Month: May 2024

NCWNZ supports partnership to raise money to help women in Gaza

https://www.ncwnz.org.nz/fundraiser_for_gaza
May 17, 2024

Te Kaunihera Wāhine o Aotearoa National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) has joined in an Aotearoa intercommunity partnership – which includes Alternative Jewish Voices, the Federation of Islamic Associations (FIANZ), and Palestinian-led advocacy group Justice for Palestine – to recognise and respond to the escalating needs of women in Gaza.

“The hunger and famine in Gaza are unprecedented and horrifying. Working alongside one another is the strongest way we can support the women and children who are so disproportionately affected. So, as the conflict in Gaza passes the six-month mark, we are joining the voices of the partnership in asking for your help,” NCWNZ President Dr Suzanne Manning said.

Laura Agel from Justice for Palestine added, “We stand with NCWNZ in recognising and responding to the escalating needs of women in Gaza. The hunger and violence they face is horrifying. We at Justice for Palestine urge everyone to do what they can to help and support the women and children who are disproportionately affected by this humanitarian crisis.”

Marilyn Garson, co-founder of Alternative Jewish Voices, agreed. “Just as health workers and journalists have organised to draw attention to the devastating toll on their Gazan counterparts, we are so glad to see the National Council of Women responding to the dire needs of women and children this way.”

There is global evidence showing the disproportionate effects on women and children, including:

• The latest statistics from 15 May show that at least 35,233 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, the majority of these are women and children.
• The UN body dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, UN WOMEN, notes that among those killed are an estimated 6,000 women who left 19,000 children behind. Women who have survived have been displaced, widowed and are facing starvation. More than 1 million women and girls in Gaza have almost no food, no access to safe water, latrines, washrooms, or sanitary pads, with diseases spreading amid inhumane living conditions.
• Tufts University World Peace Foundation reports ”a ‘great’ famine, with 100,000 or more excess deaths, may be in prospect if the current level of hostilities and destruction continues.”

Dr Manning is urging New Zealanders to act. “We can raise money to help women and children who are disproportionately affected. It is easy to feel helpless being so far away but there is a very practical step that New Zealanders can take to help those most affected. We are asking supporters to donate to FIANZ’s Humanitarian Aid to Gaza Palestine Appeal Account: 02-0500-0737236-006.

“This will make a real difference and we need your help,” Dr Manning said. “Throughout history, women have worked together, and we are asking you to continue to do so today. We must continue to show solidarity and share our strength with those women and children affected by this humanitarian crisis now and for future generations.”

FIANZ Chairperson, Abdur Razzaq also acknowledged the partnership and its aims. “FIANZ is grateful for the help of the National Council of Women and Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa for their support to raise funds for humanitarian aid for Gaza, particularly the women, children and the elderly who are suffering from starvation.”

For more information, or to interview Dr Suzanne Manning please contact 022 655 6512 or email us.

Anti-Zionist Jewish activist in New Zealand speaks out against genocide in Gaza

Tom Peters, John Braddock 15 February 2024

World Socialist Web Site reporters in New Zealand recently spoke with Rick Sahar, the son of two Holocaust survivors, about his decision to speak out publicly against Israel’s genocidal war against the people of Gaza.

Sahar lived in Israel as a young man and since moving to New Zealand in 1981 has had a long career as an entertainer and performer. For several years he worked as a volunteer for the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand, helping to educate people about the genocide of the Jewish people during World War II.

He is one of many Jewish people across the world who have spoken out against the actions of the Netanyahu regime and joined protests against Israel’s ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Palestinians. The prominent participation of Jews in protests against the war exposes the lie, repeated incessantly in the media and by politicians, that the Israeli state represents the Jewish people and that any opposition to it constitutes antisemitism.

In January, Sahar addressed a protest in Wellington—one of dozens held across New Zealand since Israel’s bombardment of Gaza began—where he said: “I condemn the intentional murdering and maiming of innocent people by Israel in Gaza and in the West Bank. Collective punishment was used by the Nazis and was condemned after the Holocaust amid cries of ‘never again,’ and yet it is happening again.”

Born in the US city of Detroit, Sahar was one of four children of two survivors of the Holocaust in Poland. “At home we didn’t speak at all about the Holocaust. My mother was still very distressed by it all, she was traumatised,” he said. Many years later, his father told him that he had a first wife and twin boys in Oświęcim, Poland, all of whom were killed at Auschwitz in 1944.

Because his father had some medical skills as a barber, he was sent to work in the adjacent Birkenau camp, where “he would treat cuts and bruises, breaks and things like that, and that kept him alive because he was able to speak German as well.”

