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Summarised by Centrist
New Zealand’s foreign policy and domestic security posture collided this week, as Winston Peters publicly denounced Israel’s expansion of control in the occupied West Bank while Muslim volunteers revealed they are conducting a growing share of extremist content monitoring, once led by the state.
Posting on social media, the Foreign Minister called Israel’s move a “major setback for any chance at a two-state solution” and said the International Court of Justice was clear that Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank is “unlawful” and should be reversed “immediately”. His criticism aligned New Zealand with the United States, Britain, the European Union and several Arab nations.
Meanwhile, a new report shows that non-governmental organisations, including the Federation of the Islamic Associations of New Zealand, are now the largest source of referrals of potential Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content to authorities.
In 2021, the Department of Internal Affairs made 261 detections that were investigated. By 2024, that number had fallen to just 24. In contrast, NGOs made 340 referrals last year, more than any government agency.
The department has acknowledged the decline “correlates with persistent resourcing and capacity constraints within the government and DIA teams responsible for content triage, monitoring, and proactive detection”.
FIANZ chairman Abdur Razzaq said the March 15 mosque attacks were a “wake-up call” and that the community felt obligated “not to purely rely on other agencies, but to do what little they could themselves”.
Read more over at NewstalkZB and RNZ
