Asia Pacific Report
“Triple-tap” attacks by Israeli and US forces against Palestine, Iran and Lebanon were condemned today at a Stop Wars Aotearoa rally against the atrocities in the Middle East in Auckland’s Aotea Square.
New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters was also criticised in satirical theatre over accusations of racism and insults against immigrants.
Thanking people for showing their support and solidarity with the people of Iran — “who have had American and Israeli missiles raining down on them for five months” — a New Zealand Afghan speaker said this “new wave of aggression” had started on February 28 with a demonic US attack on Minab elementary girls’ school in southeastern Iran.
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“A triple-tap attack against children in their classrooms,” said Bibi Amena. Rescue officials reported 175 people had been killed — most of them young schoolgirls, with 32 of the victims recently being buried in a mass funeral.
“A triple-tap attack is a tactic used to ensure there are no survivors, and to kill anyone responding to the initial attack, in particular it aims to kill any rescue workers and journalists who arrive at the scene after the first strike,” she said.
This was the same tactic used by the “demonic Israeli Occupation Forces in Palestine”.
In August 2025, Israeli forces carried out a triple-tap attack on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing 22 civilians, including 3 journalists who arrived minutes after the initial attack.
Shameful Hind Rajab killing
Amena also highlighted the shameful killing of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, along with 6 other family members, as they fled in a car from Israeli bombs in northern Gaza.
“They were all shot, 335 times by Israeli occupation forces. Two paramedics were sent to rescue Hind. A double tap attack followed, deliberately timed to kill the paramedics,” she said.
The shocking tragedy was told in a documentary, The Voice of Hind Rajab, featuring the actual sound track of Hind’s pleas for her life as she lay wounded and talked to rescue dispatchers.
This film was screened to packed cinemas for the third — and final time in Auckland — at the 2026 NZ International Film Festival yesterday.
A Palestinian community and justice advocate, Maher Nazzal, posted on social media this week the following response:
“It is heartbreaking beyond words.
“If you are a human being with even the smallest sense of compassion, this film will change you. After watching it, life can never, ever absolutely never go back to ‘life as usual’.”
“We all know her name and her story,” said Amena. “we all know the story of Gaza, and the story of Palestine. And we also know the story of Iran.
“Because their stories are not new to us. We have been witnessing Israeli and American political violence, aggression, torture, terrorism and illegal wars for most of our lives.”
‘Illegal, immoral war’
She said the months-long attack in Iran had been an “illegal, illegitimate, immoral and senseless war, started by the world’s biggest aggressors, America and Israel”.
Over the past 5 months, Iran has had its schools, hospitals, power plants, bridges and other civilian infrastructure deliberately targeted and destroyed.
Amena said this was not new.
The Islamic Republic of Iran had been facing American and Israeli aggression since their Islamic Revolution of 1979.
For 47 years, Iran had been “relentlessly threatened, sanctioned and violently attacked by the American and Israeli regimes”.
“Why? Because the Islamic Republic of Iran fought for sovereignty and independence, and broke free from the clutches of Western imperialism.”
Ironically, as she spoke a counter-protest of Iranian monarchists and supporters who back the claim of dissident and Zionist US-exiled former crown prince Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, tried to drown out the speakers at the Stop War protest.
392 military interventions
Between 1776 and 2019, the US carried out over 392 military interventions worldwide.
“From my home country Afghanistan, to Cuba, to Korea, to the Philippines, Venezuela, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Vietnam, Iraq and beyond.”
Currently, America had more than 600 military bases in at least 63 countries worldwide, Amena said.
“And these are conservative figures, others estimate over 1000 military bases and installations in over 150 countries,” she said.
“Many of us here in Aotearoa who are immigrants, are here because of America’s military interventions in our home countries. And as much as I love Aotearoa, which has been the only home I know for most of my life, no one wants to be a refugee.
“It is not a life of luxury, to leave your home, your ancestral lands, your whānau, your hapu and iwi. No one wants to risk their lives to get on a boat, and travel in inhumane conditions, to a foreign land where they are stripped from all that’s familiar to them, and all that’s sacred to them.
“No, they immigrate because they are escaping American and Israeli bombs. They are escaping poverty caused directly by America’s economic terrorism.”
‘Educate yourself’ on immigration
Amena appealed to people in Aotearoa who had a problem with immigrants and refugees, “please educate yourself as to why and how we came to be here”.
“We are reliant on immigrants to sustain our economy and our public services.
“As a healthcare worker, I can tell you from first hand experience that our healthcare system is falling apart because we don’t have enough healthcare workers.”
The protesters also held a mock trial of an effigy character representing Foreign Minister Winston Peters over his anti-immigrant and racist statements inside and outside Parliament over recent weeks and failure to take a stand over the Gaza genocide.
The crowd acted as the “jury” and delivered a resounding “guilty” verdict on his “shameful” behaviour.
Peters refused this week to apologise for his attack on a Chinese-Kiwi MP despite Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and other critics describing his insults as “racist”.
The Foreign Minister had stirred a public row by slamming Green Party MP Lawrence Xu-Nan in Parliament, ordering him to “go back to where you’ve come from”.
Among several other speakers at the rally was Iranian Kiwi Seyed Derhany, who also spoke about the Minab schoolgirls atrocity and the injustice of the unjustified war on Iran, saying that Iranians were essentially peace loving people who did not like war.
As he spoke, he held aloft photographs in memory of two of the Minab schoolgirls “brutally killed” in the US-Israel attack — 10-year-olds Maryam Bazarak and Asra Zahari.
