Captions by Faith Hamblyn. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024. - Tonight on Sunday ` as the death toll goes up, so too does the alarm. What's going on in Kaikoura? - We started noticing a lot of fur-seal deaths; this was a lot more than we normally do. Another dead pup. I'd never seen anything like that here. - They're starving. - So skinny. - But why? - Just natural attrition, really. The sea surface temperature has been consistently higher, every day, than has ever been recorded before. - It's seriously concerning. - And confronting Israel's military machine. - Why does the most powerful military in the Middle East, Israel, need to kill so many children? - We don't need to. - But you are. - Is there a way out... - Do you trust Benjamin Netanyahu? - Never. - ...of a war with no end in sight. - As long as Israel continues to occupy the Palestinians and deprive them, they should not expect but for more violence. (ELECTRONIC THEME MUSIC) - Kia ora. I'm Miriama Kamo. The fur seals, or kekeno, are like torpedoes in the water and big, lumpy cats out of it. For visitors, they're the superstars of Kaikoura's iconic coastline. But right now, something is very wrong. They're starving. In just seven months, more than a thousand fur seals have died. Tonight, Tania Page is with those raising the alarm and racing to figure out what's going on. Kaikoura's spectacular coast and close-knit community is a mecca for the outdoorsy types. - Kaikoura's such a beautiful place, and there are so many options to do outside activities, and so, depending on where the wind is blowing on any given day. - Offshore ` surfing, still ` fishing, or... - Ngaru! Misa! Good boy. Come on! - Ngaru! Misa! - In a light breeze, feeding your pet sheep. - Me tip the rest. - OK, tip it over. Thank you. - It seems idyllic, but it was the practicalities of her mahi that first brought marine biologist Dr Jody Weir to Kaikoura 20 years ago. - I was studying, um,... sea turtles in Barbados,... and at the end of that season, the people said there's another project happening in Kaikoura. - This-Canadian born Kiwi was always destined to work with animals. - At an early age, my parents would always take us camping, um, in all sorts of places, camping with crocodiles and alligators. - It's a lot more adventurous than most Kiwis get. (LAUGHS) There's nothing like that here, is there? - Not so much of the big things. I mean, we do have fur seals. - And it's those fur seals that are top of mind now, after Jody saw something alarming last spring, on patrol for DOC. - And another... another dead pup. We started noticing a lot of fur-seal deaths; this was a lot more than we normally do. There was a stretch that was about 800m long. In a normal year, - only a couple might die. - I was counting, like, 20 to 40 dead animals in that same stretch. - So Jody looped in Lorraine Hawke from Te Runanga o Kaikoura. - That's really concerning. So what does that tell us really? It's important because that was an indicator, really, of, um, other issues that potentially could be happening within our oceanic environment. - We need the fur seals. They are important to the ecosystem. They are what we would call, like, a top predator. But they're also like an ecosystem sentinel, because seeing how they're doing is a good indicator of how the health of the overall system is doing. - So what are they finding? - We're seeing still a fair bit of skinny ones. - These wahine have worked together for nearly two decades. - We moved into a partnership agreement with, um, DOC a number of years ago. Um, and that was a learning curve, uh, really, for all of us. - Lorraine's passion for the environment started while working for the hapu tourism juggernaut Whale Watch. She now chairs its Environmental Pou. - We have a whakapapa connection to the land and to the ocean. Their well-being is, um, very much connected to our wellbeing, and that, um, there's an intrinsic relationship. - That's carved into the wharenui. - She's been alongside, providing guidance and much more of a connection in certain ways that I can't find in a normal scientific background. - It wasn't just the spate of seal deaths that concerned them. - We were also seeing, amongst the live individuals in the colony, several that looked very, very skinny, so emaciated, showing their ribs and shoulder and collarbones as well. - Had you ever seen anything like that before? - No, I'd never seen anything like that here. - Not here, but she has seen similar confronting scenes elsewhere. (WIND WHISTLES) - Yeah. Unfortunately, Campbell Island, which is our further southernmost subantarctic island. - These are sea lions. Jody was posted here in 2019. - And many, many, many pups die ` was about 70% of the pups that were born died before they were a few weeks old. - It's not unusual in the extreme cold and where food is scarce. But in Kaikoura, the high