Titled“Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians”, the 211-page report concludes that the occupation state has imposed a “cruel system of domination” and is committing “crimes against humanity.”
“Our report reveals the true extent of Israel’s apartheid regime. Whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights.
"We found that Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid. The international community has an obligation to act,”
said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general.
Independence and self-determination in the Pacific ... contrasting
referendum experiences between Bougainville, Kanaky New Caledonia and
West Papua. IMAGE: Screenshot of the Kanak flag in Middle East Eye
THE PACIFIC year has closed with growing tensions over sovereignty and self-determination issues and growing stress over the ravages of covid-19 pandemic in a region that was largely virus-free in 2020.
Just two days before the year 2021 wrapped up, Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama took the extraordinary statement of denying any involvement by the people or government of the autonomous region of Papua New Guinea being involved in any “secret plot” to overthrow the Manasseh Sogavare government in Solomon Islands.
Insisting that Bougainville is “neutral” in the conflict in neighbouring Solomon Islands where riots last month were fuelled by anti-Chinese hostilities, Toroama blamed one of PNG’s two daily newspapers for stirring the controversy.
“Contrary to the sensationalised report in the Post-Courier (Thursday, December 30, 2021) we do not have a vested interest in the conflict and Bougainville has nothing to gain from overthrowing a democratically elected leader of a foreign nation,” Toroama said.
The frontpage report in the Post-Courier appeared to be a beat-up just at the time Australia was announcing a wind down of the peacekeeping role in the Solomon Islands.
1981
Springbok tour protest leaders Ripeka Evans (left) and John Minto speak
to the protesters 40 years on at the restrospective exhibition at the
Hamilton Museum - Te Whare Taonga o Waikato. IMAGE: David Robie/APR
AFTER his release from prison in South Africa and he became inaugural
president of the majority rule government with the abolition of
apartheid, Nelson Mandela declared in a speech in 1997: “We know too
well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the
Palestinians.”
Founding Halt All Racist Tours (HART) leader John Minto invoked these
words again several times in Hamilton on Sunday as veterans and
supporters of the 1981 Springbok Rugby Tour anti-apartheid protests
gathered to mark the 40th anniversary of the historic events.
Starting at the “1981” tour retrospective exhibition
at the Hamilton Museum – Te Whare Taonga o Waikato, the protesters
gathered for a luncheon at Anglican Action and then staged a ceremonial
march to FMG Stadium – known back then as Rugby Park – where they had
famously breached the perimeter fence and invaded the pitch.
The exhibition features photographs by Geoffrey Short, Kees Sprengers
and John Mercer of that day on 25 July 1981 when about 2000 protesters
halted the second match of the tour.
International reporting has hardly been a strong feature of New
Zealand journalism. No New Zealand print news organisation has serious
international news departments or foreign correspondents with the
calibre of such overseas media as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
It has traditionally been that way for decades. And it became much worse after the demise in 2011 of the New Zealand Press Association
news agency, which helped shape the identity of the country for 132
years and at least provided news media with foreign reporting with an
Aotearoa perspective fig leaf.
It is not even much of an aspirational objective with none of the 66 Voyager Media Awards categories recognising international reportage, unlike the Walkley Awards
in Australia that have just 34 categories but with a strong recognition
of global stories (last year’s Gold Walkley winner Mark Willacy of ABC Four Cornersreported “Killing Field” about Australian war crimes in Afghanistan).
Aspiring New Zealand international reporters head off abroad and gain postings with news agencies and broadcasters or work with media with a global mission such as Al Jazeera.
WHEN Nanaia Mahuta was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, there
were hopes for a change in government thinking towards the struggles of
indigenous people. The minister said she hoped to bring her experience
and cultural identity as an indigenous woman to her role on
international issues.
Palestine, West Papua and Western Sahara are places where the
indigenous people are struggling for freedom and human rights and early
on there was hope New Zealand would join the 138 member states of the
United Nations that recognise Palestine.
However the hope has faded and Mahuta finally spoke on Tuesday,
via a tweet, saying she was “deeply concerned” about the deteriorating
situation in Jerusalem and Gaza. She called for a “rapid de-escalation”
from Israel and the Palestinians, for Israel to “cease demolitions and
evictions” and for “both sides to halt steps which undermine prospects
for a two-state solution”.
