US Starts New Horror Show For Israel
PSNA Co-Chair, Maher Nazzal, says he hopes, but does not expect, that the New Zealand government will be critical of the US for its war escalation.
'Israel has once again hoodwinked the United States into fighting Israel's wars.
'Israel's Prime Minister has declared Iran to be on the point of producing nuclear weapons since the 1990s. It's all part of his big plan for expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine to create a Greater Israel, and regime change for the entire region.'
'Israel knows Arab and European countries will fall in behind these plans and in many cases actually help implement them.'
'It is a dreadful day for the Palestinians. Netanyahu's forces will be turned back onto them in Gaza and the West Bank.'
'It is just as dreadful day for the whole Middle East. Trump has tried to add Iran to the disasters of US foreign policy in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The US simply doesn't care how many people will die.'
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NZ Herald
an hour ago
- NZ Herald
‘You don't want to go there': Ron Mark's message to Kiwis wanting to take up arms against Russia in Ukraine
Other phone calls come from closer to home: New Zealanders – including civilians and current or former New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) soldiers - considering joining the International Legion. Mark knows the reality of the risks: he's visited the front line during three trips to Ukraine. He said his regular response to those keen to fight is 'think again'. Former Minister of Defence Ron Mark has had many harrowing phone calls with Kiwis serving with the Ukraine International Legion, and those considering it. Photo / Neil Reid 'I keep saying to people, 'You don't want to go there... I don't care how many tours of Afghanistan you did... you didn't do this',' he told the New Zealand Herald. One soldier, who Mark couldn't dissuade from travelling to Ukraine, talked of how the NZDF had provided him with a skill and he wanted to 'offer that skill to Ukraine'. Mark estimates there are dozens of New Zealanders who - like the soldier he encouraged not to head to Ukraine - have signed up with the International Legion. Some have now been there fighting for three years. Mark told the Herald it's 'astonishing' some of them are still alive. Mark said they fell into three categories; those with some military experience, others with extensive experience - and others with no military experience at all. 'Some of them have gone through some pretty harrowing, horrible s***,' he said. Ron Mark has visited Ukraine three times since it was invaded by Russia. New Zealand Herald composite photograph Several legionnaires have returned to New Zealand to recover from injuries, then returned to Ukraine to continue to fight, he said. At least four New Zealanders are known to have died in the European nation since Russia invaded in February 2022: three soldiers - Dominic Abelen, Kane Te Tai and Shan-Le Kearns - and one aid worker, Andrew Bagshaw. Mark said 'considerably more' Kiwis have been maimed on the battlefields. Shan-le Kearns, 26, is the fourth New Zealander and most recent known to have died in Ukraine. Photo / Supplied Members of the International Legion are paid at the same rate as soldiers in the Ukraine Army; $840 a month behind the frontline, $2000 a month for service in a 'dangerous zone' and $7500 a month for a full combat deployment. Compensation is given to those who suffer life-changing injuries; the amount depending on the severity. Former New Zealand Army soldiers Dominic Abelen (left) and Kane Te Tai (right) both lost their lives fighting in Ukraine. Photo / Supplied When proof of death is confirmed – requiring the return of a body or body part for DNA testing - families of soldiers killed in action can receive a compensation payment of $615,000. 'Let me assure you, they are not doing it for the money,' Mark said. Mark said his experience of the Ukrainian military is that they mourn the loss of Kiwis on the frontlines as if they were locals. Russian leader Vladimir Putin shakes hands with US president Donald Trump during the latest round of talks. Photo / Getty Images 'They serve loyally and faithfully,' Mark said of the Kiwi contingent. 'I felt like a failure; it hurt' Mark was outraged when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 - but it was a month later when his interest was piqued. He fielded a phone call from Ukraine. On the other end was Owen Pomana; a former New Zealand Navy diver deported from Australia as a 501 convict. He had abandoned drug abuse and crime for a life of faith and become a church pastor. New Zealand pastor Owen Pomana, right, headed to Ukraine shortly after Russia invaded. Photo / Supplied Pomana had travelled to Ukraine to take up a humanitarian role with Great Commission Society (GCS) an evangelical organisation that provides aid to victims of conflict and disaster around the world. He wanted Mark to help lobby the New Zealand Government for body armour and helmets to be given to unarmed aid workers going into conflict zones. Owen Pomana - in front of a shelled building in Ukraine - rang Ron Mark for help with aid missions. Photo / Supplied That attempt failed, and so too did an effort to get the Government to pay for charter buses to speed up mass evacuations from Mariupol into Romania. Pomana and his colleagues had to face the heartbreaking reality of leaving behind many who wanted to escape the bloody battle. 