Whanganui Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa successfully petitions District Council to call for ceasefire in Gaza

Friday 10 May 2024

In an impressive local action Whanganui PSNA supporters, led by Orlando Bright and Sophi Reinholt, took two issues to their local council on Tuesday this week: A petition requesting the council call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and also for the council to change its procurement policy to exclude companies identified by the United Nations Human Rights Council as complicit in the building and maintenance of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

The council made the call for ceasefire and has accepted the petition to change its procurement policy which will be followed up at a later meeting.

Here are three media reports from the successful presentation:
Whanganui District Council calls for immediate and permanent ceasefire here (NZ Herald)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/whanganui-chronicle/news/whanganui-district-council-calls-for-immediate-and-permanent-gaza-ceasefire/BH4H3OHM7FE5PF6ETLPHO5RS5U/

Whanganui Council calls for immediate ceasefire in Gaza here (RNZ)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/516191/whanganui-council-calls-for-immediate-ceasefire-in-gaza

Council upheld human rights supporting ceasefire in Gaza here (Stuff)
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350270469/council-upheld-human-rights-supporting-ceasefire-gaza

Before the council made the decision Sophi Reinholt from Whanganui PSNA made this powerful, impassioned speech to the council:

Sophi Reinholt

Kia ora koutou, ko Sophi Reinholt taku ingoa.

Dr Nafiz Ghamri, a Kiwi-Palestinian cardiologist who has served our community for 19 years, was meant to be here this morning but he has given me leave to speak in his stead. I’m sure you can appreciate how much Nafiz wanted to be here to speak to you all. Nafiz has personally lost his first cousin, who was shot by an armed drone while assisting people escaping the debris after a bombing. His uncle has been kidnapped, as has his deaf and mute aunty. Their whereabouts are still unknown. He has lost family members who were nurses and ambulance drivers, all of whom worked at Al Shifa hospital. There are 40 members of his family still unaccounted for. Their houses have been confirmed as having been destroyed but due to communication black-outs, Nafiz is struggling to reach them. He doesn’t know if they are sheltering in tents in Rafah, or if they are under the rubble.

But Nafiz has patients in the Whanganui community who need him and so once again he puts others before himself, before his own very pressing need to speak about this issue.

Dr Ghamri was born at Nasser Hospital in Gaza. Since the start of the War on Gaza six months ago, thousands of displaced civilians had been sheltering in all the major hospitals in the area.

Tragically, this hospital, along with 24 of the 36 hospitals and health care facilities in Gaza, has been completely destroyed. Another of these hospitals, Al Shifa hospital, was described by doctors working for Doctors Without Borders as the “beating heart of the Gazan medical system.” After a two- week long assault on Al Shifa Hospital by the Israeli Defence Forces, it is now the site of mass civilian graves that the international community, including the European Union and the United Nations, has demanded independent investigation into.

Until there is a ceasefire, there can be no end to the suffering of civilians, on both sides. Until there is a ceasefire, international humanitarian aid agencies cannot operate safely. The passage of aid cannot be guaranteed, and essentials such as water, food, maternity kits, antibiotics and anaesthetics will continue to be blocked from entering Gaza. The head of the United Nations World Food Programme has stated that: there is ‘full blown famine in Northern Gaza moving its way South.’ Without a ceasefire, foreign war correspondents will still not be allowed unhindered access to Gaza - just one of so many worrying precedents which are being set by this War.

So what does Whanganui District Council have to do with calling for a Ceasefire in Gaza? A place that most of us here today will never get to visit, and whose people we may never meet?

Well, what is happening in Gaza is affecting the residents of Whanganui. It is affecting Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli citizens here in our community, and all of us who are bearing witness to the devastation. Without political pressure, on a nationwide and then international scale, nothing will stop. Right now, Israel is being led by the most right-wing government it has ever had, an extremist right-wing government, one that is dedicated to the end of the “two state solution”, one that has displayed contempt for international law, international conventions, international humanitarian aid agencies, and United Nations Security Council rulings. There are weekly protests in Israel calling for Netanyahu’s resignation, with thousands upon thousands of Israelis in attendance. Only through intense political pressure from the ground up can we see an end to the violence being wrought upon Gaza and the West Bank.

