial militarisation and violence north and south of the Israel-Lebanon border.) This war largely took place under the cover of the British-Argentinean Falklands War, in June 1982. The nastiest single event, though, was the Sabra and Shatila massacre in September 1982, an aftermath to the Siege of Beirut.

The sixth map shows the situation of occupation in October 2023. (The BBC map shows Gaza only.) Of particular note is the extent to which Palestinians do not supervise the West Bank. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the West Bank’s fate as a slow Israeli land grab; an ethnic clearance accelerating under cover of the present War in Gaza. While the violence in Gaza has been full-on, the West Bank has been subject to huge amounts of petty violence which in its own way is as distressing.

One State, Two States, Three States?

The present Siege of Gaza began from 2005, after Israel closed its settlements there, and after Hamas acceded to government in Gaza. Gaza has been a ‘cage’, the “Gaza ghetto”, (see 20 November 2023 NZ Listener opinion-piece No Place to Call Home by Paul Oestreicher); a refugee enclosure since 1948 managed in large part by the United Nations in the form of UNRWA. Gaza and southern Lebanon were the major destinations for those 700,000 Palestinians dispossessed of their land during the Nakba.

Gaza once had an opportunity to become an independent nation-state; not an oil-state like Kuwait nor an entrepôt-state like Singapore, but a coherent small nation more along the lines of Malta or Cyprus. But the western obsession with a Two-State solution, with Gaza tagged onto the West Bank – like India and Pakistan (with Bangladesh concocted as a distant appendage, as East Pakistan) – put the kibosh on that.

Gaza became a semi-state under blockade, substantially dependent on aid from both foreign and besieging parties. Israel would utilise Gazan labour, to perform low-wage but essential tasks. Gaza – in a first-past-the post election in 2006 – chose Hamas as their administration and their military; Hamas gained a majority of seats but not a majority of votes. Hamas’ rival was Fatah, in control of the Palestine Authority in the West Bank. Gaza was voting for independence from the West Bank as well as from Israel.

People have been able to leave Gaza, but only in accordance with other countries’ immigration eligibility criteria. Thus, the Palestinian diaspora has taken place under a much more difficult ‘rules-based’ legal framework than the 2,000-year Jewish diaspora. (That’s not to understate the many difficulties Jews faced over the millennia in settling other parts of the world.) Persons in Gaza born to Palestinian refugees in 1948 would have led their entire 75-year-long lives in a United Nations supported refugee enclosure. There are few people alive in the Southern Levant today who have clear memories of life before 1948.

Hamas wants a one-state solution: one Palestine, no Israel. And it is mandated by a substantial minority of the Gazan people to remind Israel that it is still there and that it has aspirations to be much more than an enclosure of dispossessed people. Hamas-led Gaza has attacked Israel a number of other times since 2006, though with barely a ripple of international attention. (My recording of the 13 May 2023 Listening Post episode about surveillance of Palestinians in East Jerusalem shows this in the lower-screen news-ribbon: “Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip continue for the fifth consecutive day. Israeli military says at least 1,000 missiles have been launched from Gaza since Tuesday. Israel confirms killing a sixth commander of Islamic Jihad in air strikes on Gaza. At least 33 Palestinians killed and 120 injured in air strikes on Gaza. At least two people killed in Israeli raid on Balata Camp in Nablus in occupied West Bank”. Clearly Hamas had to do much more next time in order for the international community to take notice of the ongoing plight of the Palestinian people under siege and surveillance.) The world – and the news-cycle – follows an ‘out-of-sight out-of-mind’ reality. On 7 October 2023, Hamas did enough – probably more than enough – to be noticed. Egregious behaviour is rewarded with attention.

We should also understand that the willingness of many Palestinians to die in their struggle for freedom is not unique to them. Israel maintains a substantial monument to the Siege of Masada (by the Romans) in the year 0073. Apparently “The Jewish rebels had set all the buildings but the food storerooms ablaze and had killed each other, declaring ‘a glorious death … preferable to a life of infamy’.”

My sense is that an India-Pakistan-style two-state solution was never viable in the Southern Levant; just as it was never viable as a post-colonial solution to British India. The ‘two-state solution’ remains a fantasy of the self-proclaimed ‘liberal rules-based’ West. And, I suspect, it’s now too late for a three-state solution. Both Gaza and the West Bank have already been too substantially compromised. (A West Bank state has been compromised by the present degree of Israeli settlement there. There had been a possibility of a small landlocked independent state such as Eswatini, which – as Swaziland – ‘enjoyed’ an independent coexistence with Apartheid South Africa.) We should note the parallels between the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 with that of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, and this story from Al Jazeera in 2015: Rabin’s assassination marked the end of the two-state solution.