and sudden number of fur-seal deaths meant it was time to raise the alarm with her bosses, who'd been hearing from other scientists around the motu as well. - It wasn't just in Kaikoura - there were, um, deaths in Napier and other places that were all just more than normal. So it flagged this nationwide response. - MPI experts and DOC veterinarians quickly came to investigate. - We wanted to rule out disease, of course, and we were able to do that. However, then it became clear that it was starvation. - I can't imagine it's a quick or painless way to die. - No, it certainly is, um, a very painful way to die and a lot of suffering that would be involved for the animals. - Surprising also because fur seals are not fussy eaters. - So, they eat, like, 26 species of fish, 18 species of cephalopods ` those are the squid and octopus and such. And so for them to be starving of that big myriad, complex diet was very alarming. - Yeah, word was getting round that there were seals dying, and I had seen a couple myself, just round the peninsula. - Someone who's not so worried is Kevin Duncan. - It's just natural attrition, really. - He's been casting here for 30 years. Before retiring, he managed the local Hunting & Fishing shop. - They say that many years ago, it used to be quite unusual to see, um, numbers of seals. - They were nearly wiped out in the fur and oil trade. - ARCHIVE: Over the next 30 years, millions of skins were shipped to Sydney. The seal population of southern New Zealand was virtually exterminated. - But seals have been protected since 1978. - I think it's just a natural nature cycle, because the population's got very high, and the food source is not getting higher. - Now, there are about 25,000 fur seals here. Are there too many seals? - Yeah, yeah. So, um, there is a lot of misunderstanding out there. We know that they're making a comeback. We know they're nowhere near their historic population size. - I think there's gotta be a balance. Um, it's achieving that balance. - It's something everyone here's keen to get to the bottom of. - But it's good that DOC are looking at it. The more we know, the more we can help. - We'll be going over different kinds of terrain, but a lot of it... - Jody is on the case,... - They can use their flippers and things like that. When you're handling the fur seals, um, always have gloves on. - ...with some increasingly nervous volunteers. - Fur-seal bites, because yes, they are wild animals, and they can and do bite. We put them in a hessian sack, and then we use the scale to weigh them. - We're going into a protected area. Even Jody needs permission to do this. - Really, we need to get the data to know what's happening. So some of what we see can be observations. But until we actually do the science, we can't, kind of, keep the attention on what's happening and what we might need to do. - And there's only one way to catch them. While some scarper; others slink off... or hide away, before long... - Got one! - (SQUEALS) - Eight? - Eight. - That's a decent weight. So Jody needs to restrain it like this by applying a little bit of pressure, um, just to keep it calm. Soon a much smaller one. - Four. - Wow. Nice. - 4kg. Yeah, that's really light. - Is that at the bottom end of what you're getting at the moment, Jody? - Yeah, yeah. Quite small, with the upper end being about 9kg. So, these pups are all the same age, so differences in their weight has not got to do with their age. - Yeah. Once weighed, more vital stats are recorded. - Are you on the nose? - Yeah. - Yeah, on the nose. - Small but feisty. - And then the next one we're doing is the auxiliary girth. So skinny. 41. - 41? - Yeah. - Can you feel ribs when you're doing that? - Yeah. - And finally, a kind of undignified haircut, so they're easy to spot when Jody returns to assess the total population in a few days. Pups are completely reliant on their mother's milk for the first 10 months of their lives. - So that condition is a reflection of the condition of the mum. - Sure. - So the mum right now may very well be pregnant again. - So she's feeding three. - She's usually feeding three, yeah, that's right. - Jody is a bit short on volunteers, so she ropes me in. - Where are those scissors? - They're here. - Yeah, so, you basically wanna push the scissors down, not the pointy end. - Oh, my goodness, it's so much thicker than you think it is. - So, water doesn't ever actually reach their skin. Their fur keeps them dry. - I don't know if I'll be making a career as a barber. Oh, no, what a terrible job I'm doing! A process repeated 50 times on this day of the three-week project. - All right. I'll send it back. - You are lovely. Good luck, little seal. There are reminders everywhere of why she's doing it ` dead pups, foetuses... and more. - Tania, if you come take a look here. Um, yeah. So, this is a pup, same age as the ones we've been weighing, measuring