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→ 25 April 2021
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Israel is partying like it’s 2019: With most adults now vaccinated, Israelis are busting loose | Stuff

Israel is partying like it’s 2019. With most adults now vaccinated against the coronavirus and restrictions falling away – including the lifting this week of outdoor mask requirements – Israelis are joyously resuming routines that were disrupted more than a year ago and providing a glimpse of what the future could hold for other countries.

Restaurants are booming outside and in. Concerts, bars and hotels are open to those who can flash their vaccine certificates. Classrooms are back to pre-covid capacity.

The rate of new infections has plummeted – from a peak of almost 10,000 a day to about 140 – and the number of serious coronavirus cases in many hospitals is down to single digits. The emergency Covid-19 ward at Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv resumed duty as a parking garage, and waiting rooms are suddenly flooded with non-Covid patients coming for long-deferred treatments.

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→ 23 April 2021
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New Zealand’s Sovereign Wealth Fund damages its reputation by divesting from Israeli banks| FDD

David May, Research Analyst, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

New Zealand’s $36 billion sovereign wealth fund divested $4 million from five Israeli banks last month because of their West Bank operations. This could cause reputational and financial problems for New Zealand and for companies managing its sovereign wealth fund.

Flawed information and analysis spurred the fund’s decision. In a letter explaining the move, the Guardians – the government entity that runs New Zealand’s sovereign wealth fund – cites concern about Israel’s plans to annex portions of the West Bank. However, Israel agreed to suspend its annexation plans in September 2020 as part of its peace deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Subsequently, UAE-based Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank signed a memorandum of understanding with Bank Leumi, one of the Israeli banks subject to divestment.

The letter erroneously describes United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which declared that Israeli settlement activity “has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law,” as “binding.” However, the council passed that resolution under the non-binding Chapter VI.

The Guardians’ letter also relies on reports by the UN Human Rights Council, a body composed of numerous autocracies that has passed nearly as many resolutions criticizing Israel as the rest of the world combined. This reality undermines the credibility of the council’s reports.

Thanks to the Guardians’ decision, Israeli companies now comprise 11 of the fund’s 53 divestments not related to tobacco or cannabis. Two of these are Israeli construction companies from which New Zealand divested in 2012 for building West Bank settlements. The Guardians excluded the others for manufacturing certain weapons or for alleged labor or unethical-conduct issues.

Yet even as they condemn Israel, the Guardians invest in one of the world’s leading human rights abusers. The fund holds nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of investments in 625 Chinese companies, including two companies blacklisted by the United States for violating the rights of ethnic minorities. China has detained up to 1 million Uighurs from Xinjiang province, suppressed pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and continues to occupy Tibet.

Likewise, while the fund divested from Israeli banks, it invests in companies extracting natural resources from another disputed territory. On March 15, New Zealand’s High Court upheld the sovereign wealth fund’s right to invest in companies operating in Western Sahara, a non-self-governing territory occupied by Morocco.

Two New Zealand companies included in the fund import around $30 million worth of phosphate from the disputed territory annually. Morocco’s alleged facilitation of the extraction of natural resources from an occupied territory appears to contravene Article 55 of the 1907 Fourth Hague Convention.

Israeli banks have faced divestment in the past. In January 2014, Dutch pension firm PGGM announced it was divesting from the same Israeli banks that New Zealand’s fund excluded. The Financial Times reported that several senior PGGM executives later regretted the decision because it inadvertently thrust the company into the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the same month, Denmark’s Danske Bank terminated operations with Israel’s Bank Hapoalim, prompting Illinois’ Investment Policy Board to bar investment in Danske.

Accordingly, U.S. states such as Illinois that impose restrictions on the investment of public funds in companies boycotting Israel should prohibit investment in financial management firms implementing the Guardians’ anti-Israel divestment policy.

On their website, the Guardians state that avoiding reputational damage is one of their guiding principles. The fund’s exclusion of Israeli companies while continuing to invest in problematic businesses elsewhere could damage the fund’s reputation if members of Congress voiced their displeasure. This would carry significant weight, since the United States is New Zealand’s third-largest trading partner.