The only viable long-term outcome that I can see is a one-state solution, possibly with that state being Israel. For a first-best outcome, we can draw some inspiration from post-Apartheid South Africa. In the Levantine context, an ideal state would neither be called Israel nor Palestine. An important feature of such a state would be a truth and reconciliation process. In the words of Paul Oestreicher: “There is still a fast-shrinking possibility that apartheid Israel could become a nation with equal rights for all of its inhabitants … a dream worth pursuing.” Such a state might be called ‘South Levant’.

My sense though is that Israel’s campaign of supremacist violence has already become a fait-accompli. The rest of the world probably needs to focus on achieving – this decade – the second-best one-state solution. The best that the West can offer the Southern Levant is a state of permanent limbo; a permanent cycle of escalating and de-escalating violence; this is a third-best or fourth-best outcome. Contemporary Gaza is like a turkey-enclosure before Thanksgiving; enduring its own Squid Gamepurgatory. And the West Bank has already become a Kafkaesque nightmare of Israeli-imposed bureaucracy and petty collective cruelties to those Palestinians – especially Muslims – who resist being chased off their lands.

Military realism today may be a more likely precursor to a long-term realisation of the living-together one-state dream than another permanent set of temporary impasses; than another 75 years of limbo and a continuance of the passions that the last 100 years have brought, not only to that region but to the whole world.

Military and geopolitical realism may see all the Southern Levant west of the Jordan River become Israel; eventually (hopefully by 2050) a depoliticised and de-zionised Israel. To avoid genocide this northern hemisphere summer, the 1940s’ architects and sponsors of Israel – especially the United States and the United Kingdom – will need to facilitate a substantial 2020s’ expansion of the already-large Palestinian diaspora. Israeli writers are already saying this: refer The West Should Welcome Gaza Refugees, by Danny Danon and Ram Ben-Barak, Wall Street Journal 13 Nov 2023. The sooner the purgatory is over, even if the short-term outcome is not first-best, then the sooner people who identify as Palestinians will once again be welcome in the lands of their ancestors; welcome as equals in a 2040s’ Israel or South Levant that is very different from the present Israel.

We note that the Netherlands of today – renowned for its pluralist tolerance – is quite different from the Calvinist Netherlands of 1600; although Netherlands still retains much from its Calvinist origins, including its own rural Bible Belt. Some forms of supremacism wither, when circumstances no longer sustain them. In addition to the Dutch, consider the more recent histories of the Germans, and the South Afrikaners. The United States remains a work in progress; white supremacism remains a problem there. And there are other supremacisms still alive, still rampant; in Myanmar, and in Darfur, which have not so far been mentioned here, and are not mentioned much anywhere else either. The West’s attention span remains too short.

Afterword

The Zionists and the Calvinists – the Jews and the Dutch – have, for better and/or worse, punched above their weight in world history, in the creation of the modern capitalist world. Likewise, we must give much credit to Darwinism as a positive force; the science of evolution and the evolution of science that is (not supremacist Darwinian pseudo-sciences!).

Supremacism will not go away. It will not be smashed by anti-supremacism. Israel cannot and should not be smashed, just as the Calvinist tradition in modern Christianity cannot be eradicated. Rather, supremacist cultures can be ‘domesticated’, their energies channelled in ways that construct rather than destroy, that sustain rather than deplete. Jewish people should be – and are – proud of what they have achieved and have endured, in collectives and as individuals; they don’t need Zionism or Neo-Zionism through which to express that pride.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

While the world remains fixated on the devastating October 7 Hamas attacks and the subsequent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, there has been a pronounced — and mostly unnoticed — escalation in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Before the recent events, this had already been the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, with about 200 fatalities, mostly attributed to Israeli security forces.

This figure has more than doubled since October 7, including the killings of 55 children. That brings the yearly fatality total in the West Bank to more than 450 Palestinians so far, according to the United Nations.

The UN has also recorded 281 settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, resulting in eight deaths. Four Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians.

