By Elliot Crossan
There are no words strong enough to condemn the horror that is currently unfolding in Palestine.
The state of Israel has imposed a months-long blockade on humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip. Gaza had already been teetering on the brink of famine since October 7. Last week, the UN-backed IPC agency told the world that “the worst-case scenario of famine is now unfolding in the Gaza Strip.” Millions will soon die if unrestricted aid is not allowed through the Israeli blockade. Even if immediate humanitarian relief is allowed into Gaza tomorrow, many will still carry irreversible damage to their bodies as a result of prolonged starvation.
In response to backlash in May, the Israeli and US governments launched the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an organisation which has delivered a paltry amount of aid while routinely shooting Palestinians desperate for food. More than a thousand civilians have been killed while waiting in line.
International condemnation of the man-made famine has continued to grow since the GHF was established. In late July, Israel began airdropping food into Gaza — a dehumanising practice — and has created limited corridors to allow some aid to enter.
Aid groups have condemned these moves as woefully inadequate amidst the growing famine. Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s policy lead, describes the measures as token gestures. “They’re theatrics, they’re designed from my perspective to deflect scrutiny. We’re being blocked and delayed at every turn.” Previously, aid workers crossing the border have reported that Israel is confiscating from them any items that may be used to alleviate the crisis, including baby formula.
Now Israel’s Security Cabinet has approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to send several IDF divisions in to occupy Gaza. The Guardian reports that the plan “would mean sending ground troops into the few areas of the strip that have not been totally destroyed, roughly 25% of the territory where many of its 2 million people have sought refuge.” This would represent a further escalation by Israel, in yet another breach of the peace negotiations which Netanyahu clearly has no interest in abiding by, and will result in countless more Palestinian deaths.
Meanwhile, incidents of settler violence are escalating in the West Bank. Awdah Hathaleen, an activist and filmmaker who helped create the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was shot in the chest by an Israeli settler on Monday last week.
International human rights groups have long since labelled Israel’s campaign in Gaza as a genocide. Even leading Israeli human rights organisations have now admitted this to be the case. The horrific images coming out of Gaza are indistinguishable from pictures of Nazi concentration camps; then as now, a campaign of extermination is being waged against an ethnic group.
This genocide is not a response to the October 7 attacks. It is the logical conclusion of a project of ethnic cleansing that began with the event known in Arabic as the Nakba (the Catastrophe) in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were violently expelled from their lands to make way for the foundation of the state of Israel.
Zionist ideology claims that the Jewish people have a God-given right to the land in which Palestinian Arabs have lived for centuries — and that they have the right to claim it by force. Israel is a settler-colonial state built on stolen land; it is an ethnostate, one that cannot tolerate the existence of a majority-Arab population, and which must therefore ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem and the West Bank. Genocide is the only logical conclusion of Zionist ideology. October 7 merely gave the Netanyahu government the excuse to accelerate this project of ethnic cleansing which has been in progress for nearly eight decades.
A Reckoning
80 years ago, as Europe was liberated from the Nazis, the scale and horror of the Holocaust was revealed to the world. Six million Jews had been killed, along with several million others including Slavs, Romani, LGBT and disabled people, and activists and leaders from trade unions and left-wing political parties. 1945 and the years that followed saw humanity struggle to reckon with the abominable crimes committed by a fascist regime intent on exterminating all those it deemed to be enemies.
The humanitarian laws and conventions that the nations of the world are supposed to uphold to this day were created to prevent such a nightmare from ever occurring in the future. There was a reckoning with fascism. There was a reckoning with the widespread antisemitism which led Hitler’s regime to brand the Jewish people as subhuman before embarking upon its campaign of extermination. The world cried out: Never Again.
This time, it will come as no shock when the full scale of Israel’s cruelty and murder is revealed to the world. Palestinians have live streamed the crimes of the IDF every day for nearly two years. IDF soldiers have proudly posed for pictures amongst the rubble of Gaza.
The same reckoning must happen again today. In 2025, we must reckon with the fascist ideology of Zionism which dominates Israeli society. We must reckon with the Islamophobia which has underpinned Western intervention in the Middle East for a quarter of a century, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Yemen. We must reckon with the rhetoric of dehumanisation which frames refugees fleeing to Western countries as a “swarm” or a “horde” of “illegal aliens.” The rhetoric which led the Christchurch shooter to kill 51 Muslims and injure 89 at their place of worship in this country just six years ago. The rhetoric which the state of Israel is taking to its logical conclusion with its genocide of the Palestinian people.