At Whanganui PSNA, we want to see ALL the hostages brought home. We want to see an end to the mass slaughter. In 215 days, over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, over two thirds of them being women and children, with thousands more still unaccounted for under the rubble. Nothing justifies this. Nothing. Not self defence, not human shields, nothing. We want an end to a military bombardment that has left 19,000 children orphaned or separated from their parents. All of these numbers feel inconceivable, the scale is too vast. I ask you to remember that each and every one of these numbers represents somebody’s everything.
A United Nations Development Programme assessment has stated that they estimate that if a permanent ceasefire were to be called tomorrow, it would take approximately 16 years to clear the debris, and the report notes (and I quote) it will take "approximately 80 years to restore all the fully destroyed housing units" assuming the pace of reconstruction follows the trend of several previous Gaza conflicts (end quote). More than half of the housing in Gaza has been destroyed, alongside all thirteen of Gaza’s universities.

The cost of rebuilding Gaza grows ‘exponentially’ each day the fighting continues. The debris is littered with toxins such as white phosphorus, around 7,500 tonnes of unexploded ordnance, and the remains of loved ones.

We at Whanganui PSNA want Whanganui District Council to once again prove that you stand for human rights, for civilian rights, as you did in 2022 when you unanimously called for a ceasefire in the case of the Russia-Ukraine War.

We want you to address our two petition submissions signed by over 2,200 local residents in the space of 2 ½ weeks - 34 hours of signature collecting to be precise. To be clear, that’s a signature a minute. We want you to consider the appeal by 48 local businesses and organizations to stand for a ceasefire and to ensure that Council’s procurement policy legally aligns with the United Nations Security Council’s Resolution 2334.

We are a group of peaceful volunteers who went out and heard the voices of the community. We were thanked, again and again, by Whanganui residents for giving them the opportunity to help, to feel that they were taking action in some small way. And we were told, again and again, to ‘keep up the good work’. If we had had more time to engage with the wider community and this issue had been less pressing to present to Council immediately, we are sure we would have had even more overwhelming support for this motion.

What we are witnessing here is not ‘normal.’ This is not ‘business as usual’. The War on Gaza has broken too many records, too many conventions of warfare. Those of us bearing witness cannot help but experience a deep trauma on behalf of and alongside the people of Gaza. The countless horrific images and stories coming out of Gaza are so inhumane, so unbearable, that I personally, and many others, will never be able to forget, and we will be forever changed by these events.

It needs to stop. We need you, Whanganui, to be the moral compass that points the way for our country’s leaders. We need the Whanganui District Council to work with us to ensure that bigotry is rejected by this council, that our community rejects anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism, and to say that this council, this place, stands for human rights. A call for a ceasefire from our political leadership gives our community clear guidance on what is acceptable and what is not. In the absence of this, misguided declarations that are steeped in hatred are emboldened. Taking a stance to advocate for an end to violence against civilians makes our community safer for everyone. Criticism of the government of Israel is not anti-Semitism. My husband Mark, sitting here in the audience today, is Jewish, and he and his family firmly states: NOT IN OUR NAME. NEVER AGAIN MEANS NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE.

All loss of civilian life is abhorrent. All loss of civilian life needs to be investigated and tried by organisations such as the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.

For this, we need you. We need you, Whanganui District Council, to speak up in order to be heard. We need you to give voice to our plea for a ceasefire. Because it is ONLY with a ceasefire that we can begin the process of justice. It is ONLY through the process of justice that we can begin to plant the seeds from which peace will grow. Thank you for your time today, for hearing the voices of our community, and for standing on the right side of history. If I may leave you with one final quote from the World Health Organisation as of this morning: “A ceasefire is urgently needed for the sake of humanity.”
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PSNA National meeting 18/19 May 2024 in Auckland – make your travel arrangement NOW – we’d love to see you!