In nearly half of the settler attacks, Israeli security forces either “accompanied or actively supported the attackers”, according to the UN.

WATCH| The moment when an Israeli sniper executes a 9-year-old Palestinian boy in Jenin City! pic.twitter.com/VY6HSFkufB

— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) November 29, 2023

A sharp increase in displacements
It is no coincidence the upsurge in anti-Palestinian violence this year has corresponded with the coming to power of the most right-wing nationalist government in Israeli history.

The new hardline government promised to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since capturing the territory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

This has emboldened Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, who now regularly engage in violence and provocative nationalist actions around the al-Aqsa mosque compound.

Since 1967, Israel has built over 270 settlements containing approximately 750,000 settlers. Despite these settlements being deemed illegal under international law, they remain protected by the Israeli military and their own security squads.

In February, the Israeli government transferred the West Bank from military to civilian control, which critics claimed could represent a step towards legalised annexation.

Since October 7 alone, the Israeli human rights group B’tselem reports that 16 Palestinian communities have been “forcibly transferred” in Area C, which covers about 65 percent of the West Bank and is under complete Israeli control. Overall, more than 1000 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank due to settler violence and access restrictions, according to the UN.

According to a group of UN experts:

Israel’s continuous annexation of portions of the occupied Palestinian territory […] suggests that a concrete effort may be under way to annex the entire occupied Palestinian territory in violation of international law.

Settler violence against Palestinians also includes the uprooting of hundreds of olive trees, destruction of property, blocked roads, armed raids and sabotaged wells. Military checkpoints and barriers make movement between Palestinian areas increasingly difficult.

Settlers also enjoy civilian and political rights in the West Bank, while Palestinians are subjected to military rule. This has been described by human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem, as well as prominent Israelis, as apartheid.

In a study of 1,000 cases of settler violence submitted to the Israeli judiciary between 2005 and 2021, the human rights organisation Yesh Din found 92% were dismissed.

A recipe for more violence
The West Bank continues to be run, at least in parts, by the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority (PA), led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah.

However, the PA is considered corrupt, nepotistic and is deeply unpopular among Palestinians in the territories. Recent polling revealed 78 percent of Palestinians want Abbas to resign. Primarily, this is because the PA is seen by Palestinians in the West Bank as nothing more than Israel’s security subcontractor and has suppressed demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza.

As a result, a younger generation of Palestinian fighters has emerged in West Bank towns and cities that transcend the longstanding divide between Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank.

These self-defence battalions are intended to defend Palestinians against Israeli incursions, especially in the Jenin refugee camp and the old city of Nablus, both of which have repeatedly been the subject of Israeli raids this year.

Meanwhile, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister and the leader of the Jewish Power Party, continues to openly defend settlers’ actions, setting the stage for more attacks.

Earlier this year, a joint statement by the Israeli military, Shin Bet (Israel’s domestic security agency) and Israeli police condemned Jewish settler violence against Palestinians, saying the increased vigilantism contradicted Jewish values and were a form of “nationalist terror in the full sense of the term”. Days later, though, Ben-Gvir blocked condemnation of the settlers and is reported to have called them “sweet kids” who had been turned into adults in detention.

After the October 7 attacks, Ben-Gvir’s ministry announced it had purchased 10,000 assault rifles to be distributed to civilian security teams around the country, including in West Bank settlements.

Other senior Israeli politicians have also been seen to encourage violence. In March, for instance, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also in charge of the civil administration of the West Bank, said a Palestinian town called Huwara should be “wiped out”.

The US State Department said the comment amounted to an incitement of violence and called it “repugnant”. Smotrich later apologised, calling it a “slip of the tongue”.

All of this has helped create an environment of fear, frustration and desperation among Palestinians in the West Bank. Following five weeks of war in Gaza, the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research reported 69 percent of Palestinians say they “fear future settler attacks”.

The upshot of this continued violence in the West Bank is the prospects for a viable two-state solution are more remote than ever, leaving Palestinians with little alternative then to continue resisting.

Tristan Dunning, honorary research fellow, The University of Queensland and Martin Kear, sessional lecturer Dept Govt & Int Rel., University of Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Aotearoa New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is correct to condemn Hamas killing Israeli civilians in its attacks on Israel this week.

The killing of civilians or taking them hostage is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and should be universally condemned.

However, the Labour government has been deathly silent on the war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians under Labour’s watch these past six years.