It was only later in life, after moving to New Zealand, that Sahar began to research his parents’ history. “I became more involved in my own heritage of how my people were impacted by the Nazis, and that’s when, after I put together a bit of research, I was asked to present it at the Holocaust Centre as one of their speakers for adult education. That was really hard to do the first time, to present my parents’ survival story. I learnt how to deal with that and I went presenting it at high schools around the country and other adult groups.”

Sahar was elected to the board of the Holocaust Centre, an institution founded in 2007 in Wellington to promote awareness and education about the Holocaust. In 2020, Sahar was recognised for his work bringing together Polish and Jewish people through shared events with the Centre and the Polish Embassy by being awarded the Gold Cross of Merit from the Republic of Poland.

He told the WSWS that he initially felt that Israel had a place in the work of the Centre, but his views changed over time. “I started realising how it was limiting our choices and decisions, impacting on who we can see that human rights are being taken away from, because Israel has a different idea on that. Certain instances there led to me resigning from the board and getting more involved now in the Palestinian cause.

“I feel it’s important for me to speak out about Palestinian rights and the atrocities that I see are being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank,” he said.

“There are so many war crimes in Gaza being perpetrated by Israeli armed forces. It’s all detailed there in the media how the Gazans are being impacted by the siege. I see it as a genocide that’s being committed. And, you know, you can’t wait to the end and then call it a genocide. It’s in the process of happening, it definitely qualifies as a genocide.”

Asked what he thought was motivating Israel’s actions, he said: “It’s in retaliation for the 7th of October. It’s anger, revenge against all Palestinians, who they see as below them, as the perpetrators.”

He added that Netanyahu had “selected people with similar views to be part of his war cabinet, especially those right-wing religious representatives, who to me are not Jewish, they don’t represent the beauty of beliefs that exist in Judaism as they do in other religions. They don’t represent Judaism to me.”

He criticised the United States-led bombing of the Houthis in Yemen, which New Zealand military personnel are actively assisting. He said the Houthi militias were attacking shipping in the Red Sea in response to the bombardment of Gaza. “If the US was really interested in trade they would make sure that the bombing stops, they wouldn’t supply the armaments for Israel.”

Sahar said he recently wrote to Foreign Minister Winston Peters opposing the decision to stop funding for the United Nations agency UNRWA, which provides food and aid for starving people in Gaza.

“Israel’s done an incredibly successful campaign of vilifying UNRWA,” he said. “There’s no reason for that other than their paranoia as to whether or not any assistance can be made through UNRWA to Hamas.” He said it was “ridiculous” that the alleged participation of a handful of UNRWA employees in the October 7 operation “could be the basis for stopping the aid to just over 2 million people. They’ve relied on this aid ever since the siege was implemented. Everyone relies on aid there.

“So it’s a travesty to stop funding UNRWA and things are just going to get worse and worse, even after the International Court of Justice finding that Israel is committing acts that could be considered a genocide. They didn’t call it a genocide but they said it may be leading to that. Israel is taking no notice and is increasing its bombing of Gaza, and also environmentally impacting it with the flooding of the tunnels, which is something horrible for whoever will be there again, because it’s ruining any kind of chance of there being water from wells, groundwater, pure water to drink.

“They’re destroying so much infrastructure. It also really angers me how they go into the West Bank and destroy the infrastructure there, as well. It’s just so spiteful and it’s not in my name.”

Speaking about the dehumanisation of Palestinians, Sahar described it as “a caste system within [Israel’s] borders and outside its borders against Palestinian people. Within Israel, Palestinians who live there are definitely a second-class people, and the ones in the territories that they have been exiled to are at least second- or third-class, and they really are hated.

“The sadness I have is that Israel theoretically started as, according to the tenets of Zionism, ‘a light unto the nations’ and to make peace with the other countries around them, and to accept all people. I think they confused the issue by calling it a Jewish state and a democracy. It’s not possible to do both. You have to allow for other religions and other peoples if you’re a democracy.”

He said Israel had to come to terms with its past by “accepting the wrongs that have been committed, and how they are the perpetrators in this disaster that’s happened of displacement, of persecution, of killing, murdering people.” This was the only way to have reconciliation and peace. “I think the best thing that’s happened recently is South Africa’s bringing the case [accusing Israel of genocide] to the International Court of Justice. I just wish Israelis would see that too.”

Sahar praised the small number of young Israelis, including the outspoken Tal Mitnik, who have opposed conscription and refused to fight in Gaza.

He explained how he had become disillusioned with Zionism while living in Israel during the 1970s. “I served in the Israeli army, I was conscripted because I had to be in order to stay in Israel. I was there for 11 years, and after two-and-a-half years they said: you either have to leave the country or become a citizen.”