Complicit Western Leaders Begin to Change Their Tune
“One day, everyone will always have been against this.”
Omar El Akkad’s prophecy is playing out in front of our eyes. One by one, as the man-made famine in Gaza enters its final stages, Western journalists and politicians are beginning to speak out against Israel’s actions, calling for urgent measures to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe.
Governments, politicians and media organisations who are speaking out now after giving Israel cover for 22 months of genocide made a choice. They knew precisely what Israel was doing. They justified atrocity after atrocity, yet now claim that Israel has gone “too far.” Only now, as horrific images of starving children roll in and the backlash becomes overwhelming, are they choosing to switch gears and denounce the famine they helped create.
Yesterday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz responded to Netanyahu’s plan to further escalate the war by halting German arms exports to Israel. However, this export ban will only cover weapons “that could be used in Gaza.” Keir Starmer’s government in the UK announced a similar partial arms embargo in the wake of Labour’s election victory last year — yet Al Jazeera reported in May that thousands of munitions have been sent to Israel since this announcement. Even so, Merz’s decision will have more impact — 30% of Israel’s weapons between 2019 and 2023 came from Germany, making Germany by far the largest exporter of weapons to Israel other than the United States.
Every Western leader who gave weapons to Israel over the last 22 months — Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Olaf Scholz, Rishi Sunak, Merz, Starmer and others — made a choice. A choice to directly arm a state committing the worst crime of which humanity is capable. The deaths of hundreds of thousands, and the suffering of two million people, is on their hands.
In a just world, every single one of these people would join Israeli government and military officials at the Hague. Yet just as Bush administration officials and members of the Blair government continue to live privileged lives to this day after their illegal invasion of Iraq, it is entirely possible that Western leaders will once again escape justice for their crimes. It is up to social movements and civil society to demand full and transparent public inquiries into the role Western governments have played in facilitating Israel’s genocide. All those found to be complicit in allowing these horrors to take place must be prosecuted for flagrant breaches of the international framework of human rights created 80 years ago.
Every world leader who maintained friendly relations with Israel, equivocating on the extent of Netanyahu’s crimes, making excuses, up to and including those who made empty calls for a ceasefire whilst refusing to use any tool available to them to put actual pressure on Israel to halt the genocide, is complicit. Christopher Luxon and Winston Peters are complicit.
Journalists who parroted Israeli talking points, who cast doubt on credible reports that the IDF was deliberately targeting hospitals with its bombs, who had more outrage for musicians Kneecap and Bob Vylan than for an army committing crimes against humanity, and who littered every interview with the constant refrain do you condemn Hamas? Do you condemn Hamas? Do you condemn Hamas? They knew better. They had the historic responsibility to tell the world that the crime of crimes was unfolding in Palestine and that Western governments were complicit. They failed.
Members of the United Nations have a legal obligation to do everything in their power to prevent genocide. This means putting maximum diplomatic and economic pressure on rogue states through sanctions, and it means military intervention where possible. The only acceptable position for any political leader with an ounce of humanity was to push urgently for maximum sanctions on Israel once the war of extermination began in 2023.
To every politician and every journalist who failed to do everything in their power to prevent the Gaza genocide: your actions and choices will never be forgotten or forgiven.
Palestinian Statehood
Last week, the New Zealand government joined 14 other countries including France, Australia and Canada in signing a joint statement which calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, expresses “grave concerns” about the humanitarian situation, and reiterates a commitment to recognising a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution. Crucially, this would be a demilitarised state, and Hamas would be disarmed and excluded from being part of governance.
As one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, France was the most powerful signatory to this letter. French President Emmanuel Macron has announced his intention to formally recognise the state of Palestine at the UN General Assembly in September. This begs the question: why not recognise the state of Palestine with immediate effect? Why wait until September? How many more innocent men, women and children will Israel murder in cold blood before the next meeting of the General Assembly?