today, um, that has recently died. I would say, by the condition, it probably passed away this morning. - Right. - You can also sort of see its shoulder bones there. You can also see a little bit of the pelvic bones poking out there. - Unscientific question for you, but how does that make you feel? - Wow. Hmm. Driven. (LAUGHS) It just makes me wanna get back out there and keep working. - All right. We'll let you do that. - Cool. - We also found it's not just seals facing starvation. - Can't have been feed very much at all. - And the efforts to understand our oceans. - There's no evidence to suggest that fishing has contributed to these deaths. Where are you off to? To get the flu jab. You coming? Nah. I won't get the flu. (QUIRKY MUSIC) Touch wood. (QUIRKY MUSIC CONTINUES) WOMAN: Kia ora! Are you here for the flu jab? Hey. VOICEOVER: Don't leave it to chance. - Since last September, over a thousand fur seals have died in Kaikoura, with all the signs pointing to starvation. In the hills above,... - Thank you. ...conservationists Ted and Ailsa Howard are making an unusual breakfast... - Brunswick sardines and soy oil... mashed up very, very finely. ...for another species they fear for. - And you bring the temperature up to 40 degrees. - Everywhere you look ` hints at who, or rather, what, this warm. fishy smoothie is for; the nationally vulnerable Kaikoura titi, or Hutton's Shearwater. - We're good to go. So much is special about these birds. Kaikoura's the only place these birds live. - 50 years ago, there were at least eight colonies, but now... - Well, there's only the two natural colonies left and our one small artificial colony. So they are very, very vulnerable. - Hundreds of adults have been moved to the sanctuary since 2005, in partnership with Ngati Kuri. Ted chairs the Hutton's Shearwater Trust. - We are at Te Rae o Atiu, which is our artificial colony for the Hutton's Shearwaters. It's located on the end of the Kaikoura Peninsula, and we're here to check the chicks and see if any of them need feeding. And we're standing in front of our predator-proof fence. This is all designed to keep these birds safe from our introduced predators, particularly cats, stoats, ferrets. - And when was the last time you were here? A couple of days ago? - I was out here on Monday morning, and weighed the chicks, and I had one that I was quite concerned about at that point. (LOCK CLICKS) - Do you wanna go through? - Until two years ago, they didn't need to worry too much about the chicks. Then... - I noticed their weights dropping from one week to the next, and so I decided I needed the supplemental feed to keep them alive. We actually lost one chick, uh, to starvation before I did that. - This year is much worse. Ted's had to feed 15 of the 26 chicks. Each precious fluffy bundle is weighed regularly. - That's a little concerning ` that one had lost 100g... between its previous visit of its parents and this one. - Wow. - So that's quite significant. - It's a delicate task. - You need to grab the top of his beak. - Fill up your puku. - You're right. Keep swallowing. That's it. - Some of the adults are fitted with trackers, telling Ted just how far they're having to go for kai. - Had one bird that went 2500km to bring back 50g of food to its chick. I suspect that, you know, we'll see an increase in time, like they're going away for longer, looking for food. Two years ago, the lack of food coincided with a marine heatwave that came through. - This season, with most of the chicks needing feeding, he's noticed the same. - OK. Back on the scales. The last 11 months, the sea surface temperature has been consistently higher, every day, than has ever been recorded before. That's seriously concerning. - Unlike seals, which have a very varied diet, these manu mostly eat krill. - If you've got a warm layer of water on top, the krill will come up just to that point, and they won't come high enough up that the birds can find them. - Seals and shearwaters ` two completely different species; the same hunger problem,... posing big questions for the traditional kaitiaki here. - Extremely significant. If we're looking at social wellbeing and employment, is it a question of overfishing within our waters, or is it a question of real major shifts that are occurring within our oceans, in regards to, um, climate change? We don't know. - Anecdotally, Lorraine Hawkes noticing other changes. - You know, we're seeing definitely huge shifts ` um, fish they shouldn't be here, people are catching. Um, and those fish normally prefer warmer climates. - So are fishermen like Kevin Duncan. - Big runs of bluefin tuna lately, that, um, we haven't seen here before. A lot of salmon this year are thin, and some of them have got sea lice on them. - These are absolute manifestations of what happens in the changing climate. - Simon Lawrence is Director of Science and Information at