After an incident that occurred while he was on reserve duty in the West Bank, Sahar said he felt he could no longer stay in Israel. “Our commander called me and two other soldiers into his office and he addressed me. He said: ‘Rick, here’s the name and address of a suspected PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] operator nearby. I want you to go to him with these two soldiers, arrest him and bring him here.’ And I didn’t think about it, I just said: ‘I’m not doing that.’ He said: ‘What?’ I said: ‘I refuse to do this.’ He said: ‘Oh, you’re refusing an order?’ I said: ‘Yes, I’m here to protect, not to go out and arrest.’”

As punishment, Sahar was confined to guard duty for three weeks, four hours on, four hours off. “That’s where I sat and thought and knew that I couldn’t serve in the army again because I was going in a different direction in my beliefs about what was going on in Palestine.”

He also described an earlier incident that led him to question the role of the military and the occupation. “I had an experience in Bethlehem on an earlier reserve duty on what happened to be Easter Sunday. I’m there in the square with other soldiers, full kit, and these beautiful families of Palestinian people were walking by in their lovely clothes on their way to church, and I said: ‘Happy Easter!’ And they couldn’t look at me, they couldn’t acknowledge me. And then I remembered who I am, what I represent. I suddenly realised: I’m the occupying force here, and it could even be seen as intimidation, me calling out and wishing them a happy Easter. That was very sad for me.

“I used to believe, when I was in Israel, for a little while, that the only way to security is through armed forces, that the only way to have a lasting peace is to fight. Ever since I’ve been here and been more objectively viewing the situation in Israel, I know for sure that peace is only possible through negotiations and showing a willingness to forgive the other, and to accept one another.”

Sahar mentioned that he had two grown-up daughters living in Israel, one of whom was among tens of thousands of people evacuated from the area near the border with Lebanon soon after 7 October, as Israel ratcheted up tensions with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“She was able to pack her car, all the things that they needed, and to drive to a known destination, which eventually happened to be a tourist resort near the Dead Sea. So 80,000 people were removed and put into different resorts and safe places away from the fighting in sharp contrast to the ongoing forced evacuations [in Gaza] to crowded areas without proper amenities to sustain healthy life,” he said.

Sahar criticised the very limited media coverage of the anti-genocide protests in New Zealand. Many have gone completely unreported, and oppositional voices within the Jewish community have not been highlighted.

He mentioned that members of Alternative Jewish Voices, a Wellington-based group of anti-Zionist Jews, and Dayenu: New Zealand Jews Against Occupation, had written to the media and their letters had not been published in any form. “It’s disappointing,” he said. “The Israeli embassy has done a thorough job of influencing the press, I think.”

Sahar concluded by thanking the WSWS for its coverage and for interviewing him. Rick is a member of Dayenu: New Zealand Jews Against Occupation.

We thank the World Socialist Web Site for permission to use this interview with Rick. : https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/16/xryx-f16.html

(Remarks to Student Justice for Palestine teach-in at Vic Uni, Nakba Day 2024)

Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa

Ko Hūrae te whakapaparanga mai

I tipu ake ahau i Canada i te whenua o Mi’kmaq 

Ināianei, e noho ana ahau i Te Whanganui-a-Tara

I whakakaupapa māua ko Fred Albert i te rōpū Alternative Jewish Voices

Ko Marilyn Garson taku ingoa

Thank you for inviting me to speak, and to every Palestinian person here, I wish some kind of safety for your family. I wish you quiet, peace and real justice soon, in our time.

What does Nakba mean to anti-Zionist Aotearoa Jews like me?

75 years ago, some of my antecedents took the homes of Palestinians. Some of my antecedents were seeking safety from genocide while others were capitalising on it. But Jewish suffering is not resolved by replicating the exclusion, violence, dispossession, erasure.

Nakba Day reminds me that my history was and is still used to rationalise Palestinian Nakba. Nakba is a day for storytelling and I listen without defensiveness while Palestinians tell me what that has meant and continues to mean.

Nakba is a day to feel the reverberations of the intergenerational trauma that we carry in our bodies leading to and from 1948. Also we feel the trauma dug into the land itself when that land is colonised, stolen, soaked in Indigenous blood and sadness. Nakba is also a day to understand Aotearoa and our long project of decolonisation.

As an anti-Zionist Jew, I (and my co-founder Fred Albert) also regard the violent creation of Israel as a self-inflicted disaster. It repudiates many of our texts and the intentions of the prophets. Zionism reduced our religious imagination to a plot of land and reduced our eternal vision to an exploitative project of power over others. It traded our thousands of years of study and worship for what, a culture like the other cultures. Nakba is the day when some of our antecedents gave religion away to become landlords like all the other landlords. And it was a terrible milestone on the road to doing genocide.