David May is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he also contributes to FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from David and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow David on Twitter @DavidSamuelMay. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

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→ 22 April 2021
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Maori and Israelis: Peoples of the Land | Times of Israel

Ngapuhi’s powhiri

While Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970, for indigenous peoples, living in close connection with the environment and being caretakers of the land is part of the culture, hence Māori are called tangata whenua, people of the land.

A special event organized by a Māori tribe in the north of Aotearoa New Zealand to welcome the new Israeli Ambassador also provided a unique opportunity to mark Earth Day.

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→ 21 April 2021
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Ngapuhi welcomes new Ambassador of Israel to NZ

Heartwarming stuff!

–NZ Friends of Israel

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→ 19 April 2021
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Mills-Mojab spread’s Iran’s disinformation about Israel | Stuff

Centrifuges used for enriching uranium at the Iran Natanz facility

Stuff ran an opinion piece written by Donna Mills-Mojab today. It is an example of Iranian propaganda. It weaves a narrative that makes Iran seem like it is doing no wrong. Her article makes no mention of:

  • Iran’s sponsorship of terrorist organisations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the PFLP.
  • Iran’s terrorist activities in Albania, Bahrain, India, Israel, Iraq, Kenya, Argentina, Thailand, France and Denmark.
  • Iran’s military units operating in Syria and Iraq
  • Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty way back in 1970. Under the treaty, Iran agreed to not develop nuclear weapons, disclose all nuclear technology activities, and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency full access to check and monitor Iran’s compliance. Iran’s non-compliance and intentional deceit under the treaty have been well-documented.

Instead, it lays down a smokescreen of false information which should be corrected here:

  • There is no evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons. No independent observer has ever sighted an Israeli nuclear weapon, nor is there any evidence of any Israeli nuclear weapons tests. Unlike North Korea, India, and Pakistan. Nuclear weapons tests can’t be seismologically hidden. The vibrations literally reverberate around the world.
  • Any relaxation of economic sanctions against Iran has only accelerated efforts to arm Israel’s enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah.
  • That Israel’s existence is a form of colonialism when it is clearly an UN-mandated humanitarian initiative to restore Israel as a Jewish homeland, borne out of the Holocaust, which demonstrated that Jews must have a safe haven from endemic anti-Semitism.
  • Mills-Mojab claims Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands is illegal. Actually, Israel’s presence there is the result of an unsuccessful Arab invasion of these territories and their illegal attempt to extinguish a fledgling member of the UN. Now, these lands are disputed and claimed by people who have created a state where no state existed before, to give their claim a false veil of legitimacy.

Iran has demonstrated that it does not act in good faith. Which leaves Israel deeply skeptical of a successful diplomatic outcome. What good is a treaty when it’s highly likely that Iran does not intend to comply with it?

Uranium 235 enrichment to less than 20% is suitable for commercial power generation. Anything beyond that sends a clear signal of Iran’s intentions.

Read Mills-Mojab’s article.

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→ 14 April 2021
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Israel to accept foreign tourists after year-long break | Stuff

Israel will reopen the country to vaccinated foreign tourists in May, more than a year after closing its borders to most international visitors due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Tourism Ministry said a limited number of tourist groups will be allowed to enter the country starting May 23, with individual visitors allowed at a later stage. All foreign tourists entering the country will be tested for coronavirus before boarding flights to Israel and must present a serological test to prove they have received a Covid-19 vaccine.

Israel suffered a major economic blow due to the coronavirus pandemic. In recent months, it has carried out a highly successful vaccination programme that has allowed it to reopen most sectors of the economy. But the tourism industry, limited only to serving Israelis, remains blighted.

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→ 12 April 2021
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Israel rejects ICC probe, saying it lacks jurisdiction | ABC

Fatou Bansouda, ICC prosecutor

Israel on Thursday said it would formally reject the International Criminal Court’s decision to launch a probe into potential war crimes against the Palestinians, denying that it has committed such crimes and saying the court lacks the jurisdiction to investigate.

A panel of judges at the ICC ruled in February that the court does have jurisdiction, allowing the investigation to proceed. Israel’s response to a formal notification sent out last month is not expected to reopen that debate, though judges may reconsider the issue of jurisdiction later in the process.

