A LOCAL Christchurch meeting to show solidarity with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has provoked a predictable reaction from Zionist Juliet Moses. She says that the meeting is support for an organisation that has been labelled a terrorist group by the United States and other western countries. It has not been designated a terrorist group by the New Zealand Government.
In July 2021 Moses used He Whenua Taurikura, a conference on 'countering terrorism and violent extremism" as an opportunity to launch yet another one of her familiar attacks on supporters of the Palestinian people. She repeated her claim that a 2018 Auckland rally in support of the Palestinian cause was both pro-Hezbollah and pro-Hamas. She had only just described both military organisations as terrorist groups, a claim that was met with shouts of 'Free Palestine!' from within the audience.
Representatives of the local Christchurch Muslim community walked out of the meeting during the course of Moses inflammatory speech.
Azad Khan of Foundation Against Islamophobia and Racism later told the media that his group was 'not going to sit there with dignity and listen to her say that.'
Canterbury University political science lecturer Bronwyn Hayward tweeted that she had also walked out in protest and suggested that the panel discussion had been badly organised from the off.
Local Christchurch journalist and former Newstalk ZB talkback host Chris Lynch has joined Moses in describing the PFLP as a 'terror group' and quotes her extensively in his article. There is no attempt to provide any analysis of the PFLP's history or its views.
In 2017, and in the aftermath of the murderous attack on two Christchurch mosques that killed 51 people, Newstalk ZB removed an anti-Muslim opinion piece, written by Lynch, from its website. Spin Off reported: 'When asked what prompted the removal, Jason Winstanley, head of talk at NZME, said “we removed the article as it was upsetting people”.
Finding it increasingly difficult to directly defend Israel's continued slaughter of innocent men, women and children in Gaza, Moses has decided that attack is the best form of defence. She invariably describes Israel's critics as everything from 'anti-Semitic' to 'supporters of terrorism'. She has most recently been involved in attempts to smear Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick as anti-Semitic. Swarbrick is a prominent critic of Israel and a supporter of the Palestinian cause.
The PFLP is a revolutionary socialist organisation. In its program, it says that it is at war with the Zionist state of Israel and not with the Jewish people:
'The Palestinian liberation movement is not a racial movement with aggressive intentions against the Jews. It is not directed against the Jews…The aim of the Palestinian liberation movement is to establish a democratic national state in Palestine in which both Arabs and Jews will live as citizens with equal rights and obligations, and which will constitute an integral part of the progressive democratic Arab national presence living peacefully with all forces of progress in the world.'
In October last year journalist Rania Kalek talked with Marwan Abdul Al, a member of the Political Bureau of The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and head of the group’s Cultural Department. He responded to the US-driven accusation that the PFLP is a terrorist group:
'There is no doubt that United States of America has a strong strategic relationship with the Zionist state. Therefore, it's natural that it should adopt Zionist ideas, especially as there are mutual services and services of a strategic nature. Here I remember what the current American president said that you do not necessarily have to be Jewish to be a Zionist. The issue of resistance is the choice of the Palestinian people because we are facing an enemy that occupies our land. We are facing an enemy that glorifies the philosophy of power, an enemy that practices aggression on a daily and continuous basis against the Palestinian people. The world was unable to stop this aggression against the Palestinian people, so it was the Palestinian people who chose their options in practising this resistance. The PFLP believes in liberation values.'
See the above video for the entire interview.
What a brilliant idea. What is happening in the Middle East is terrible. Israel needs to be held to account.
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