Nakba is our day to remember that disavowing is not enough. We are still implicated in Israel’s structures of power and violence. I am involved, obligated in the present tense. I was raised on the story and its benefits are offered to me. Israel writes for me a so-called law of return while Palestinians have not realised their UN-mandated right to return.

When I lived in Gaza, I did not see enmity in my colleagues’ eyes. I saw the future. I saw them crafting explanations for the bombardments to prevent their small children from living lives blighted by hatred. What on earth can Gazan parents say today? I saw all the anger I would feel at the Zionist project which classified my colleagues’ lives ethnically, deprived their children and separated their families, stunted and shortened their lives. What must they feel today? So Nakba is a day to feel all my discomfort as I listen and continue to unwrap the training that enlisted me in the project of their deprivation.

This year, this Nakba Day we are all Palestinian and we are all holding back our despair. As a Jew I belong in those streets, those canyons of rubble. I walk with the homeless, I weep with the bereaved and I wish I could comfort every motherless child. If I hope to live in peace and justice with Palestine tomorrow, I must walk each step with Palestinians to get there.

Nakba is being done again, still. This Nakba is a day for Jews of conscience to recommit to return, restoration, reparation and justice.

Nakba is just one day. Together we all commit to the daily, steady work of making this stop and sowing the seeds of real justice. If this is your first act of solidarity, please don’t let it be your last.

B’Tzedek

Marilyn Garson for Alternative Jewish Voices of Atoearoa

May 15, 2024

Israel’s War on Journalism

By Jeremy Rose

Ahmed Alnaoug appearing in one of numerous interviews following the massacre of 21 of his family members in Gaza on 21 October last year.

Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq’s first published story dealt with what he described as Israel’s murder of his brother Ayman in 2014.

The IDF would call it self-defence or mowing the lawn – a common phrase in Israel for the periodic attacks on Gaza aimed at depleting Hamas’s military capacity.

The essay – published on the We Are Not Numbers website –  describes Ayman coming home, in the early 2000s, after five of his primary school mates had been killed by Israeli soldiers, and another 12 injured while playing.

By the time Israel invaded Gaza in what it dubbed Operation Cast Lead, in 2008, Ayman was in secondary school and once again he saw friends being killed.

Operation Cast Lead left 1400 Palestinians dead, 46,000 homes destroyed and more than 100,000 homeless. Thirteen Israeli soldiers died during the invasion. 

The blockade that followed the war left Ayman and Ahmed’s disabled, taxi driver father unemployed as the supply of petrol dried up. As the eldest son Ayman took on the role of breadwinner.

Then in 2012 Israel again “mowed the lawn” in Operation Pillar of Defence – and once again hundreds were killed and thousands left homeless.

“When this war was over, Ayman was not the same,” Ahmed wrote.

His older brother joined Hamas’ armed resistance force – the Al Qassam Brigades.

It was a decision that would cost him his life. In 2014  Israel yet again invaded Gaza and Ayman was killed by a missile fired from an F16 as he as he made his way to battle the IDF

The world is divided on what to call the likes of Ayman. To Palestinians he’s a martyr, a freedom fighter, and a patriot – to Israelis  he’s a terrorist.

Some will praise him for his decision to join the armed struggle. Others will condemn him.

Ahmed chose another form of resistance: journalism.

In 2014 he helped set up We Are Not Numbers, a website that provides a platform for young Gazans to share their stories, in English, with the outside world.

Then in 2019 he teamed up with Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham to bring the stories to an Israeli audience in Hebrew in a project called We Beyond the Fence.                 

On October 21 of last year Israel dropped a bomb on Ahmed’s family home killing 21 members of his family – including 14 of his nieces and nephews all under the age of 13.

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The house was in the south of Gaza in an area Israel had declared a safe zone.

Ahmed heard of the massacre in the UK where’s he’s on scholarship.

He’s been tirelessly telling people the stories behind the numbers ever since.

But as we enter to seventh month of what leading Holocaust scholar, Hebrew University professor, Amos Goldberg, last week, declared to be a genocide, the numbers tell other important and horrific stories.

The media has been updating the death count daily  – currently it’s over 34,000 the vast majority women, children and civilian men – but there are other numbers that are less well known.

Around 100 journalists – 10% of Gaza’s journalists have been killed to date. It’s by far the most deadly war for journalist in the 21^st Century.