The United Kingdom, another member of the Security Council, did not sign this statement. Instead, Starmer threatened to recognise a Palestinian state in September unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire and commits to a long-term peace process. Starmer is making recognition of a Palestinian state conditional; he is using the basic, inalienable right of Palestinians to their own state as leverage when calling on Israel to do the absolute bare minimum. The British Prime Minister — a former human rights lawyer — is making a mockery of human rights.
The current status quo in the region is a one-state solution. For decades, Israel has been doing everything in its power to prevent the implementation of a two-state solution so that, through conquest and ethnic cleansing, it can take control of the entire region of “Greater Israel” and settle it with a Jewish-majority population. Israel’s genocide in Gaza, expansion of settlements in the West Bank and illegal occupation of the Golan Heights are all part of this project to force a one-state solution into reality. Israel is armed to the teeth by the West, has repeatedly attacked its neighbours in Lebanon, Syria and Iran, and — unlike any of its neighbours — has a nuclear arsenal.
To call for a demilitarised Palestinian state and the disarming of Hamas in this context is empty rhetoric which gives cover to Israel. Even if Israel agrees to allow a demilitarised Palestinian state — which will only happen as a result of overwhelming pressure from the rest of the world — Israel will continue to hold all of the power. It will continue its practices of Apartheid and ethnic cleansing. If the current war of extermination is halted by a ceasefire, Israel will continue the long, slow genocidal campaign it has been waging since long before October 7.
The Palestinian resistance will not stop fighting back. Hamas has remained consistent: it will not disarm itself until an “independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital” is established. Israel claims it is attempting to eradicate Hamas — yet even if it were to succeed in this goal, all it will do is create the conditions for a new resistance group to emerge. Slaughtering civilians en masse is the most effective way to radicalise a population against you. Calling for the victims of genocide to put down their guns while allowing the perpetrators of genocide to get away scot-free is simply a fantasy.
The only path forward for anyone interested in peace and justice is the creation of a single secular democratic state from the river to the sea, where Arabs, Jews and all other ethnic and religious groups can live together free from Apartheid. Palestinians whose land has been stolen must be guaranteed the right of return.
This will not be easy. The scars of the last 77 years will last for centuries, and in particular the scars of the 1948 Nakba and the ongoing genocide will make peace difficult and harmony impossible for a very long time. International peacekeepers from neutral nations will be necessary to protect the Palestinian population from those who have oppressed them for decades.
The Western nations which bear responsibility for the genocide owe billions in reparations to the people of Gaza to finance the reconstruction. It will take a generation to rebuild.
This is the difficult, fragile future that the Palestinian liberation movement is fighting for. Anything short of this future is a non-starter. The Apartheid ethnostate of Israel must be torn down for this future to succeed. Such an eventuality is nowhere near the lips of any mainstream Western politician at the current moment; it will only be possible if there is overwhelming pressure from below, and if Zionist politicians and organisations are defeated and ousted from public life.
Yet as far-off as this hope currently might seem, we must remember that the global movement to end Apartheid in South Africa also faced challenges which seemed insurmountable. The movement to desegregate the United States struggled in vain for decades. The movement to end the transatlantic slave trade faced perhaps an even greater challenge. In the famous words of Nelson Mandela: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
The Ultimate Litmus Test
If there is any hope at all to be gleaned from the events of the last 22 months — and it feels disrespectful to speak of hope at a time like this — it is in the courageous struggle of the Palestinian people for liberation, and in the Palestine solidarity movement that is growing in strength across the world. Millions have taken to the streets. More and more people are reacting with disgust to the genocide being livestreamed onto their phones. More and more people are speaking out, and more and more people are getting organised.
2025 has seen the Western left begin to recover from the defeats of the late 2010s. This rejuvenation has been fuelled in part by the Palestine solidarity movement. New leaders are emerging such as Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in New York City and rebel ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana in the UK. Alongside their commitment to fighting the billionaire class and improving the lives of working people in their own countries is a commitment to support the movement against genocide and fight for a free Palestine.
Rima Hassan, an MEP from the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI), joined Greta Thunberg and others on the Madleen voyage in June, which sought to break the naval blockade and deliver aid to Gaza. She was kidnapped in international waters by the IDF and held in solitary confinement.
Another attempt was made to break the blockade in July. The Handala was seized two weeks ago along with its crew. Amazon Labor Union co-founder Chris Smalls was singled out by the IDF and assaulted. He was the only African-American aboard the ship, and was beaten and choked by Israeli soldiers. He was released from his illegal imprisonment after five days.