Fisheries New Zealand. - My team's job is to use science and data to count fish, to understand the health of populations. We focus our research efforts, uh, on the fish that are of the highest value, um, that is both commercial, recreational and customary interests. - However, only 10% of the seal's diet overlaps with what people like in the high-value commercial fishery. - And on that basis, there's no evidence to suggest that fishing, uh, has contributed to these deaths. What we do know ` climate change, uh, has affected the sea temperature. This may mean that some of the, um... the fish that seals like to eat are moving further offshore, into deeper water. - It's not like you can put your finger on one thing or draw a straight line ` it's probably these collective things that are contributing to what we're seeing. - So there's no silver bullet? - No, unfortunately. - But connecting the dots is what Lorraine wants to see more of. - Because at the moment, it's not joined up. The research is siloed. We have, uh, researchers in the area that are solely focussed on paua, on seals, on kareno, for example ` we need to start taking a unified approach. - The more that we can collaborate with iwi, with local communities, with local fishers, the better. - And that's encouraging. But for Jodie, who's witnessed firsthand how our warming oceans are changing, not knowing the exact specifics is no excuse. - We already know enough to know that there's problems happening. I think we already know enough to be able to act. - Are you hopeful? - Always. (LAUGHS) I've been described as having rose-coloured glasses and an iron-clad grip. - Well, Jody's early findings show that while the fur-seal birthrate in Kaikoura has been stable for over a decade, the number of pups this year has dropped dramatically by more than 50%. E whai ake nei ` the failures that led to war in Gaza. - What went wrong? - Everything. Literally everything. - Israel's military insiders break ranks. - What did we think is gonna happen, after 16 years of siege? - I would fight against Israel, in order to achieve my liberty. - Kia ora mai ano. The war in Gaza will be etched in the memories of generations to come ` first, the brutality of Hamas' October 7 attack; then, the ferocity of Israel's retaliation. Was it proportionate, or was it driven by rage and revenge? In this special investigation, John Lyons challenges some of Israel's most powerful political and military voices on the country's strategy and intentions. Is this a forever war, he asks, and is there a way out? (DRONING MUSIC) (DRAMATIC MUSIC) (MUSIC CONTINUES) October 7 was the deadliest day in Israel's history. - Saturday morning, it was about 6 o'clock, I woke up. I got to prepare myself to go to the beach to swim. About 20 minutes later, I heard noises of Iron Dome rockets. - I was watching all the horrible videos coming out from the south, and... and I became physically sick. The level of dehumanisation, the brutality, yeah, it was just beyond belief. (SOMBRE MUSIC) (GUNFIRE) - (SOBS) (INDISTINCT SHOUTING) - What went wrong? - Everything. Literally everything. (SOMBRE MUSIC) (MUSIC CONTINUES) (DRONING MUSIC) (MUSIC FADES) - Israel is at war. - From the beginning of the first moment, I knew that such a big event will also bring a ferocious Israel and a ferocious Israeli response. - They've made a mistake of historic proportions. (DRAMATIC MUSIC) (TANK ENGINES REV) (MUSIC CONTINUES) - You know, at the beginning, I was also full of rage. (BOMBS EXPLODE) I also had the feeling that, you know, these are animals, we need to go there and bomb the hell out of them. But then you stop for a second, and you think, and you say to yourself, 'What did we think is gonna happen... 'after... '16 years of siege?' - I was surprised and not surprised, because I kept warning that people cannot stand the accumulated cruelty accumulated over so many decades, and somehow, it will... there will be an explosion. Somehow there will be an outburst. I couldn't imagine what it would be, but, uh... but there it came. (SOMBRE MUSIC) (MUSIC CONTINUES) (MUSIC CONTINUES) - The occupied Palestinian territory is made up of three parts ` Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem ` Gaza, under Israeli blockade, since the militant group Hamas seized power in 2007; and the West Bank, run by the moderate Palestinian Authority, although more than 700,000 Israeli settlers also now live there, protected by Israeli soldiers. The architecture of occupation is brutalist. Palestinians require permits to enter or leave the West Bank. There are scores of fixed checkpoints, pop-up checkpoints, internal checkpoints, occasional checkpoints, roadblocks, earth mounds, road gates, walls, fortified barriers and trenches ` more than 600 physical obstacles and about 100 different permits in total, and everywhere; Big Brother surveillance cameras, armed with face-recognition technologies. Israel says it's for security. 