The twentieth of April 2024 was a stormy Saturday, and by 11am the Ostend market was almost deserted. One stall still stood proud in wind and rain, its red awning sagging, its distinctive flags flapping wetly over pamphlets, buttons, posters – and Liz Eastmond, huddled inside.
Admiring her commitment, I stopped to take photographs. Liz, a writer, researcher and art curator is the founder of Stand with Palestine Waiheke, and she has raised thousands of dollars for medical aid to Palestine.
Most Waihekeans know that stall. We see it every weekend, and we thought we would keep seeing Liz in there too. But the toughest of health news has taken Liz to hospital, and now her many friends are taking it in turns to look after the stall.
“It takes around four or five of us to fill in for Liz,” Rodney Davis told me when I visited. “She does so much.”
I know Liz would want me to stop talking about her stall, and start talking about the reason for the stall, and so I will.
Some say the situation in Gaza is complex, although Vincent Fean, the former British Consul General to Jerusalem, captures it in a sentence. “Israel’s international standing has disintegrated because of its total destruction of Gaza, calculated starvation policy and plans for forced migration in Gaza and in the West Bank, where illegal settlers kill with impunity and the economy hangs by a thread.”
This month Helen Clark and Ireland’s former PM Mary Robinson watched as Israeli officials stopped baby food and crutches from entering Gaza at the Rafah border crossing. “What we saw and heard underlines our personal conviction that there is not only an unfolding, human-caused famine in Gaza. There is an unfolding genocide.” To Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, the Israeli cabinet has “lost its reason and humanity”. New Zealand PM Christopher Luxon says Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “lost the plot”.
The New York Times and the BBC (among others) have published lengthy investigations into the targeting of young children by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza, a cage they cannot flee. In October 2024 the New York Times ran a piece titled 65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza. Forty-four of those interviewed had seen multiple cases of preteen children shot in the head or chest in Gaza, often presenting at the same time; 52 had seen young children who were suicidal, or said they wished they had died.
The Guardian reports more child amputees in Gaza than anywhere else in the world. This month, the IDF admitted deliberately killing a respected Al Jazeera correspondent and five of his colleagues in Gaza. Days later, they bombed a Gaza hospital twice, killing rescuers and another five journalists.
Recognising Palestine is not just “sending a message.” It is not just a sign of our collective revulsion against these atrocities. Recognising Palestine upholds the rights of Palestinian people to determine their own future in their own state – Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. These areas have been unlawfully occupied by Israel, whose extremist government is claiming all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The Knesset has voted (71-13) to annex the West Bank, and last week a government committee approved plans for 3,400 settler homes there. Israel’s fanatical Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich exulted that the Palestinian state was “being erased”.
As momentum builds for the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, opening on 9 September, Australia has committed to recognizing Palestine, joining 147 out of 193 UN nations. Since late July, France, Britain and Canada have announced they will follow suit.
New Zealand is hedging. “New Zealand has been clear for some time that our recognition of a Palestinian state is a matter of when, not if” Foreign Minister Winston Peters prevaricates, refusing to say when that ‘when’ might be.
Helen Clark wants targeted sanctions against Prime Minister Netanyahu and his security cabinet. Last month, thirty-one high-profile Israelis went further, calling for ‘crippling sanctions’ against Israel for “starving the people of Gaza to death”. Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick’s proposed bill would enable sanctions against those responsible for, or associated with, the presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Trade deals and arms exports to Israel must end. This affects New Zealand too; just last week our military admitted it hasn’t ruled out buying drones from Israel.
New Zealand must also join others in pushing for an oil embargo against Israel, and for it to be suspended from the UN.
As Swarbrick told reporters this month after being thrown out of parliament for calling coalition MPs spineless, “New Zealanders… expect their so-called leaders to just do something and to do the right thing, and it’s pretty bloody clear what the right thing is here.”
• Jenny Nicholls
Where to donate: psna.nz/where-to-donate-for-palestine
