GIVEN THAT the New Zealand Government has already signalled to the United States that it supports Israel's Genocidal Military Campaign in Gaza, no one should be surprised that, at its very first cabinet meeting of the year, it agreed to sending troops to a widening conflict zone.
The Prime Minister emphasised at yesterday's press conference that no New Zealand troops would be entering Yemen. Big deal. In case Luxon hasn't noticed, there are no ground troops in Yemen and the United States has no intention of sending in troops. That would be madness. This is all about hitting Yemen from afar; missiles are being fired into the country from US and UK warships and submarines. The job of New Zealand's six-member team is to assist with sending those missiles to those targets.
But President Joe Biden has already conceded that the strikes against the Houthis are not deterring the groups' attacks in the Red Sea. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon however must know something that Joe Biden doesn't because he claimed that the missile attacks were all about 'the self-defence of shipping'. Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who is proving to be a real courtier of the American Empire, claimed that 'These efforts support international security and the free flow of trade on which New Zealanders rely.' But as Beirut-based journalist Rania Khalek has already observed: 'Yemen isn’t even targeting ships destined for New Zealand, this makes no sense! Also, you’re cool with bombing people over … shipping delays to customers??? Late-stage capitalism is as embarrassing as it is barbaric.'
For Luxon to claim that the military attacks on Yemen are somehow separate and distinct from Israel's ongoing genocidal military campaign in Gaza is ludicrous. He is trying to gaslight us because New Zealand has now joined the United States in a direct military confrontation with Ansarullah, the de facto government of Yemen. It has for weeks maintained a naval blockade to prevent commercial ships from reaching Israeli ports. Ansarullah has made clear on several occasions that its intervention in the Red Sea is aimed at exacting an economic cost on Israel for the genocide in Gaza, a form of pressure to bring the bloodshed and humanitarian catastrophe to an end.
While the New Zealand Government have declined to acknowledge the real source of the conflict in the Red Sea, the attacks on shipping could end almost immediately if the United States forced Israel to submit to a permanent ceasefire. It won't do that. Instead, it is allowing the slaughter in Gaza to continue, as well as risking a wider regional war that there will be no coming back from. That the New Zealand Government has chosen to ally itself with the United States is reprehensible.