19-year-old Israeli soldiers in the West Bank wield absolute power ` even if they kill an innocent Palestinian, they'll rarely face serious consequences. What is the reality for Palestinians here? - A life of people who dream about... freedom and don't see it. Whether we like it or not, we control the life of millions. - If you were a Palestinian living in the West Bank or Gaza, what would your view be of Israel? - I would fight against Israel, in order to achieve my liberty. (PEOPLE CHATTER) (ENGINES REV) - Life, for us, is struggling not to drown. It's basically continuing on survival mode all the time. (INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS) The ability of somebody else to humiliate you on a daily basis, just passing through a checkpoint. I've seen personally, when an Israeli sniper hit one of my friends and high-fived his buddy, that he got the target. - What's it like, having a gun pointed at you? - It's totally abnormal. It's not civilised, to say the least. If I want to take my kids over the weekend to visit their grandma, who lives 40 minutes away from Ramallah, we have to pass two checkpoints, we have to stop, get checked, with the soldiers pointing the guns at the back seat, where my kids, you know, are terrified, and they start to ask questions. - If life in the West Bank was difficult, daily life in Gaza was worse. Israel's siege condemned Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians to slow suffocation, in what many describe as the world's largest open-air prison. (YELLING) Every so often, Gaza would erupt with public protest or barrages of rockets, and Israel would come down even harder. (TENSE MUSIC) What was the choice of Palestinians before October 7th? - No legal respite, no diplomatic resolution, no horizon for a two-state solution or one-state solution; no efficacy for non-violence action. - As long as Israel continues to occupy the Palestinians and deprive them and suffocate them,... they should not expect but for more violence. - Yeah, it's hard not to imagine that this war will sow seeds of hatred for generations to come, particularly for those who have suffered the most ` that's next. - We never target civilians. - Israel's dropping the bombs. - We have no other alternative. - We are told, but the idea of doing everything to avoid civilian casualties ` straight lie. (SOMBRE MUSIC) - The rampage by Hamas on October 7 shook Israelis to their core. Within hours, Israel was bombing Gaza. (BOOM! BOOM!) Since October, more than 30,000 Gazans have been killed; two-thirds of them women and children. Why did Israel need to kill so many people in Gaza? - We never target civilians. - You might not be targeting them, but they're dying in their tens of thousands. - Because they live, or those that control their life, are these terrorists that... are exploiting their existence. - Israel's dropping the bombs. - We have no other alternative. (BOOM!) - Mr Ayalon, one thing I don't understand is why does the most powerful military in the Middle East, Israel, backed by the most powerful military the world's ever seen, The United States, need to kill so many children. - We don't need to. - But you are. - When we fight Hamas,... it is the most populated battlefield ever fought in the history of wars. (BOOM!) And in order to achieve... our military goals,... we have to hit military targets. But in a populated area, in which we are fighting in Gaza, it is almost impossible to hit a military target without killing or hitting civilians. Hamas, deliberately, are using civil targets ` civilian targets ` schools, hospitals, UN institutions, in order to place... military targets in civilians institutions. - We are told, but the idea of doing everything to avoid civilian casualties is a blunt lie ` straight lie. It's a hard statement to say about my own army, but it's the truth. We are told that every target we strike is a legitimate target, under international humanitarian law. And when we strike, we do it in a surgical manner, in a way, while taking all precautions to... avoid, you know, to minimise the civilian... collateral damage and casualties, yeah? But what about a house of a militant? A target that was very common in many operations before in Gaza. Two-, three-, four-, five-, six-storey building, that you would wipe out with a half 1-ton bomb just because on the second floor, the flat to the left, a Hamas militant lives. (BOOM!) There's no way this is a legitimate target under IHL. I have no doubt that after October 7, yeah,... they've loosened some of the restraints, some of the restrictions they had from previous wars. So if before, let's say, for a company officer in Hamas, you were allowed to take out five civilians, hypothetically speaking,... and now, in this war, for every rank-and-file guy in Hamas, you're allowed to take out, i.e. to kill, 15 