Leadership requires courage. Courage to defy the overwhelming pressure that exists in Western nations to support Israel’s “right to defend itself,” and its justifications for genocide. Any political leader who has failed to show this courage, to show leadership in this dark time, has proven themselves unworthy of support.
This genocide is a litmus test. If our leaders are willing to allow Israel to exterminate the people of Palestine, if they cannot stand up for basic human dignity, we must ask ourselves: will they ever stand up for us? Will they protect us if the going gets tough? Or would they throw anyone under the bus if it was politically convenient for them?
The US, British and German governments are currently proving this point as they continue to escalate crackdowns on the right to protest. Anti-genocide protests across US college campuses in 2024 were met with violent repression; now Trump’s far-right government is illegally detaining anti-genocide protesters, most famously Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained without a warrent by ICE on March 8 and held for 104 days without a criminal charge.
In the UK, the Labour government has proscribed direct action group Palestine Action as a terrorist group, meaning any show of support for the organisation is now punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Palestine Action’s supposed act of terrorism was breaking into an RAF base to spray-paint planes which have been used to assist the Israeli military.
Meanwhile, the German government is ensuring that Germany remains firmly on the wrong side of history by using the memory of the Holocaust to justify its support for another genocide. Palestinian solidarity protests were made illegal in October 2023. Any show of support for the Palestinian cause has been branded as antisemitic and met with fierce repression.
Leaders on the radical left in Britain and France, most prominently former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have been consistent in their support for Palestine, despite the smear campaigns waged by establishment forces attempting to brand them as anti-semitic. They are joined by emerging leaders such as the aforementioned Sultana and Hassan in doing so.
The same cannot be said for the leaders of the US left. On the one hand, two left-wing members of the so-called ‘Squad,’ Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, have consistently opposed the genocide. So too has the aforementioned Mamdani, who has refused to compromise his principles despite overwhelming hostility from the Zionist lobby in the New York mayoral race. All three are Muslim-Americans.
The two most prominent figures on the US left, however, have not been so consistent. Senator Bernie Sanders has pointedly refused to use the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions, while Representative Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez has repeatedly voted in favour of maintaining US funding for Israel’s Iron Dome, which she brands as purely a defensive weapons system that protects civilians. Whilst both politicians have condemned Israel’s war crimes and opposed sending Israel offensive weapons, many supporters of Sanders and AOC have been disappointed with their equivocations.
In Germany, the situation is even more dire. A coalition government led by Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz was in power until May this year, and was responsible for sending military aid to Israel while using false claims of anti-Semitism to criminalise dissent. The Greens were part of this coalition. In the wake of October 7, all parties in the German parliament voted unanimously for a resolution calling for solidarity with Israel. This included Die Linke (the Left Party), which in 2024 expelled party members for pro-Palestine activism. The party is beginning to shift its position now, but this move is too little, too late.
In Aotearoa, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have been consistent in their support for Palestinian liberation since October 7. Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson was part of a freedom flotilla attempting to break the blockade back in 2016. Chlöe Swarbrick has submitted a member’s bill proposing sanctions on Israel, backed by the Greens and TPM. As a result of sustained pressure from the Palestine solidarity movement, the Labour Party announced in March that it is supporting Swarbrick’s bill. It is a major achievement of the movement in this country that all three parties on the left-of-centre have broken with the Western consensus and backed sanctions.
The strength of the anti-colonial movement in Aotearoa is a factor in why the Palestine solidarity movement is so strong here. Israel is implementing the 21st Century equivalent of the settler-colonial policies that the British Empire used when colonising Aotearoa in the 19th Century. Palestinians today are experiencing what Māori experienced when the state of New Zealand was built on stolen indigenous land.
To again quote the words of Nelson Mandela: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” Any movement for liberation and justice is incomplete if it does not represent liberation and justice for all. Anyone who calls themselves a socialist, anyone who identifies with the left and its goals, must therefore oppose imperialism, colonisation, Apartheid and genocide at every turn. That means standing with indigenous struggles for liberation, from Aotearoa to West Papua to Palestine.
What Can I Do?
To those who are reading this who feel hopeless and powerless in the face of the unimaginable atrocities being committed in Gaza: you are not alone. Most people feel revolted when they see this. If given an opportunity to stop this genocide, most people would. Anyone who does not feel this way has lost their humanity.