Under his prime ministerial watch this year, Chris Hipkins has looked the other way while Israel has built more illegal Israeli settlement homes on Palestinian land; killed more than 250 Palestinian civilians; supported Israeli settler pogroms against Palestinian towns and villages across the occupied West Bank and encouraged highly-provocative Israeli ministerial and settler incursions into the Al Aqsa compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

Why does he only wake up when Israelis are killed? Why does he think Israeli lives are more important than Palestinian lives?

The Prime Minister’s pro-Israel stance is one-sided and blatantly racist.

New Zealand, along with other Western countries, bears heavy responsibility for the deaths of Palestinians and Israelis in recent days because we have never held Israel to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people.

We have given Israel a free pass to murder and abuse Palestinians and this led to the inevitable tragedy last weekend.

It is precisely the attitude of Western leaders such as our Prime Minister which has meant so many lives have been lost.

The Prime Minister has the blood of Palestinians and Israelis on his hands.

John Minto is national chair of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

The besieged Gaza Strip
The Palestinian enclave — home to about 2.3 million people — has been under an Israeli air, land and sea blockade since 2007, reports Al Jazeera.
More than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced and thousands have taken shelter in UN schools as Israeli attacks intensify, forcing Palestinians to flee their homes.

Buildings, mosques and offices have been targeted as Netanyahu promised “mighty vengeance” for the deadly attacks that has sent shockwaves across Israel.

Harrowing images from inside Gaza have emerged with 19 members of a family killed when an air strike on Sunday hit their residential building. More than 60 percent of Gaza’s population are refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their homes currently in Israel.

Israel has maintained a land, sea and air blockade on Gaza since 2007, a year after Hamas was democratically elected into power. The voting came nearly two years after Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from the enclave.

The blockade gives Israel control of Gaza’s borders, and Egypt has stepped in to enforce the western border.

Israel has stated it has blocked the borders to protect its citizens from Hamas, but the act of collective punishment violates the Geneva Conventions and has long been considered illegal by groups including the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Aotearoa New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is correct to condemn Hamas killing Israeli civilians in its attacks on Israel this week.

The killing of civilians or taking them hostage is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and should be universally condemned.

However, the Labour government has been deathly silent on the war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians under Labour’s watch these past six years.

Under his prime ministerial watch this year, Chris Hipkins has looked the other way while Israel has built more illegal Israeli settlement homes on Palestinian land; killed more than 250 Palestinian civilians; supported Israeli settler pogroms against Palestinian towns and villages across the occupied West Bank and encouraged highly-provocative Israeli ministerial and settler incursions into the Al Aqsa compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

Why does he only wake up when Israelis are killed? Why does he think Israeli lives are more important than Palestinian lives?

The Prime Minister’s pro-Israel stance is one-sided and blatantly racist.

New Zealand, along with other Western countries, bears heavy responsibility for the deaths of Palestinians and Israelis in recent days because we have never held Israel to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people.

We have given Israel a free pass to murder and abuse Palestinians and this led to the inevitable tragedy last weekend.

It is precisely the attitude of Western leaders such as our Prime Minister which has meant so many lives have been lost.

The Prime Minister has the blood of Palestinians and Israelis on his hands.

John Minto is national chair of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

The besieged Gaza Strip
The Palestinian enclave — home to about 2.3 million people — has been under an Israeli air, land and sea blockade since 2007, reports Al Jazeera.
More than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced and thousands have taken shelter in UN schools as Israeli attacks intensify, forcing Palestinians to flee their homes.

Buildings, mosques and offices have been targeted as Netanyahu promised “mighty vengeance” for the deadly attacks that has sent shockwaves across Israel.

Harrowing images from inside Gaza have emerged with 19 members of a family killed when an air strike on Sunday hit their residential building. More than 60 percent of Gaza’s population are refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their homes currently in Israel.

Israel has maintained a land, sea and air blockade on Gaza since 2007, a year after Hamas was democratically elected into power. The voting came nearly two years after Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from the enclave.

The blockade gives Israel control of Gaza’s borders, and Egypt has stepped in to enforce the western border.

Israel has stated it has blocked the borders to protect its citizens from Hamas, but the act of collective punishment violates the Geneva Conventions and has long been considered illegal by groups including the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

About 2000 people from Aotearoa New Zealand communities, including many families, staged a vibrant rally in Auckland’s Aotea Square and marched down Queen Street today in support of freedom for #Palestine and an end to the Gaza massacre.