civilians,... you know, a move like this can explain a lot of what we see. (TENSE MUSIC) - This is Benjamin Netanyahu's war ` Israel's longest-serving Prime Minister. Throughout his career, Netanyahu has tried to kill the idea of a Palestinian state. Do you trust Benjamin Netanyahu? - Never. (CHUCKLES) - Can there be peace while Benjamin Netanyahu's the leader here? - Uh, no. No. (POP MUSIC PLAYS) - Just over a year ago, he managed to cobble together the most right-wing coalition Israel's ever seen. Netanyahu awarded senior Cabinet portfolios to two extremists ` Bezalel Smotrich, now the Finance Minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, minister of national security. Both ministers live in illegal settlements. Ben-Gvir has criminal convictions for racist incitement and supporting a Zionist terrorist group. He's been condemned by the US and the EU for using racist rhetoric. Smotrich denies the very existence of the Palestinian people. These two men are now accused of driving Netanyahu's Gaza policy, pushing the agenda that would force Palestinians off their lands. - I think Israel's agenda,... the end goal, is to annexe the land. It doesn't take a genius to come up with that conclusion. - How powerful are Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, and what do you think of them? - I see them as terrorists and as, uh, Jewish, uh, Messianics. They represent only a small minority within the Israeli society, but they get their power because of, um, our coalition system. - But can I just check something? Are you calling ` the Minister for National Security and the Minister for Finance, in Israel ` are you calling them terrorists? - Of course. They are. - The Prime Minister's Office did not respond when we put these allegations to him. Mr Ben-Gvir and Mr Smotrich also failed to respond. It now appears that Netanyahu wanted to sow seeds of division between the hardliners, who ruled Gaza, and the more conciliatory Palestinian Authority running the West Bank. - We did something very, very simple. We did everything in order to make sure that Hamas will go on controlling Gaza, and Palestinian Authority will control the West Bank, so they will fight each other. - Netanyahu allowed Qatar to give massive amounts of cash to Hamas in Gaza. Netanyahu maintains the Qatar money was to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe. Having helped to build up Hamas, Netanyahu has now vowed to destroy it. - He fed the beast, and it exploded in our face. The issue is this, OK? If you want to destroy Hamas... in Gaza, what you will have to do is forcibly displace more than 2 million Palestinians into Sinai. Go house by house, corner by corner, wipe out entire Gaza above ground, and then go for months, underground, tunnel by tunnel, yeah? Suffer hundreds of casualties, if not thousands, ultimately. And maybe after a few years, there won't be Hamas in Gaza, but if you've done that,... (SCOFFS) there's gonna be Hamas everywhere else. - Can Hamas be destroyed? - Hamas, as a military organisation, will be destroyed. So they can hide in tunnels ` we shall find them there. They can hide in houses ` we shall find them there. It's not going to be stopped up, until we are going to destroy the military infrastructure of both in Gaza Strip. - How long do you think Israel's war against Hamas will last? - How long it will take? It may take a year or two. - Yes, it's a frightening timeline, but it's dependent on one crucial ally. - We stand with Israel. - What would happen if President Biden said, 'As of tomorrow, 'I'm cutting off the supply of bombs'? - The war would end. - Nau mai ano. Gaza was already one of the most desperate places on Earth; now it's plagued by mass starvation and disease. Israel has killed tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, as it tries to wipe out Hamas. But what about the US? Just how accountable is this powerhouse ally? - We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel. And we will make sure that it has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself and respond to this attack. - What would happen if President Biden said, 'Thousands and thousands of civilians have been killed in Gaza, 'the bombing's indiscriminate ` 'as of tomorrow, I'm cutting off the supply of bombs'? - The war would end. That would be the end of this war. Israel cannot wage it without these bombs. The role of the US has been ` as usual ` full-fledged support, uh, for Israel; backing in the Security Council; supply of arms; total complicity and responsibility for all of Israel's behaviour and the bombing, that is indiscriminate, as the president said; and at the same time, a bit of public finger-wagging. - The State of Israel was born to be a safe place for the Jewish people. - President Biden is a lifelong supporter of Israel. - I've long said if Israel didn't exist, we'd have to invent it. - The supporters of