To give money directly to an organisation working tirelessly to provide food, water, and essential aid to Gazan residents in urgent need, Justice for Palestine is recommending donating to Team Assal via this link.
I spoke to Justice for Palestine activist Nadia Abu-Shanab in March this year, a week after Israel tore up the ceasefire and resumed its attacks on Gaza. Her advice for activists in Aotearoa was to participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. She told me the following:
“We need to extend and also fortify support for Chlöe Swarbrick’s Sanctions Against Israel Bill, which has united support across the Opposition now, and needs six Government MPs to support it when it’s pulled out of the biscuit tin to trigger a conscience vote. So we should target government MPs. However, I would say it’s very worthwhile right now going to talk to Labour MPs about why sanctions and Palestinian human rights matter to you. We are going to need to hold the Labour Party to account, so that when they are leading their next government — and we hope and expect that they will be leading the incoming government in 18 months time — they will make that historic move of being the first Five Eyes nation to sanction Israel. So go and let your Labour MPs, your National MPs, your local electorate MPs know how much this matters to you. Follow up with them.
If you happen to be an ASB Kiwisaver customer, you can join hundreds of people who have already left ASB Kiwisaver over their investments in Motorola Solutions. If you bank with them, switching banks or writing a complaint is also going to help support the ongoing divestment campaign we’re going to keep at until they divest. Of course, there are many Kiwisaver funds with investments in companies complicit in Israeli apartheid, so switching funds is something you can do even if you’re not with ASB. For many of us, our Kiwisavers are the only investments we actually have that we can move in 30 minutes.
You can also support the ASB campaign by helping to pressure NZ Superfund into dropping their investments in Motorola Solutions by writing them a complaint.
You can also participate in consumer boycotts of Obella, Caltex, things like that.”
Above all, Nadia’s message was that people cannot get sucked into despair.
“It’s natural to wrangle with hopelessness and despair at a time like this. Our grief and rage comes from a deeply human and ultimately beautiful part of us — which is that more and more people every day wake up, and they see through the veil of dehumanisation of Palestinians. And they recognise that, just like everyone else, Palestinian children deserve the right to wake up alive, not bombed in their beds for the mere crime of being on a land that somebody else wishes to colonise. That’s one breakthrough that allows us to bind together. But we need to recognise that — as Hera Lindsay Bird said recently — that the antidote to despair is action.”
You can read the full interview with Nadia here.
If you want to find out where pro-Palestine events are happening in your region, go to the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) website and sign up to their email newsletter or follow their social media accounts.
The Palestine movement in Wellington won a victory this week as Mayor Tory Whanau signed a friendly city agreement with the city of Ramallah. In Auckland, we should follow the example set by the 300,000 people who marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the rain.
More broadly, the anti-imperialist movement in Aotearoa needs to oppose closer relations between our country and the US. Israel acts as America’s stationary aircraft carrier in the Middle East. As the focus of US imperialism moves towards a new Cold War with China, the Americans will seek to use Australia and New Zealand as outposts in the South Pacific.
The Coalition has kowtowed to President Trump’s demand that US allies increase defence spending. The government chose to gut pay equity to fund the expansion of the military. Last week, the opening of a permanent FBI office in Wellington was announced. Speculation has been increasing about New Zealand abandoning its independent foreign policy and joining the AUKUS pact, a military alliance between Australia, the UK and the US aimed at “combatting China.”
Our country’s independent foreign policy and anti-nuclear stances were won through hard-fought struggles by the peace movement. As the tide of public opinion turns against Israel’s genocide, we must draw out the broader lesson: that imperialism and colonisation are a stain upon this planet. That means upholding Tino Rangatiratanga and Mana Motuhake at home, and it means opposing the US empire on the world stage. Anti-imperialists in Aotearoa must oppose the presence of the FBI in our country, resist any attempts by the government to drag us into AUKUS, and demand we withdraw from the US-led Five Eyes surveillance network.
However horrific the images coming out of Gaza may be, and however dark the situation gets, we will not stop fighting until the genocide is ended and Palestine is free.
Elliot Crossan is an ecosocialist writer and activist from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He is the Chair of System Change Aotearoa. Subscribe to his Substack page to read more.