Marchers held placards proclaiming “This is a massacre not war”, “Free Palestine – End the Occupation now”, “Land back” — with reference to Israel seizing Palestinian land on a banner also displaying the Aboriginal, Māori (Tino Rangatiratanga) and West Papua (Morning Star) flags.

Warning about a “new Nakba” — the 1948 forced eviction of 750,000 Palestinian refugees from their homeland — the Jewish Voice for Peace advocacy group said in a statement that the Israeli government had declared a “genocidal war” on Palestinians in Gaza.

Israeli officials are openly planning to open “the gates of hell” on Gaza, referring to the two million Palestinians trapped inside as “human animals”, the statement said.

“The Israeli military has launched non-stop airstrikes and bombing over Gaza.

“Our partners tell us of entire neighbourhoods being flattened, schools and hospitals being bombed, apartment buildings being brought down.”

At least 583 Palestinian children have been killed by the Israeli military offensive on Gaza so far, representing one-third of the total death toll with casualty count rapidly rising, reports Defence for Children International.

“The Israeli government has shut off all electricity to Gaza. Hospitals cannot save lives, the internet will collapse, people will have no phones to communicate with the outside world.

“Gaza will be plunged into darkness as Israel turns its neighborhoods to rubble. Still worse, Israel has openly stated an intention to commit mass atrocities and even genocide, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the Israeli response will ‘reverberate for generations’.

“All of this with the full throated support of the US.

“On Friday, the Israeli military called for all civilians of Northern Gaza — over one million people, including half a million children — to relocate south within 24 hours, as it amassed tanks for an expected ground invasion.

“According to the UN, it is impossible to evacuate everyone with power supplies cut and food and water in the Palestinian enclave running short after Israel placed Gaza under total siege.

The UN said this invasion would have “devastating humanitarian consequences”, the statement said.

“For 16 years, Palestinians blockaded in Gaza have lived in the most densely populated place in the world. That density is set to double, if one million Palestinians are pushed from the North into the South.

“We shudder to think what will happen if the north is vacated: Israel could annex the territory. Another Nakba could be imminent.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Almost 50 years to the day after the joint Egyptian-Syrian offensive that launched the 1973 October War, Israel has once again been caught with its pants down. On this occasion its briefs were dangling from its ankles as well.

Operation Al Aqsa Storm, as Hamas named its 7 October 2023 offensive into Israeli territory, represents an even greater Israeli failure.

Extensive and reasonably successful Egyptian and Syrian efforts to conceal their intentions, preparations, and capabilities notwithstanding, Israel in 1973 received multiple warnings about an impending Arab attack from, among others, King Hussein of Jordan, a high-level Egyptian agent, and several of its own intelligence officers.

Its primary failure was not ignorance, but the haughty dismissal of knowledge that contradicted preconceptions.

While hubris and complacency have been mainstays in Israel’s dealings with Arab military adversaries, on this occasion it additionally had no information about the impending operation.

This despite its world-leading surveillance and intelligence capabilities, and the reality that the Gaza Strip is not only miniscule in size but also the most intensively and intrusively surveilled territory and population on the planet, and one that has furthermore been under blockade for 17 years.

That Hamas and Islamic Jihad were under these circumstances able to plan and prepare an operation of such scale, scope, and sophistication, a process that will have consumed many months at the least, and will have required extensive communications among leaders, cadres, and operatives, is an astonishing achievement and testament to the legendary resourcefulness of Gaza’s Palestinians.

Launched in plain view
While we can at this point only speculate as to how Hamas managed to prepare and launch this offensive in plain view of Israel, the avoidance or effective encryption of electronic and digital communications will certainly have played an important role.

Similarly, Hamas has in recent years considerably improved its counter-intelligence capabilities to minimise infiltration, an essential feature given the nearly constant flow of Palestinians who transit through Israeli-controlled border crossings and are susceptible to recruitment by Israeli intelligence as conditions for access to health care, employment, and the like.

Rather than serving as Israel’s eyes and ears within the Gaza Strip, it seems likely at least some of these Palestinians conducted reconnaissance for Operation Al Aqsa Storm within Israel.