The reason I’ve fudged the numbers is twofold: firstly whatever figure I use is likely to be out of date by the time this story goes to print; and, secondly there’s a discrepancy between the figures given by the Committee to Protect Journalists which reports that 92 Palestinian, three Lebanese and two Israeli journalists have died since the  Hamas’ October 7 attack and the Gaza media office which claims more than 140 journalists have been killed

The Palestinian Journalist Syndicate reports that 84 media offices have been bombed – including the We Are Not Numbers offices.

Prof. Goldberg includes the targeting of journalists in his carefully argued case for declaring the assault of Gaza to be genocidal.

“What is happening in Gaza is genocide because the level and pace of indiscriminate killing, destruction, mass expulsions, displacement, famine, executions, the wiping out of cultural and religious institutions, the crushing of elites (including the killing of journalists), and the sweeping dehumanisation of the Palestinians — create an overall picture of genocide, of a deliberate conscious crushing of Palestinian existence in Gaza.”

Reporters Without Borders filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court on October 31 last year, asking for an investigation into the targeting of journalists by Israel which it believes constitutes war crimes.

And in February a group of UN experts, including four special rapporteurs,  issued a statement calling on the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court  to look into the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza.

“We have received disturbing reports that, despite being clearly identifiable in jackets and helmets marked “press” or travelling in well-marked press vehicles, journalists have come under attack, which would seem to indicate that the killings, injury, and detention are a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to obstruct the media and silence critical reporting,” a spokesperson wrote.

Ahmed Alnaouq is far from alone among Gaza’s journalists in having multiple family members murdered. Last week he tweeted: “Israel killed my sister and all her children while sheltering in my home in October. Today they have bombed her husband’s home. This home sheltered over 70 people. 7 flats.”

Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief Wael Al Dahdour – probably Gaza’s best known journalist – lost his wife, son, daughter and grandchild, when an Israeli airstrike hit their home in the Nuseirat refugee camp on 25 October last year.

On 7 January his son, Hamza Al Dahdouh, a journalist, was killed by an Israeli airstrike while travelling in a car, marked press,  along with a colleague. 

It’s an open question whether Israel is targeting not just journalists but their families.

What is certain is that Israel has a terrifyingly high threshold for the number of civilian deaths resulting from its targeted killing.

Yuval Abraham – who worked with Ahmed on the We Beyond the Fence project – published an investigation on the progressive  +972 website which revealed an AI programme called Lavender that identified 37,000 suspected militants in the first weeks of the war.

The article, based on interviews with six IDF intelligence officers, claimed Israel systematically targeted those on the kill list while they were home usually at night.

Another automated system called Where’s Daddy? was developed to identify when suspected militants arrived home.

Two of those interviewed claimed that in the early weeks of the war it was permissible for 15 to 20 civilians to be killed for every militant targeted.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement in December saying it was alarmed by journalists in Gaza reporting death threats and subsequently their family members being killed.

“The killing of the family members of journalists in Gaza is making it almost impossible for the journalists to continue reporting, as the risk now extends beyond them also to include their beloved ones,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour.

Last Sunday Israel closed Al Jazeera’s office in occupied East Jerusalem, confiscating broadcast equipment and taking the channel off air.

The move comes almost exactly two years after an IDF soldier shot and killed the American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh while covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank for Al Jazeera.

At first, Israel claimed Abu Akleh, who was wearing a blue vest identifying her as media, has been shot by a Palestinian militant. When that story became untenable, due to video evidence, the IDF launched its own investigation which declared there was a high probability that the Al Jazeera journalist had been accidentally hit by an IDF bullet and there would no further criminal investigation.

Israel’s targeting of journalists and their families, the closure of Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem office, the imprisonment and alleged torture of journalists, and the refusal to let foreign journalists enter Gaza amounts to a war on journalism.

Ahmed Alnaouq remains committed to the craft of journalism but he’s critical of much of the mainstream coverage of Israel’s assault of Gaza.

“The Western media played a pivotal role in the murder of 21 members of my family, including my parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews,” he tweeted on X.

“Yes, Israel executed the attack and the US supplied the weaponry, BUT the Western media provided cover. I hold every propagandist for Israel and every Western journalist who repeated the narrative of “Israel’s right to self-defense” against the civilian population of Gaza, including children and women, accountable. The era of diplomacy is past. It’s time to call these terrorists by their true name: enablers of genocide. I refuse to tolerate Israeli propaganda any longer. I refuse to be intimidated any longer, and neither should anyone else.”

With leading Holocaust scholars like Amos Goldberg declaring Israel guilty of genocide it’s time for media outlets to ask themselves whether Ahmed Alnaouq has a point.

Jeremy Rose is a founding member of Alternative Jewish Voices