The struggle of the Palestinians is integral to a larger struggle for
fundamental human rights that can be witnessed throughout the Middle
East. IMAGE: France 24
COVID-19 cases in Palestine, especially in Gaza, have reached record highs, largely due to the arrival of a greatly contagious coronavirus variant which was first identified in Britain.
Gaza has always been vulnerable to the deadly pandemic. Under a hermetic Israeli blockade since 2006, the densely populated Gaza Strip lacks basic services like clean water, electricity, or minimally-equipped hospitals. Therefore, long before covid-19 ravaged many parts of the world, Palestinians in Gaza were dying as a result of easily treatable diseases such as diarrhoea, salmonella and typhoid fever.
Needless to say, Gaza’s cancer patients have little fighting chance, as the besieged Strip is left without many life-saving medications. Many Palestinian cancer patients continue to cling to the hope that Israel’s military authorities will allow them access to the better equipped Palestinian West Bank hospitals.
Alas, quite often, death arrives before the long-awaited Israeli permit does.
The tragedy in Gaza - in fact in all of occupied Palestine - is long and painful. Still, it ought not to be classified as another sad occasion that invokes much despair but little action.
Israel arrests 16-year-old Palestinian girl Ahed Tamimi in a night raid in the occupied West Bank.
Video: Al Jazeera
COMMENT: By Sister Barbara Cameron
When I read last week of the detention of a young Palestinian teenage girl, 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi, dragged from her bed in the middle of the night by Israeli soldiers, for me it wasn’t just another Palestinian teenage protester.
I was devastated. This is the beautiful young woman I’d met as a happy, innocent 10-year-old, in whose house I’d slept, with whose family I’d sat at table, to whose grandmother I had listened as she shared the pain of the terrible things her own children had suffered at the hands of the Israeli military, her daughter shot in a military court room, her son detained innumerable times.
I was gutted thinking of this family having to deal with yet another trauma, fearing what might happen to their 16-year-old daughter in military detention.
Ahed with her mother Nariman ... a family suffering
again from the cruelty and injustice of the Israeli
occupation. Image: Al Jazeera
Not only that but her 15-year-old brother, Mohammed, is now lying in an induced coma as the result of the injury caused by being shot in the face by a rubber bullet. For me it was heartbreaking news.
In 2011, as a NZ Catholic nun, a Mission Sister, I had volunteered with
the International Women’s Peace Service group in Palestine on the West
Bank, a group that supports the Palestinians in any nonviolent
resistance to the occupation of their land by Israel, and reports on
human rights abuses.
Alistar Kata's report on the visit by Amira Hass. Video: Pacific Media Centre
COINCIDING with the visit by renowned Haaretz journalist Amira Hass to New Zealand in the past couple of weeks, Al Jazeera has been running a repeat of the brilliant programme “The Architecture of Violence” in the Rebel Architecture series.
In this, architect and communicator par excellence Eyal Weizman explains how Israel has transformed urban warfare and how the techniques are used to subjugate Palestinians.
Travelling across the illegal settlements and roads of the West Bank and also along the Separation Wall, Weizman shows how the controlled use of architecture is deployed to consolidate the Israeli grip on Palestine.
"Architecture and the built environment is a kind of a slow violence,” he says.
“The occupation is an environment that was conceived to strangulate Palestinian communities, villages and towns, to create an environment that would be unliveable for the people there."
PROTESTS in New Zealand over the massacre in Gaza kept up the pressure in the hours before Israel unilaterally declared a ceasefire. In Auckland, red paint bombs - signifying the Gaza bloodshed - and shoes were hurled at Rakon Industries, a company alleged to manufacture crystal oscillators for bombs used by the Israeli military. Nearly 1200 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli offensive began on December 27. Thirteen Israelis have died. Rakon protest photos by Del Abcede.
Incidentally, Gaza was among the topics in James Murray's new blog this week at TV3 - Views on the news. He isn't too keen on the lame name, but he plans to stir up the ethical minefields. All power to you, James.