As for the weaponry used, much of it is either rudimentary or of local manufacture, making ingenious use of available materials such as paragliders, steel from a British ship that sunk off the Gaza coast decades ago to manufacture rocket tubes, and unexploded Israeli ordnance. More advanced capabilities will have been smuggled in, presumably with the assistance of Hizballah in Lebanon, perhaps with the cooperation of sympathetic or corrupt Egyptian border patrols.

The legendary corruption of Israel’s own border crossings with the Gaza Strip may also have played a role.

Committed to fighting the previous war, Israel constructed formidable underground obstacles to prevent Palestinian commandos from infiltrating Israel through their tunnel network. In response, Hamas and Islamic Jihad simply breached the weak points in the barriers surrounding the Gaza Strip, such as wire fences that relied on electronic monitoring rather than more sturdy concrete obstacles (some of which also appear to have been breached).

And a key objective of the initial Palestinian missile barrage, which targeted Israeli military airfields among other objectives, was to paralyze and thus delay Israel’s ability to rapidly respond.

Immediate objectives
Al Aqsa Storm’s immediate objectives were to infiltrate and seize key Israeli security installations, such as the Re’im military base which serves as the headquarters for the Gaza Division; kill or capture a significant number of Israeli soldiers; establish Palestinian territorial control over population centers within Israel’s boundaries for the first time since 1948; and present significantly improved Palestinian capabilities to the Israeli public and security establishment with a massive missile barrage at Israeli cities and the deployment of new infiltration and combat techniques.

While Israeli civilian casualties do not appear to have been an objective as such, it appears that many were killed, and others abducted. Additionally, there are reports of a massacre at a desert party.

In the event, the operation succeeded in nearly all respects, one suspects beyond the wildest expectations of those who planned and executed it. Dozens of Israeli soldiers, including a major general, were spirited into captivity inside the Gaza Strip.

Many more, including senior officers, were killed and wounded, and almost 24 hours after the operation commenced, Palestinian fighters remained ensconced in multiple locations and installations inside Israel.

Images of Israeli bulldozers and missiles deployed against the Israeli police headquarters in Sderot to dislodge Palestinian fighters within it will remain with us for some time, and as with the Egyptian military’s nearly effortless crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973, won’t be erased by subsequent developments.

A more difficult question concerns Hamas’s motives and broader aims. Seen from the movement’s perspective, Israel has simply gone too far, for too long.

Particularly under the stewardship of the Netanyahu government and its predecessor, escalation has been consistent and transformed into a strategy.

Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing of the Jordan Valley, army-enabled attacks on villages throughout the West Bank by settler auxiliaries, and increasing incursions by prominent Israeli politicians and settler groups into the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem’s Old City have reached new heights, and done so in the explicit service of formal annexation.

Indeed, speaking last month to the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu displayed a map that showed both the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, Israel has shown no inclination to lift or significantly relax the blockade, and treats Hamas as a force that can safely be ignored on the grounds that the movement cares about little else than maintaining its rule over the Gaza Strip.

Within Israel’s prisons, the situation of Palestinian detainees has been deteriorating by design. Yet every Israeli escalation has been normalised by Israel’s US and European partners, with each outrage met by little more than paeans to “shared values” and Israel’s “right to defend itself” and, under Washington’s leadership, a focus on an Israeli-Saudi agreement intended to render Palestine and the Palestinians irrelevant.

Within the region, a growing number of Arab states have in practice extended to Greater Israel a halal certificate, at Palestinian expense. Closer to home, Turkey has forced a number of Hamas leaders it previously hosted to leave the country, and Qatar has in recent months reduced the financial support it provides to Gaza in agreement with Israel, on the grounds that Hamas needs to find a more sustainable solution to its financial crisis.

So what is Operation Al Aqsa Storm meant to achieve? It appears that the movement concluded, some time ago, that a repeat of previous confrontations with Israel, such as during the 2021 Unity Intifada, the first that Hamas rather than Israel initiated, would be insufficient to break the logjam, and that only a spectacle on the scale of what we witnessed on October 7 would serve to concentrate minds in Israel and other relevant capitals.

In other words, the main objective would seem to be to render the status quo obsolete and put paid to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade, entirely or at least in its current form. Secondly, Hamas appears determined to free Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, and additionally use those it has captured and abducted as leverage in negotiations on other matters, including for example those relating to the Haram al-Sharif.

Insurmountable obstacles
It is highly unlikely that undermining Saudi-Israeli diplomacy formed an important motivation, because the proposed deal faces too many insurmountable obstacles in Washington and Israel, and both Hamas and its allies understand this.