Israel in America, of course, would say Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East ` it's in our strategic interests to support it. Is that a fair argument? - Well, um, I don't know of any, uh, democracy that, uh, for more than half a century, has deprived millions of the people under its control of basic civil rights, uh, based on their inborn characteristics. That is the case here in Israel, and I don't think, uh, it's, uh, defensible, under any definition of democracy, to call this place a democracy. - Pro-Israeli lobby groups in the US wield immense power. - Every politician in the United States knows that they can pay a major price with their jobs for not toeing the line. And the level of devastation that we are seeing now has so horrified the world, and has so horrified the American public, that now we have half of the people who voted for Biden saying that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza. - Israel also has a fundamental responsibility to protect innocent civilians in Gaza. - And now, for Biden, for the very first time, there is talk that an American president could lose an election over being too pro-Israel. It's unheard of. And so we have this enormous American hypocrisy of supplying the bombs that we say are being used indiscriminately and expressing sympathy for the people who are being killed by our bombs. - If it's found later that war crimes were committed by Israel, is the United States complicit in those war crimes? - 100%. 100%. - As the US continues to supply Israel with munitions, it's now dropping food aid to Gazans, amid warnings that hunger has reached catastrophic levels. (YELLING) Children are already dying of starvation, and the UN says famine is imminent. - There is this country, and there are two peoples who live in it, and this country belongs to the two peoples. But any plan to... expel or to get rid of one of the two peoples... will result in even more disasters. I feel that now, when this genocidal war is still going on, uh, in Gaza and against Gaza, my first thing that I say is there must be a ceasefire. - Genocides start... with something very, very clear ` the intention to kill a race or a people. We do not have this intention. We are doing many mistakes, but it is far from being genocide or far from being a genocide intent. That's it. (INTENSE MUSIC) - The International Court of Justice opened hearings on allegations that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. - The acts and missions by Israel... - In a preliminary ruling, the court said it was plausible that Israel's acts could amount to genocide. The ICJ ordered restraint. Another international court is investigating possible war crimes by both Hamas and Israel. Some members of Hamas have said, clearly, that, 'We will try more October 7s' ` they're committed to wiping out Israel. What can Israel do to protect itself? - I think the answer is very simple. They need to end the Israeli military occupation. They need to grant the Palestinians back their rights, and they need to recognise that the Palestinians have a right to self-determination, to freedom, to sovereignty, to independence, to liberation, to being equal humans. - You cannot deter a person, or a group of people, if they believe that they have nothing to lose. We Israelis, we shall have security only when they will have hope. - What's the future for Palestinians? - Supporting death will not bring you anything. If you don't believe that the Jewish presence here between the Mediterranean and Jordan Valley is forever, you are going to lose more than you've lost till now. - We're in a very bleak, very dark moment in our own history. But at the same time, I always think that from the depths of despair, from the depths of this darkness, we can always see some light. And perhaps there is some hope that, uh, we can reconfigure life in... in the Holy Land in a way, um, that treats people equally, uh, treats people, uh, with the humanity that they deserve. - Well, this week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters addressed the situation when speaking at the UN. He says Palestinian civilians must not be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas. He also made clear the overwhelming support in the international community, including New Zealand, for a two-state solution. Well, that is our show for tonight. Now, you will have seen this week the news that Sunday will be closed down. We are grateful for all your support for us and our media colleagues in a difficult week. We will be on air until mid-May and will continue to bring you the stories that matter in the weeks ahead. Until then, you can join us on social media ` Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Thanks for joining us e te whanau, for staying with us in the weeks to come. Nga mihi nui. Hei kona. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024.