RANDOM images from the international protest against the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip in Auckland, New Zealand, on Saturday. Speakers included Green MP and foreign affairs spokesman Keith Locke. Photos: David Robie and Del Abcede
AFTER the impressive weekend protests in New Zealand - and globally - against the Israeli genocide in Gaza, The Nation has published a thought-provoking article by Naomi Klein on the "boycott, divest and sanctions" campaign that worked so well in bringing down apartheid. She argues:
It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005, a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions - BDS for short - was born. Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of ceasefires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the anti-apartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.... This international backing must stop." Pictured: Palestinian women and their large national flag carried at Saturday's Auckland city protest. Note Israel-apartheid links in posters. Photo: David Robie
RANDOM letters to New Zealand media protesting against the global hypocrisy over Israel's shameful and murderous assault on the citizens of Gaza. Also check out the YouTube video on an earlier Auckland protest against Israel's genocide against the Palestinians earlier this month featuring Green MP Keith Locke and may other speakers.
Condemn Israeli attacks There can be no excuse for the totally disproportionate Israeli attacks, which should be condemned by every Western Government without hesitation. The Nazis tended to take 10 French lives for every German killed. This ratio in Gaza is 280 to one. That is the true measure of the appalling nature of what is happening and the tacit support by the US is shameful. Peter Berman Dairy Flat
Israeli airstrikes Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and hundreds wounded by Israeli airstrikes. Israeli spokesman Avi Benayahu says this is just the beginning. While he claims the targets are the (official) police force of the (democratically elected) Hamas Government, the reality is that the victims have been a cross-section of the population already weakened by the illegal siege, which has starved them of food and medical supplies. The international community must demand that Israel stops the bombing ends the siege, removes Israelis from the illegal settlements and abides by UN resolutions. Bob van Ruyssevelt Te Atatu South
Rule of law Israel's merciless military assault on Gaza is a war against the rule of international law, human rights and the Geneva Conventions. The violence continues to be framed as a conflict between warring peoples with equal power. But Israel is a version of an apartheid state, based on racist ideology and a colonial occupying force with one of the most advanced militaries in the world. The multiple forms of collective punishment currently being inflicted on the Palestinians in Gaza reflect Israel's 60 plus year history of ethnic cleansing: blockades of fuel, food and medicine, and endless brutal attacks promoted as acts of self-defence. For human rights of the Palestinians to be advanced, Israel must be isolated like apartheid South Africa was in the 1970s and 1980s. J. Wakim Epsom
NZ's response I wonder why our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Murray McCully, has refrained from condemnation of the Israeli military action against the people of Gaza. It is true that the events are saddening, but this calls for public condemnation. Israel's actions are hugely disproportionate to the dangers posed by the homemade rockets some Gazans launch. Mr McCully's assertion that it is pointless to debate proportionate versus disproportionate use of force is disconcerting and lacking context. Some 1.5 million Gazans have been effectively starved since June 2007 by Israel blockade of the coastal city. If I am denied food, water, medicine, fuel, sewage treatment for one and a half years, I would get pretty angry. Yet the rulers of Gaza have honoured a ceasefire for the past six months but saw no lifting of the blockade in return. Khalil Bosauder Howick
Gaza bombing When Israel bombed Gaza's elected Hamas Government, university and mosques and killed more than 300 citizens, I sent emails to ten leaders in Israel and New Zealand. Only one of them was not delivered. The letter addressed to Prime Minister Key was returned with the message: Undeliverable: (Contains Potentially Offensive Language). My polite letter contained no word that would embarrass any sensitive person. I was raising questions of policy about which a Prime Minister might welcome comments from citizens he was elected to serve. I told him that I believe God made and loves all human beings. Hence the Israeli Government's atrocities are comparable to those committed by the Nazis. By years of brutal occupation, starving and impoverishing 1.5 million people and psychologically damaging half a million children, Israel actually provokes the people of Gaza to retaliate. Rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza cannot be justified - I said - but if our government does not act to stop this holocaust we will be guilty, like those who did not speak out to stop the massacre of Jews in an earlier one. Peter Munane Dominican friar Auckland
Pictured: The bloody hand of Israel - from Electronic Intifada (Greek protest against an earlier Israeli assault in 2006).