'I felt like a failure. And it hurt,' Mark said. 'I couldn't understand how it could be so hard, why people wouldn't lean in.' Ron Mark says he felt like he had failed when he couldn't get transport for Owen Pomana. Photo / Neil Reid The frustration unleashed a desire within Mark to do more. His first trip to Ukraine was just three months after the Russian invasion. His second was in July 2022. All three of his trips to Ukraine have been self-funded during annual leave from his role as mayor of Carterton. He juggled fact-finding with helping out on aid delivery for the Rapid Relief Team – created by the brethren church in Australia – and GCS. It was work that took him to some of the conflict's frontlines. Ukraine's defensive lines in Donetsk have held against recent pressure from Russian forces. Photo / Getty Images His travels with aid convoys took him to Bucha – scene of the mass murder of civilians and prisoners of war, and past bombed-out locations near Kharkiv, including large 'shell holes' and scenes of 'devastation and utter demolition of villages'. On one occasion his military escort was a soldier who wasted no time in laying out the risks - telling Mark 'the Russians are in line of sight. They have line of sight on us at this location' he said. A layer of light steel had been added to the interior of the doors of the vans – carrying thousands of meals and several aid workers – in a bid to slow shrapnel or bullets that may pass through them. 'It wouldn't stop bugger all, but it made you feel good,' Mark said. A civilian vehicle in the city of Irpin peppered with hundreds of bullet holes. Photo / Olena Kalashnikova They were living in homes with roofs that were either partially collapsed or had shell-fire damage. On a shelf at the Carterton house Mark shares with his partner, Chris Tracey, are pieces of twisted, jagged shrapnel the former MP recovered from his trips to the frontlines. 'They're just to remind me of the craziness and the bravery and the dedication of some impressive people whose names will never be known to anyone' he said. The tail section of a Russian rocket in the Donbas region. Photo / supplied 'Four Māori walk into a bar in Kyiv' Humour can cut through the darkest of circumstances. During Mark's last trip to Ukraine, in July, he met three fellow māori New Zealanders for a beer in Kyiv: Pomana, a surgeon who has been in Ukraine for three years, and a NZDF-trained sniper. The surgeon is doing life-saving work, Mark said. 'Kiwis tend to side with the underdog. I always believe that Kiwis will always line up with what they believe to be right and against what they believe to be wrong.' Kiwi aid worker Andrew Bagshaw tragically lost his life trying to help others. Photo / Sebastian Polarchski Mark said their commitment reminds him of those who volunteered to fight in WWI and WWII. '[Colonising] might be a popular word right now. But I saw the physical signs of the Russians trying to eliminate Ukrainian language. I saw the road signs that had all been painted over and stencilled over the top with the Russian wording, the Russian language. 'Stories about them kidnapping children, taking them away to concentration camps where they're going to be re-educated in the Russian way. 'Because of that, it doesn't surprise me how many Māori are over there. It's probably an equal number of Pākehā to Māori.' Ukrainian territorial defence soldiers from the Donetsk Oblast fire D-20 artillery in the direction of Toretsk, Photo / Getty Images Amass drone strike - at least 550 drones loaded with explosives - hit areas of Kyiv near Mark's Airbnb while he was on a FaceTime call with his partner, Chris Tracey, back in Carterton. 'Chris said, 'Why do they attack at night'. I said, 'Terror babe, it's just terror'. There were times when he moved his mattress from the street-front room and slept in the hallway where he felt safer from drones and missiles. A civilian apartment block damaged in a mass drone attack in Kyiv. Photo / Getty Images On other occasions he took shelter in the Kyiv underground train system, surrounded by families. 'Imagine 10 o'clock at night, you've already got the kids in bed, and you don't have your husband because he's on the frontline, and you may have elderly families staying with you,' he said. 'Imagine bundling all that up - bedding, sleeping bags, bundling up bedrolls and children and the cat and the dog and in one case, a little girl wanted to take a goldfish, herding them out the door. When the air raid alarms go off, you've got to move. 'You look around and you see families setting up their own little family space.' When Mark travels to Ukraine his partner Chris Tracey faces a nervous wait. Tracey said she was '1000% proud' of her partner and the pair have discussed what should happen back home if he dies. The profile of former Defence Minister Ron Mark added to a website that lists those deemed by "patriots" of Russia to be enemies of the state. Photo / Supplied 'He's passionate about the guys and the girls that are over there, who are working hard and putting their lives at risk every day. Tracey said there was no point in her being scared and worried. 