The court is expected to look at possible war crimes committed by Israelis forces and Palestinian militants during and after the 2014 Gaza war, as well as Israel’s establishment of settlements in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem that now house over 700,000 settlers. International law prohibits the transfer of civilians into occupied territory.

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→ 9 April 2021
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The man who survived Dr Mengele | Newsroom

Benjamin Steiner

Benjamin Steiner died in Auckland last week at the age of 81, and as Mark Jennings writes, his life story was unique in many ways

Benjamin Steiner cut a distinctive figure with his dapper clothes, trilby hat and twinkly eyes. But belying that appearance, his body covered in scars and the number A-421734 tattooed on his left forearm, was a terrible truth.

Steiner was a survivor of Auschwitz, and the subject of the notorious Dr Josef Mengele’s experiments.

The small, softly-spoken man lived in New Zealand most of his life. He was a professional and passionate saxophonist and worked as chief purser for the airline that became Air New Zealand.

Born in 1935 in Budapest, he was 8 years old when he was transported to Auschwitz – Birkenau in a railway wagon. By 1944, 12,000 Jews were being delivered to Auschwitz on an average day.

Winston Churchill once described the treatment of Hungarian Jews as the “greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world…”.

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→ 8 April 2021
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The Holocaust Is My Heritage: Bearing the Scars and Stories of Survivor Grandparents | Haaretz

My last photo with my Zayde

NZFOI: Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah

My Zayde told us about his childhood in Kazimierz, and about burying half-alive bodies in Buchenwald. What it means to be the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, and to lose them.

He and his father were imprisoned in Plaszow concentration camp, where he said every day brought a new tragedy. He would tell us, in unadorned language, that he saw young boys being hanged for stealing bread, and that’s when he learned you say the Shema prayer before you die. He piled earth over bodies, after they were shot dead, and was haunted by watching the soil shiver – the victims were still alive, and slowly suffocating.

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→ 2 April 2021
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New Zealand Fund Decision to Divest from Israeli Banks Breaches Legal Requirements | UKLFI

Catherine Savage, Chair of the Guardians of New Zealand’s Superannuation Fund

The Guardians of New Zealand’s Superannuation Fund have recently decided to divest from Israeli banks in apparent breach of legal requirements.
The Superannuation Fund, known as the Super Fund, was set up in 2001 to secure funding for universal pensions for New Zealand’s aging population with a fair sharing of the cost between present and future taxpayers.

The Guardians’ statutory mandate is to invest the Fund on a prudent, commercial basis and manage it in a manner consistent with:

  • best-practice portfolio management;
  • maximising return without undue risk to the Fund as a whole; and
  • avoiding prejudice to New Zealand’s reputation as a responsible member of the world community.

International financial markets lawyer, Dan Harris, has pointed out:

  1. The published reasons for the decision to divest from Israeli banks show a failure to properly consider material information and give too much weight to questionable sources. This appears to be inconsistent with “best-practice portfolio management”. For example, the reasons placed considerable weight on the UN Human Rights Council’s report dated 12 February 2020. However, breaches of human rights are a matter of law, and yet the UNHRC report clearly states that it offers no legal conclusions. Moreover, the methodology used for that report was demonstrably flawed and based on biased sources.
  2. The decision appears to have been taken with a dominant improper purpose to be a political player, rather than applying a responsible investment policy; and on the basis of opposition to an Israeli proposal to extend Israeli law to part of the West Bank, even though at the time of the decision that proposal was no longer being pursued.
  3. There was a fundamental error of law in treating the Israeli Banks as responsible for acts of the State of Israel. Lawful acts of private companies cannot automatically be equated with those of a government.
  4. The divestment may damage New Zealand. US politicians on both sides may react in a negative manner. The Guardians are required to avoid prejudice to New Zealand’s reputation, not attract it

Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UKLFI commented: “As well as being an improper purpose, the Guardians’ political aims discriminate against Israel. At the same time as divesting from Israeli banks, they are investing in companies operating in Western Sahara and probably in other disputed territories”.

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