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Minto’s PSNA Hotline

In response to the “genocide hotline” initiative, Zionist Federation of New Zealand president Rob Berg said the PSNA call was not about free speech “but a call for vigilantism and to incite violence against Israelis”.

Photo by Taylor Brandon / Unsplash

Patrick Goodenough
Patrick Goodenough is an Auckland-based journalist who has worked in South Africa, Israel, the UK, the US and New Zealand. For the last two decades he covered international affairs for a Washington-based online news service.

New Zealand’s Human Rights Commission on Tuesday condemned a pro-Palestinian activist group for urging people to call a “genocide hotline” should they come across Israeli soldiers or reservist in the country.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) launched the campaign on Facebook, saying it would “track them [IDF soldiers and reservists] down and let them know they are not welcome here”.

The HRC, a statutory body, said it received more than 90 complaints over the weekend. In a statement on Tuesday, human rights commissioner Stephen Rainbow called on PSNA to end the campaign immediately.

“Israeli and Jewish people have as much right as everyone else in New Zealand to be safe, secure, and free from harassment,” he said. “This sort of action has the risk of a ripple effect which may cause harm in the community. We call on those behind the hotline to close it down and cease promotion immediately.”

PSNA is headed by John Minto, a veteran “peace activist” best known in New Zealand for leading protests against South Africa’s national rugby team during the apartheid era.

In response to the “genocide hotline” initiative, Zionist Federation of New Zealand president Rob Berg said the PSNA call was not about free speech “but a call for vigilantism and to incite violence against Israelis”.

How will they know who is Israeli, either by IDs or passports for tourists or by hearing Hebrew being spoken? This could affect any one of us and someone could get hurt.

He noted that, as Israel has conscription, all adult citizens would fall into the “reservists” category.

This is not a time to bury our heads in the sand and hope everything will settle down. We need your help. Our Israeli brethren need your help.

Berg added that Minto’s campaign was insinuating that all Israelis were guilty of genocide – which itself was a “modern-day blood libel” directed against Israel.

“New Zealand Police – where are you?” commentator and former politician Ashley Church asked in an online post.

Putting aside the usual emotive uninformed nonsense and baseless slogans, this is CLEARLY incitement to violence and, as such, a breach of Section 61 of the Human Rights Act. Why hasn’t John Minto been charged?

Church also scolded mainstream media outlets for not reporting on the issue, after having given “this clown Minto airtime to express his vile misinformation and hatred while absolutely refusing to allow those with a counterview to put their case. So where is your coverage of this? Why isn’t this leading the news?” 

The NZ Jewish Council’s Juliet Moses said the council and its Community Security Group had been in regular communication with police and the HRC. 

The police commissioner is aware as are police on the ground and are putting various measures in place. Police are considering their legal options as well. We are also hoping for government condemnation and have written to relevant ministers.

“In general, police are unable to respond to queries which seek to establish if a specific individual or organisation is, or has been, under police investigation,” a police spokesperson told this reporter.

‘Apartheid, Genocide’

The PSNA has led demonstrations across New Zealand since Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government hit back against the terrorists who crossed from Gaza into Israel on October 7, 2023 and killed, maimed and raped thousands of Israelis, most of them civilians.

Within weeks of the atrocities Minto was urging supporters to contact New Zealand’s leading politicians – outgoing Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and incoming PM Christopher Luxon – to condemn their stance on the ensuing Israel-Hamas war.

“Muttering meaningless comments about respect for international law is a copout when you won’t call out Israeli war crimes,” Minto said. “Silence in the face of genocide is complicity.”

Minto’s activism against apartheid in South Africa earned him 89th place in a list of NZ’s Top History Makers in 2005.

Israel’s supporters reject the Zionism equals apartheid charge, noting that members of Israel’s Arab minority enjoy the same rights as Jewish, Druse and other minority communities.

Pro-Israel groups also reject the “genocide” accusation.

Genocide is defined in the 1948 Convention on Genocide as the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, accompanied by atrocities aimed at achieving that goal. Notwithstanding the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza – where Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad have launched missiles from schools, hospitals and kindergartens – no credible legal entity has ruled that Israel’s actions meet that threshold.

Since 1988, the US government has formally determined genocide to have occurred nine times, in the cases of atrocities by:

  • Burmese military and supporters against Rohingya Muslims since 2016
  • the disintegrating Ottoman Empire against Armenian Christians a little over a century ago
  • Serbs against Muslims in Bosnia (1993)
  • ethnic Hutu extremists in Rwanda (1994)
  • Saddam Hussein’s regime against Iraq’s Kurds (1995)
  • the Khartoum regime and allied militias in Darfur (2004)
  • ISIS terrorists against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in areas under its control in Syria and Iraq (2016) and
  • the Chinese Communist Party against Uyghurs and other minority Muslims in Xinjiang (2021).

Ironically, the South Africa government, which is spearheading the campaign against Israel at the International Court of Justice, refused to arrest Bashir during a 2015 visit despite an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, and has remained silent – as incidentally has the 57-member Islamic bloc – about forced abortion and sterilization and other documented abuses by Beijing against the Muslim Uyghurs.

This article was originally published by the Israel Institute of New Zealand.

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