'There's no part of me that would ever say to him, 'I don't want you to go, please don't go'.' 'I wouldn't want him going over there feeling like he was not taking good care of me, or that he was leaving me in that kind of mindset. Chris Tracey says she is incredibly proud of her partner, former Minister of Defence Ron Mark for what he is trying to do for Ukraine. Photo / Supplied She said Mark always gave her the credentials of those he would spend time with in Ukraine, planned well and was not one to take unnecessary risks. Mark is also well aware the fact he is a former Minister of Defence visiting Ukraine – and supporting their cause – had the potential to cause embarrassment to Russia. Last week the Herald revealed he had been targeted by a website created by Russian 'patriots' that publishes profiles on enemies of the country and warns 'Know that your hostile actions will not go unpunished'. Ron Mark and his partner Chris Tracey have had honest conversations about the risk in Ukraine, and what should happen if something happens to the former Minister of Defence while in the war-torn country. Photo / Supplied 'I'm not blind to the dangers I face the moment I indicate I am going to Ukraine,' Mark said. 'I think Chris knows me well enough to know that once I have a mind to do something, it's a question of how I'm going to do it - not if.' Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 33 years of newsroom experience. Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
NZ Herald
an hour ago
- NZ Herald
Gaza and the Government: How to ‘grow a spine'
Such bravery. The Costs of War project says more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both world wars, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia and the US war in Afghanistan combined. A funeral last week in Gaza City for journalists killed in an Israeli strike. Photo / Saher Alghorra / New York Times Australia, Britain, France, Canada and more than 140 other countries have now recognised Palestine as a state, or announced they will do so. New Zealand has not. I don't believe this reluctance stems from some softly, softly diplomatic strategy. On the contrary, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has said his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu has 'lost the plot'. So why has the Government not joined with most of the rest of the world in recognising Palestine? Perhaps the strongest opposition to doing this has been voiced by Act MP Simon Court. Is that party calling the shots? More questions. Is Israel committing genocide? Is it using famine deliberately as a weapon of war? Even if you don't want to go that far, the horror is real. While precision strikes are widely used against Hamas targets, the larger reality is that whole cities and towns are being annihilated. Beyond the campaign to eliminate Hamas terrorists, this is a war on a massive scale on a civilian population. To me, this makes the Government's inability to line up in defence of the people of Gaza a catastrophic moral failure. I assume New Zealanders who've been protesting weekly, across the country, would agree. And, as Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick implied when she talked of needing to find coalition MPs 'with a spine', it is a failure of our own democracy. I want to come back to Gaza, but first I want to look at what the impasse means for the authority of the Government and the future of MMP. Isn't it time for Parliament to grow a spine? Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick speaking in Parliament during a debate on Palestine. Photo / Screengrab via Parliament TV New Zealand's mixed-member proportional representation system has been evolving for 29 years. For much of the time, the major parties have formed a succession of minority governments, with confidence-and-supply agreements from minor parties. In 2005, for example, Labour's Helen Clark needed the support of the Greens and NZ First, so had to create policies that were acceptable to both. In 2008, John Key's National Party won 58 seats, just short of a majority. All he needed to govern was support from either Act or the Māori Party, both of which had five seats. Cleverly, he didn't choose one over the other but governed by toggling between them. He didn't have to agree to anything Act said, if the Māori Party supported him, and vice versa. This arrangement powerfully reinforced his political appeal as a centrist. Labour's Dame Jacinda Ardern, following him, found herself in a formal coalition with NZ First and the Greens. Policy agreements hammered out in coalition talks had to be honoured. Largely, though, it was the minor parties that had to swallow each other's dead rats. Labour was less compromised. In 2023, this changed again. Luxon arrived in Government with a pair of indestructible stone tablets hanging round his neck. Each contained a long list and ticking off those lists – the policy goals of Act and NZ First – has often seemed to be his