I have just spoken with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.
I expressed France’s full solidarity in the face of the indiscriminate strikes carried out by Israel in Lebanon today, which resulted in a very high number of civilian casualties. We condemn these strikes in the strongest possible terms.
They pose a direct threat to the sustainability of the ceasefire that has just been reached. Lebanon must be fully covered by it.
I reiterated the need to preserve Lebanon’s territorial integrity and France’s determination to support the efforts of the Lebanese authorities to uphold the country’s sovereignty and implement the Hezbollah disarmament plan.
@wlaotearoa Israel’s aggression against Lebanon is threatening the precarious US/Iran ceasefire. President Macron for one has stated that Lebanon must be covered by the ceasefire. NZ Govt should say so.
I hope I’m wrong, but this feels to me a bit like the very early days of Covid: Governments have started to respond at different speeds and intensities.
Except this time Aotearoa has a very different government at the helm.
🚨 The promised footage of Destiny Church head Brian Tamaki confirming he gave the order to church elder Talā Leiasamaivao on 15 February to storm the library inside the Te Atatu Community Centre and shut down a children’s event being hosted by drag king Hugo Grrrl.
Tamaki goes on to also confirm he then gave a second order for his church members to “report for duty” at Auckland’s Pride parade on Ponsonby Rd later that night where they of course went on to disrupt proceedings with their Temu haka.
What follows below is Section 3 of the Summary Offences Act 1983 of which opens up the question of whether Tamaki could be liable for a charge of disorderly behaviour under the Act for inciting others in light of the below video evidence.
3.Disorderly Behaviour
“Every person is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months or a fine not exceeding $2,000 who, in or within view of any public place, behaves, or incites or encourages any person to behave, in a riotous, offensive, threatening, insulting, or disorderly manner that is likely in the circumstances to cause violence against persons or property to start or continue”
Please repost.
Ngā Mihi
News from east Rafah: Most people will not evacuate.
Patients, friends and colleagues are calling me for advice. I am confused, don’t know what to say, praying to God for guidance
I pass Zadie Smith every morning on the school run and will now wear my watermelon sweatshirt and my keffiyeh and carry a picture of Refaat Al Areer and tell her “it’s complicated”.
Israel has just issued an “evacuation” alert ordering Palestinians to move from where it has already been bombing to a “humanitarian zone” which it has already been bombing too.
The size of Gaza superimposed on Wellington NZ. Massacre beginning of Rafah. An area of southern Gaza 8km in size. 1.4 million people are sheltering there. Smaller than Island Bay. This is an international crime
All eyes on Rafah. The genocidal regime is going to ramp up their massacre of Palestinians again while the West sends them the weapons and the rest remain silently complicit. We’re witnessing another Holocaust in real time. Never stop talking about it.
In light of Israel's decision to ban AJ is asking as many people as possible to share the film, as a gesture of solidarity, and to encourage others to do so.⬇️🙏- https://t.co/Xm6oH37wXz https://t.co/Xm6oH37wXz
One doesn't need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-US game plan for Gaza runs something like this:
1. In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.
2. But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.
3. If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.
4. If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)
Last night US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.
5. The US will announce that Israel has devised a humanitarian plan that satisfies the conditions Biden laid down for an attack on Rafah to begin.
6. This will give the US, Europe and the region the pretext to stand back as Israel launches the long-awaited assault – an attack Biden has previously asserted would be a “red line”, leading to mass civilian casualties. All that will be forgotten.
7. As Middle East Eye reports, Israel is building a ring of checkpoints around Rafah. Netanyahu will suggest, falsely, that these guarantee its attack meets the conditions laid down in international humanitarian law. Women and children will be allowed out – if they can reach a checkpoint before Israel’s carpet bombing kills them along the way.
8. All men in Rafah, and any women and children who remain, will be treated as armed combatants. If they are not killed by the bombing or falling rubble, they will be either summarily executed or dragged off to Israel’s torture chambers. No one will mention that any Hamas fighters who were in Rafah were able to leave through the tunnels.
9. Rafah will be destroyed, leaving the entire strip in ruins, and the Israeli-induced famine will worsen. The West will throw up its hands, say Hamas brought this on Gaza, agonise over what to do, and press third countries – especially Arab countries – for a “humanitarian plan” that relocates the survivors out of Gaza.
10. The western media will continue describing Israel’s genocide in Gaza in purely humanitarian terms, as though this “disaster” was an act of God.
11. Under US pressure, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, will be in no hurry to issue a definitive ruling on whether South Africa’s case that Israel is committing a genocide – which it has already found “plausible” – is proved.
12. Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on, leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.
13. Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.
That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.
The article version of this post, The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face, can be shared here: https://t.co/kURvTIBNGy
Take action, share this post and demand an immediate ceasefire.
@JustinTrudeau Canada must call for an immediate ceasefire in #Gaza
https://t.co/hPes1pBrIY