Protest against slaughter in Gaza - Today (30th) 4pm, US Consulate, Citibank, 23 Customs St East

Today’s protest will focus on -

1. The deafening silence of the New Zealand government on the massacre in Gaza. New Zealand should unreservedly condemn Israel’s slaughter in Gaza and support calls for an international boycott of Israel.

2. The unconditional support for the slaughter given by the US government. Israel would not be able to continue to imprison one and a half million Palestinians in Gaza without US political and military support. The US does this not because it believes what Israel is doing is right but because it suits US interests to have a client state in the middle-east.

3. The misinformation spread by groups such as the New Zealand Jewish Council which for example claims Hamas is a terrorist organisation when it is in fact a democratically elected political organisation.

The situation of Palestinians trapped in the open-air prison which is Gaza resembles the plight of Jews trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland in the 1940s by the Nazis. Confined in this slum Jews led an uprising in 1943 which was brutally suppressed in much the same way as the some of the descendents of those heroic Polish Jews now besiege and slaughter Palestinians in Gaza.

We should celebrate the fighting spirit of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto just as should celebrate the fighting spirit of Palestinians under siege in Gaza.

Israel has no justification to attack Gaza. The problem is not the amateur rockets fired into Israel from Gaza but Israeli policies which have turned the Gaza strip into a massive open-air prison for one and a half million Palestinians. Israel has blocked off land, sea and air access while regularly choking off energy and food supplies along with work access for Palestinians. Under these appalling of circumstances it would be astonishing if Palestinians did not fight back. They have lived in an Israeli-created hell-hole of deprivation and oppression for 60 years.

New Zealand supported the French resistance fighting German occupation of France in the 1940s and we should do the same for the Palestinians.

Having been driven from their homes and land 60 years ago by Jewish terror squads the Palestinians are left with just 22% of the land of the original Palestine. It was nothing short of an exercise in ethnic cleansing which is mirrored today in the racist laws which give second class citizenship to non-Jews in Israel.

Not content with seizing most of the land for an exclusive Jewish state the remaining Palestinian land on the West Bank is criss-crossed with Israeli-only, military-patrolled roads which link together new Jewish settlements being built on Palestinian land. All this despite innumerable UN resolutions calling on Israel to abide by international law.

Just three weeks ago the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said Israel's discrimination between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank was increasingly reminiscent of white South Africa's apartheid system. The group said Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory

"have created a situation of institutionalised discrimination and segregation.”

"The discrimination in services, budgets and access to natural resources between the two groups in the same territory constitutes a stark violation of the principle of equality, which is reminiscent in many and increasing ways of the apartheid regime that was applied in South Africa."

New Zealand should condemn Israeli brutality and support the Palestinian struggle. We should also celebrate the actions of Israeli activists such as Neta Golan who was arrested by Israeli police earlier this month for joining the crew of the fifth boat to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, bringing much needed supplies to the territory.

It’s time for real pressure on the US and the rogue state of Israel.

ENDS

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