main job. The consequences have been ludicrous and damaging. The divisiveness of David Seymour's Treaty Principles Bill, Shane Jones' cheerleading for the fossil-fuel industry and NZ First's culture-war barrage have undermined us socially, environmentally and economically. But they have also undermined Luxon. Critics accuse him of inept and weak leadership, and he may find that impossible to shake off. Prime Minister Christoper Luxon, in the foreign policy pool with Winston Peters and Judith Collins. Illustration / Rod Emmerson The situation is now so absurd, the Prime Minister seems unable to wrest the lead away from Seymour on Gaza, even though the issue has nothing to do with their coalition agreement. On this as on so much else, he seems traumatised, a proverbially trapped possum with the twin headlights of his minor partners' truck close to running him over. Is there a lesson to learn? The obvious one is that shopping-list coalition agreements are a blight on good government. Is there a solution? Yes, there is. It's called Parliament. From time to time, the major parties have agreed to agree and have passed good laws as a result. This famously happened in 2007, when Labour and National supported Green Party MP Sue Bradford's Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill, more commonly known as the anti-smacking law. Because of Parliament, decency prevailed. Isn't that the model for progress now? Parliament could agree to recognise Palestine, thus lining up with the pre-eminent diplomatic effort to end the war in Gaza. What else could National propose, with support from Labour, to escape the tail-wags-dog mess it's mired in now? Legislative respect for te ao Māori, which National used to understand quite deeply, would be a good place to start. Meanwhile, people die every day in Gaza. And, incredibly, a recent poll found that almost 80% of Jewish Israelis believe Israel is making an effort to avoid causing suffering in Gaza. But the tide may be turning in America. A recent Gallup poll found support for Israel's war has fallen from 42% a year ago to 32% now. That's the lowest it's been since the war began, after Hamas' horrifying attack on October 7, 2023, which claimed about 1200 lives. And 52% of Americans view Netanyahu unfavourably. That's his worst rating since 1997, the year after he first came to power. Luxon isn't going to wait until it's just him and maybe Donald Trump holding out, is he? Eighty years ago, over consecutive nights in February 1945, Allied bombers dropped 4000 tonnes of explosives and incendiary devices on Dresden, Germany. The bombs and the raging infernos they ignited killed 25,000 people, nearly all of them civilians. The next month, the same thing was done to Tokyo, this time killing 100,000 civilians. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August escalated the terror twice more. A protest in Gisborne against Israel's war on Gaza earlier this month, one of many that have been across the country. Photo / Gisborne Herald After the war, the world adopted the Geneva Conventions, which, it was hoped, would prevent such horrors happening again. War crimes became a thing. Democracy bombed those cities. No one was ever charged with war crimes, although we know now those bombings were wrong. Their purpose was to end the war, but in all four cities they were wildly out of scale with that purpose. Just as it is out of scale in Gaza. In the same way, we know the war on the people of Gaza is wrong too. We can't make peace happen, but we can support those who might be able to.
Scoop
10 hours ago
- Scoop
World Humanitarian Day Calls For Urgent Action In Gaza
Palestine Forum of New Zealand Marks World Humanitarian Day, Calls for Urgent Action in Gaza On this World Humanitarian Day, the Palestine Forum of New Zealand solemnly recognizes the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where years of blockade, conflict, and systematic deprivation continue to devastate lives. The situation in Gaza has reached critical levels. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians face food and water shortages, disrupted healthcare services, and a lack of necessities. Children, the elderly, and the most vulnerable communities are bearing the brunt of this prolonged crisis. 'The people of Gaza are living under conditions that most of us cannot even imagine,' said Maher Nazzal, 'World Humanitarian Day is a reminder that the international community must act to alleviate suffering, protect civilians, and uphold the rights of Palestinians to live with dignity and security.' We urges governments, humanitarian organizations, and civil society globally to: Increase immediate humanitarian assistance to Gaza. Advocate for an end to the blockade and restrictions that exacerbate suffering. Support sustainable solutions that ensure long-term safety, healthcare, and education for Palestinian communities. World Humanitarian Day is a time to honour the courage of humanitarian workers, recognize the resilience of affected communities, and reaffirm our commitment to justice and human rights for all. We call on New Zealanders to stand in solidarity with Gaza and amplify the voices of those living through the humanitarian catastrophe.