Additionally, if Muhammad bin Salman is determined to proceed with such a deal, there’s no indication he would be deterred by a mound of Palestinian corpses any more than his Arab cohorts who preceded him, and in any case, could consummate any agreement after a decent interval.

This notwithstanding, embarrassing not Riyadh specifically but all regional capitals that maintain formal or informal relations with Israel is an added benefit for Hamas. Particularly so if mass demonstrations in the region in support of the Palestinians serve to remind its governments and the world at large that Palestine remains a live issue.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad can additionally be presumed to hope that their offensive fatally weakens the PA ensconced in Ramallah, thereby creating greater freedom of action for their movements in the West Bank.

The above notwithstanding, the timing of this operation is curious, because conventional wisdom held that Israel’s various adversaries were content with a strategy of managed escalation so as not to interrupt the growing polarisation and dysfunction within the Israeli political arena.

That Hamas nevertheless chose an unprecedented offensive at this moment may have been related to matters of operational security and fears of exposure, or an assessment that this was an opportune moment with Israel having prioritised sadism in the West Bank and reinforcement of its border with Lebanon, or indeed a revised assessment that exposing the colossal failure of Israel’s extremists and security establishment is the best way to weaken them.

It is inconceivable that Hamas would have embarked on an operation of this scale without also preparing for an unprecedented Israeli response. Together with Islamic Jihad and others, it will probably have prepared for massive Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip launched for the purpose of significantly degrading their organisations and infrastructure, killing cadres and assassinating leaders it can locate, and leaving a massive trail of death and destruction.

Last stand thinking
Better a last stand than a slow death, the thinking apparently goes, particularly if that stand gives a renewed lease on life. Israel will presumably also conduct a massive sweep throughout the West Bank, crack down on Palestinians within Israel, and may also seek to abduct or liquidate Hamas leaders based abroad.

It’s a scenario based on the reasonable assumption that Israel remains unprepared to resume direct control of the entire territory for a protracted period of time. In other words, and as with previous assaults on the Gaza Strip, Israel’s objective may ultimately be to restore a version of the status quo that produced the present crisis.

Inflicting significant casualties in close-quarter combat, as the Palestinians succeeded in doing in 2014, could reduce the length and intensity of such incursions. The Palestinian organisations presumably know better than to believe that holding dozens of Israeli prisoners will provide them with a measure of protection from the authors of the Hannibal Doctrine, which considers a dead Israeli soldier preferable to a captive one.

It is an issue that can at most be used for psychological warfare.

A key question is whether Gaza’s militants will confront Israel only with their existing preparations, or whether Operation Al Aqsa Storm is part of a broader initiative by the self-styled Axis of Resistance, in which Hezbollah and perhaps others will join the fray if Israel crosses certain red lines to relieve the pressure on the Gaza Strip.

If Israel follows through on its demands of mass evacuations of densely populated Palestinian neighborhoods and proceeds with intensive carpet bombing to flatten them, causing mass casualties in the process, we may soon find out.

Mouin Rabbani has published and commented widely on Palestinian affairs, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He was previously senior analyst Middle East and special advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group, and head of political affairs with the Office of the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria. He is co-editor of Jadaliyya Ezine.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) congratulates New Zealand film director Jane Campion over her request for her 1989 debut film Sweetie to be withdrawn from apartheid Israel’s Jerusalem Film Festival.

The announcement was made by Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) late last night.

We are delighted to have an esteemed New Zealand director join at least four other international film directors — from the Basque region in Spain, United Kingdom and the United States — in requesting their films be withdrawn from the festival which is partnered with the Israeli Ministry of Culture.

This is a moment of pride for Aotearoa New Zealand — similar to the pride felt when New Zealand entertainer Lorde cancelled a scheduled concert in Israel in 2018.

At a time when Palestinians are suffering immeasurably under the most fanatical, openly racist Israeli government ever, this solidarity action will be deeply appreciated by Palestinians everywhere.

These film directors are taking action where governments — New Zealand included — have failed morally and politically, again and again and again to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian people.

This is similar to the fight against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s when it was civil society organisations around the world, and in New Zealand, which led the anti-apartheid struggle outside South Africa while Western governments either colluded with the regime or looked the other way.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa.

The Sweetie trailer.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz