23 Hakihea 2025

23 December 2025

Newsletter No 220

As we come to the end of 2025 we want to thank all our supporters for your dedicated commitment to continue the struggle for a free Palestine.

This is the most critical human rights issue of the 21st century. It deserves all the energy we can muster as the pro-Israel lobby tries desperately to change the story from Israeli war crimes, genocide and apartheid to other issues.

There is still much more to do and we look forward to continue working with you in 2026 for a free Palestine.

Have a well deserved break over the festive season and summer holidays with family and friends.

Items in this newsletter

New Items

PSNA will continue to protest despite attempts to muzzle anti-Palestinian protests
Nationwide rallies/marches/vigils this week
Israel's Cynical Double Standards in Its Response to the Bondi Massacre
Another BDS victory - ASB divests from Motorola Solutions
PSNA National meeting - May 1 to May 3, 2026 - in Rotorua
NZ government looking the other way on record Israeli West Bank settlement building
Genocide is profitable – very, very profitable…
US flag goes up in smoke
“Shadow-banned” by Facebook and Instagram and how we’d like you to bypass it

REGULAR ITEMS

Join the ICC Watch
Designate Israel as a terrorist state and the IDF as a terrorist group
MPs Complicit with Genocide
Keep spreading the message about the Genocide Hotline!
Important stories this week
Annual Palestinian Solidarity Dates
How to Donate
Palestine Solidarity Groups around Aotearoa

PSNA will continue to protest Israel’s genocide despite efforts to muzzle the Palestinian solidarity movement across the western world

Despite plans to suppress Palestine support protests throughout most of the western world, Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa says it will continue to hold regular rallies and marches against Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

PSNA co-chair John Minto says the movement will continue to organise consumer boycotts and demand government sanctions on Israel.”

“This is a genocidal, apartheid regime. We will not be cowed by the butchers in Tel Aviv who perversely claim it’s the protests which are causing a rise in anti-semitism.”

“Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity, is the person most responsible for rising anti-semitism across the world. He claims to be acting on behalf of Jews everywhere.”

“This is bare-faced anti-semitism from Netanyahu himself. Jews are not responsible for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, nor for its apartheid policies.“

“Nor are they responsible for Israel’s ethnic cleansing in the Occupied West Bank and Occupied East Jerusalem, which is on the largest scale since the Nakba in 1948.”

“Every week, hundreds of thousands of Jews across the world march side by side with Palestinians and human rights activists to demand an end to Israel’s genocide and to impose accountability on Netanyahu’s regime,” Minto says.

“The rise of anti-semitism, so horrifically expressed in the attack on Bondi Beach last week, is a direct result of Israel’s ongoing mass killing and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza and the abject failure of western governments to hold Israel accountable.”

Minto says PSNA is appalled at the complete silence from the government since the so-called ‘Trump Plan Ceasefire’ came into effect.

“Our government has spoken out loudly and clearly over the Bondi massacre, as we would expect.”

“But the government has effectively joined Trump to declare that Palestine issues are all solved and so New Zealand can ignore, or even endorse Israeli killing and occupation, to enhance its relations with Israel and the US.”

“We’ve heard nothing from Foreign Minister Peters or Prime Minister Luxon over UN reports of 379 Palestinians killed by Israel since the ‘ceasefire’ was agreed two months ago”

“Because Israel still limits food access, every day, more United Nations reports come in of hunger, babies dying from the cold, and at least 100,000 still facing starvation.”

“Most of those killed in Gaza were women and children with another “Bondi-level” death toll every day – all marked with deathly silence from our government.“

“The only thing the New Zealand government has done, is to change its decades-long regular vote in the United Nations, to allow Israel’s unquestioned illegal occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights to continue.”

“All the more reason for us to continue to protest.”

Nationwide rallies/marches/MP protests/vigils this week

We have discontinued the Rally list in the newsletter as it can be out of date as soon as the newsletter is sent. We have added a page to the PSNA website which is posted on Wednesday afternoon and then updated as any moves adds and changes are available. See first option.

To view events around Aotearoa. Options:

There is now a page on the PSNA website where you can see the coming events for the week. It is updated on Wednesday afternoons for coming events. It is also updated with any late events or if an event needs to be changed. See here. Check back on Fridays to see if there are any changes. Give it a try right now. Email Admin@PSNA.nz if there are any events missing or a change is required.
Go to the PSNA Homepage – www.PSNA.nz Scroll down to the button “For a list of events Nationwide, please click here - Check back often for updates” and Click the button. Check back on Friday for any moves, adds or changes
Or go directly to events on the PSNA Facebook events page here
There is also a QR code which will take you to the PSNA events page on the PSNA website

There are more than 30 events around the Motu this week.

Israel's Cynical Double Standards in Its Response to the Bondi Massacre

**Gideon Levy – Israeli journalist and commentator**

When the two murderers stood at Bondi Beach, massacring the innocents, a woman stood at the Khan Yunis beach trying to push out water that had flooded the tent she calls home with a broom. She stood and shouted, showing her shivering children their worn-out, ragged and water-soaked clothes, but no one listened to her. The world had switched to the massacre in Sydney.

In the days that followed, the world expressed shock at the heinous crime of murdering 15 Jews. Everyone was horrified by what had happened. The Bondi massacre deserved this global shock.

But the shock was accompanied by hypocrisy, cynical use and double standards. First and foremost was, of course, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was quick to blame the massacre on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Netanyahu knows a thing or two about taking personal responsibility, which is why he rushed to accuse his peer of daring to recognize a Palestinian state; ostensibly, there is a link between the empty recognition of an imaginary state and the massacre.

Israel never misses an opportunity to generate political and propaganda capital from every terrorist attack. Hints about Mossad warnings that Australia allegedly ignored were also immediately circulated. The Australians do not know how and do not want to fight terrorism. Just look at us; there are no terrorist attacks here at all.

A minister went to the funerals in Sydney, crossing the Jerusalem-Sydney distance far faster than any minister crossed the distance from Jerusalem to Nir Oz, the representative of a government that attended no funeral of its citizens from the Gaza war. "How come the Australian government didn't send representatives to the funerals of the Jews?" they grumbled in Israel. The chutzpah crossed every boundary.

The comic relief came in the form of the Australian-Syrian hero who saved the Jews. Netanyahu even tried to talk about the "Jewish heroism," until the embarrassing information came in about the identity of Ahmed al-Ahmed, and for a moment, all the claims that all Muslims and Arabs in the world are guilty of innate murder were silenced.

Is it possible that there is an Arab who shows humanity and courage? Another house of cards has collapsed, but only for a moment, of course. The debates about antisemitism immediately took over the debate again, even when it was clear that the murderers were ISIS, fighting not just Jews but the entire West.

Even the usual blaming of Iran encountered a regrettable factual difficulty: ISIS and Iran are enemies. What a shame the terrorists weren't Palestinians. That would facilitate the propaganda and increase the profit line.

Nonetheless, terrorist attacks of this kind serve Israeli propaganda: They put the Jews and Israelis on the same cart of disasters: How good it is to come together when the whole world is against us.

An imaginary same fate of an Australian rabbi and an Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip is used as a weapon against Israel's bitter critics: Look at us, how pitiful we are, the whole world is against us and slaughtering us.

Above all is the cloud of the double standard: The massacre of 15 people on a Sydney beach can blur the horrifically large massacres in Gaza.

There were two murderers at Bondi Beach. In Gaza, an entire country and army are behind the massacres. At least 36 people, 18 of them children, died in May's strike on a school in Beit Hanoun. There were many other massacres like that one, including during the "cease-fire" in which hundreds of innocent Gazans have already been killed.

The massacre at Bondi Beach cannot cover all the massacres in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians can only watch with tearful eyes from their collapsing tents that do not protect their occupants from the whipping winds, as the world is shocked by Bondi, and forgets them at alarming haste.

Another BDS victory - ASB divests from Motorola Solutions

In a great BDS victory ASB Bank has withdrawn its investments from the notorious enablers of genocide and apartheid - Motorola Solutions.

This campaign was led by Justice for Palestine in Wellington and involved a campaign in which hundreds of people withdrew their Kiwisaver funds from ASB and activists protested ASB branches around the country.

ASB of course said their decision has nothing to do with external pressure – but they would say that wouldn’t they!

Justice for Palestine’s media release announcing the decision is here and Amnesty International which had withdrawn their banking from ASB as part of the campaign welcomed the decision here

Congratulations to Justice for Palestine and everyone involved in the campaign.

NZ government looking the other way on record Israeli West Bank settlement building

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa is again urging the government to uphold its long-standing policies and publicly take action against record Israeli settlement expansion.

It has just been reported that the Israeli cabinet has approved 19 more illegal settlements in the equally illegally Occupied West Bank.

This will double the number of settlements in the West Bank since the current Israeli government came to power.

PSNA Co-chair Maher Nazzal says past National led governments have taken a strong rhetorical stance against such settlements.

In 2016, the Key government co-sponsored resolution 2334 in the UN Security Council, which declared the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Occupied East Jerusalem ‘a flagrant violation of international law’.

The number of settlers has doubled since then.

“New Zealand and other equally silent western bloc countries are paving the way for more hatred and conflict, which is likely to spill out of the region, by ignoring Israeli violations,” Nazzal says.

“Not only is Israel taking land for settlers, but it is openly encouraging settler violence. There have been thousands of often lethal attacks on Palestinians, especially at olive harvest time, in the past two years.”

Nazzal says the government should also be reminded that Israel has violated its 10 October ceasefire in Gaza 738 times, and directly killed more than 400 Palestinians in that period.

“Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is currently busy demanding various countries ban marches and statements in support of Palestine.”

“It’s more than about time these governments told Netanyahu that it is him and his genocidal government which is causing the hate and conflict.

PSNA National meeting - May 1 to May 3, 2026 - in Rotorua

Our 2026 national meeting will be held in Rotorua from 5pm Friday May 1 to 2pm Sunday 3 May in Rotorua.

This will be a critically important event for people from around the country to come and evaluate what we have done over the past year and most importantly to plan for the future.

We are fighting the most important human rights issue of the 21st century and we need your help to shape, plan and organize for the future.

More details in coming newsletters.

Genocide is profitable – very, very profitable…

New Zealand company Rakon, which provides crystal oscillators specifically designed for US-produced “smart bombs” which are sent to Israel to help with the genocide saw a huge increase in its share price shortly after Israel launched its genocidal campaign in Gaza in October 2023.

PSNA has referred former Rakon CEO Sinan Altug to the International Criminal Court for investigation into war crimes. WE have also referred for which Altug – along with government ministers – is involved in facilitating.

Foreign affairs officials “investigated” Rakon in what amounted to outright collaboration with the US and Israel as these officials accepted without question Rakon’s claims its products were “dual use” and they didn’t know where they ended up. Total BS. Foreign Affairs would not investigate further because that would have involved uncovering the uncomfortable truth of assistance with genocide which would mean the government would be required to take action – the last thing Winston Peters wanted.

US flag goes up in smoke

“Shadow-banned” by Facebook and Instagram and how we’d like you to bypass it

We’ve noticed a significant slow-down in the growth of our PSNA National Instagram account (@psnaotearoa) since the Gaza ‘ceasefire’ and also a drop-off in engagement.

Because of the ‘ceasefire’ most New Zealanders think the worst is over in Gaza and the Palestinians are heading towards some sort of ‘peace’ with Israel. While this couldn’t be further from the truth – Israel has broken the ceasefire over 500 times since it was signed - the perception that things are improving has led to an inevitable lessening in attention given to Palestine-related material on Instagram and other social media platforms.

In addition to the ceasefire-related drop-off we also have to contend with the profoundly pro-Israel bias of Meta (the company that owns Facebook & Instagram).

Human Rights Watch have called Meta’s censorship of content related to Palestine on Instagram and Facebook systemic and global.

Leaked documents showed that Instagram increased its moderation of Palestinian user comments after October 7, 2023.

Many of those in high positions at Meta previously worked for the Israeli state or the Israeli army. A report by Mint Press found that dozens of them come directly from the elite Unit 8200 – a cyber intelligence group infamous for spying on Palestinians under occupation.

Meta have a special policy unit devoted to Israel (they don’t have anything like this for any other country). The head of this unit – Jordana Cutler – is a former senior Israeli government official who used to work for Benjamin Netanyahu.

In late 2024 Meta updated its policy to allow unrestricted authority to delete accounts supporting Palestine.

As Jewish-American historian Zachary Foster points out “the data show that Meta has complied with 94% of takedown requests issued by Israel since October 7, 2023. The world’s most genocidal country controls content moderation at the world’s most important social media company”.

All this is to say that PSNA is facing an uphill battle to get the message out via our Instagram account and that’s where YOU, our supporters, can help us.

If you could deliberately check in on us every day – and do the like and comment and share thing – that will help elevate us in the algorithm so more people see us. One way of making this easier is to set a daily reminder to check PSNA Instagram. It will only take a couple of minutes out of your day but it will help us continue to build a real and lasting Palestine solidarity movement here in Aotearoa – one that won’t stop fighting until Palestine is truly free.

PS: Here are the handles for some of our regional accounts – some of them have been under lengthy shadow-bans so give a little love to them too, especially if they’re in your region.

Main

@psnaotearoa

Regional

Regular items

Join the ICC Six Watch!

Share the poster on social media – keep alert – email ICC6@PSNA.nz if you find where any of these six genocide deniers are due to show up.

Designate Israel as a terrorist state and the IDF as a terrorist group

Petition link: https://petitions.parliament.nz/5e5def5b-0658-4431-5edd-08ddfd8ffce6?lang=en

Petition title: Designate Israel as a terrorist state and the IDF as a terrorist group

You can share this petition via this QR code

Keep spreading the message about the Genocide Hotline!

Remember possible action for local groups

For groups affiliated to PSNA we suggest the following actions could be taken at any time in support of this campaign

Asking your local backpacker accommodation to display the poster and draw it to the attention of any Israeli soldiers here on “rest and recreation” from the genocide.
Pasting the hotline poster (use the version in this newsletter which includes a contact email) around the vicinity of backpacker venues in your local area. This is already happening in some areas.
Hand out flyers to people in the vicinity of your local backpackers
Contact us on the hotline if you come across Israeli soldiers

Important stories from last week

Editor’s picks

Red ribbon vigil for Palestinian prisoners here
The World Radicalized by the Gaza Genocide here (Al Shabaka – Palestinian Policy Network)
Hamas: We Did Not Surrender and Will Not Abandon Our Struggle for Liberation here
ASB drops Motorola Solutions from investments here
No safe place for children in Palestine: Starvation, torture and killing of Palestinian children – annual report from Defence for Children International here

Merchandise for sale - please check with your local branch and/or contact us Merchandise@PSNA.nz

**Recent new material – leaflets and stickers are free the bucket hats and caps are $25**

If your local branch does not have what you are after we are ready to mail to you any of our t-shirts, long ($35) and short ($30) sleeved, hoodies ($45) bumper stickers ($3), Tino/Palestine pins ($3) flags large & medium ($10 or $7) and other items plus postage.

The watermelon and the fist stickers will be back in stock early next week.

See more on the PSNA website here.

Reminder: Annual Dates for Palestine Solidarity

28 Mar – 4 Apr Israel Apartheid Week

30 Mar Land Day Palestine

5 Apr Palestinian Childs Day

9 Apr Deir Yassin massacre - Irgun Terrorism - 107-120 Palestinian men, women and children massacred

17 Apr Palestinian Prisoners Day

11 May World Kufiya Day

15 May Nakba Day – marking the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestine in 1948

5 Jun Nakba Day - Start of 1967 War - Land Grab – Invasion of Jerusalem, West Bank, Gaza, Egypt and Syria - 5 June 1967 – 10 June 1967

20 Jun Attack on Gaza - 6–21 May 2021 (2 weeks and 1 day)

16-18 Sep 40th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres

28 Sep Second Intifada - 28 Sept 2000 – 8 Feb 2005

2 Nov Balfour Declaration

29 Nov United Nations - International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

8 Dec "First Intifada - 8 Dec 1987 – 13 Sept 1993

Are you able to donate a cup of coffee a month to the campaign?

We will need some serious money to make our campaign as effective as possible. For example, we will need somewhere in the vicinity of $25,000 to bring speakers to New Zealand over the next year and organise large public meetings to help spread the message.

You can help. Are you able to donate a cup of coffee a month to the campaign? In other words, can you afford to make an automatic payment of $5 per month to support the Palestinian struggle? (If you can afford more that would be great!)

Our account details are:

Account name: Palestine Solidarity Network
Account number: 38-9015-0849542-00

We are happy to provide a receipt upon request (however, we are not a registered charity so this is not tax-deductible)

Nationwide Rally list

To view events around Aotearoa:

Go to the PSNA Homepage – www.PSNA.nz. Scroll down to the button “For a list of events Nationwide, please click here - Check back often for updates”. Click the button. Check back on Friday for any moves, adds or changes
Or events are on the PSNA Facebook events page here
Or Scroll down to the bottom of this Newsletter for the detailed list of events for this week.
We have added a page to the PSNA website where we now post the Events list. You can find it here – www.PSNA.nz/Events

The QR code for this is:

It is updated on Wednesday afternoon and ongoing as events are notified to us. Please check back on Friday afternoon to see if there has been Additions or Changes.

More ways you can get involved

Forward this Newsletter – If you know people who may be interested in this movement, please forward this Newsletter to them.
Join in local activities in your area - Contact Secretary@PSNA.nz if you would like to know where and how to get Flags and Banners
Help set up a Students for Justice in Palestine groups on your campus
Tell Your MP your opinions on Divestment and Sanctions of Israel.
Write Letters to Newspapers – Call Talkback Radio
Keep in touch with the campaign on social media

o NZ Palestine Solidarity Network website: https://www.PSNA.nz

o NZ Palestine Solidarity Network Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/671376706283605/

o NZ Palestine Solidarity Network email: Secretary@PSNA.nz

The Palestine Human Rights Campaign produces the In Occupied Palestine newsletter. It is a regular daily newsletter on the daily situation in Palestine, compiled by Leslie Bravery and emailed to subscribers. If you would also like to become a subscriber, please contact Leslie at “lesliebravery @ icloud .com” (remove the spaces to use as an email address) for further information.
Keep Updated on our Facebook pages and websites (listed below)
Human rights for Uyghur refugees - In line with our support for human rights for the people of Palestine we have added our name to the petition in support of human rights for Uyghur refugees so they can be included in the government’s refugee quota. PSNA members who wish to also sign this petition can do so here - https://our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/open-letter-let-s-show-compassion-to-the-uyghur-community