NZ Friends of Israel Association Inc
Fighting racial intolerance in New Zealand and beyond
Israel is in the throes of political upheaval as the country’s ruling party seeks to pass legislation that could allow for Jewish-only communities, which critics have condemned as the end of a democratic state.
For the past half-decade, politicians have been wrangling over the details of the bill that holds constitution-like status and that Benjamin Netanyahu wants passed this month.
Hatred against Britain and Israel surfaced in Gaza as England progressed its way through the World Cup to meet Sweden in the quarter finals…writes David Singer.
One Gaza fan was outspoken:
“Of course I will support Sweden.
I can’t imagine a Palestinian supporting England, which created the Balfour Declaration, or not supporting the country that stood before the world and recognised our state.”
The 1917 Balfour Declaration has never been forgotten or forgiven by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Hamas – both of whom consider the Declaration to be null and void – spending decades in spruiking this false message to their respective constituencies – fomenting Arab hatred against the Jews since the Declaration first called for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.
Benjamin Netanyahu
…To our shame, New Zealand has fallen into line with the anti-Israel bloc. Last year, we supported 16 of the 19 UN resolutions that condemned the Jewish state.
This is perplexing, because according to the international Democracy Index compiled by the British magazine The Economist, Israel remains the only democracy in the Middle East.
The same UN is often strangely silent when it comes to atrocities perpetrated by Arabs, but that’s international diplomacy for you. Diplomats, including our own, do whatever political self-interest dictates.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards
Protests against the ruling regime in Iran have now continued into July, with fresh demonstrations in the south and southwest of the country reported on Sunday night and Monday morning.
In fact, Iran has witnessed strikes and protests on a daily basis since December 2017. The first one took place in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city by population, and the most religious. It is a city where Ayatollah Sayyid Ahmad Alamolhoda, “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative, and Ebrahim Raisi, President Hassan Rouhani’s rival in the last election, hold indisputable power.
Now thousands of Iranian citizens have once again held mass protests in the Grand Bazaar of Tehran and in other big cities such as Tabriz, Shiraz and Kermanshah.
The larger protests that sprouted in June are a spontaneous response to Iran’s grave economic crisis, rooted in regime corruption and mismanagement. The people are telling the regime, “Leave Syria, think of us,” “Nor Gaza, not Lebanon, my life is for Iran,” and “Death to Palestine.” In growing numbers, Iranians are confronting the regime’s squandering of the country’s wealth — including billions of dollars unlocked by the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA — on its regional proxies. These include Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Islamic Jihad and others, whose aim is to destabilize the Middle East.
Mahmoud Abbas
JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he will continue paying stipends to Palestinian attackers and their families despite the Israeli parliament’s decision last week to withhold those funds from taxes collected on the Palestinian Authority’s behalf.
Abbas told a meeting of Fatah party leaders Sunday that his government will keep paying “our martyrs and prisoners and wounded people” as it has since 1965.
Benjamin Netanyahu
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he understands the criticism of his compromise agreement with Poland over its disputed Holocaust speech law, as he tried to tamp down an uproar at home in which critics have accused him of whitewashing history for political considerations.
Netanyahu and his Polish counterpart issued a joint statement last week praising Polish resistance to the Nazi occupation and distancing Poland from the Holocaust. The move came after Poland agreed to scrap prison terms for those who criticize its wartime conduct.
The agreement was aimed at ending months of tension between the two generally friendly governments that was accompanied by a wave of anti-Semitic rhetoric in Poland.
Instead, the compromise sparked outrage in Israel over Netanyahu’s seeming capitulation to the Polish narrative that they were only victims of the Nazis. Historians say anti-Semitism was deeply rooted in Poland and that many Poles collaborated with the Nazis in the genocide.
In a rare rebuke of the Israeli government, the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial slammed the statement, saying it contained “highly problematic wording” and “grave errors and deceptions.”
It warned that the law’s revision did nothing to change its essence, saying it could still impede historical research. Even some of Netanyahu’s coalition partners called the declaration disgraceful and demanded it be scrapped.
At his weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu defended the compromise statement while acknowledging it did not address all elements of the dispute.
“The statement published after the changing of the law was accompanied by a senior historian. However, after its publication different comments were heard,” he said. “I listened closely to the comments of the historians, including about some things that were not included in the statement. I respect that, and it will be expressed.”
The declaration, which denounced “anti-Polonism” alongside anti-Semitism, was seen as a diplomatic coup for Poland, which has long sought international recognition of the massive suffering its people experienced under German occupation and for the heroism of its wartime resistance fighters.
For decades, Polish society avoided discussing the killing of Jews by civilians or denied that anti-Semitism motivated the slayings, blaming all atrocities on the Germans. Raised on this narrative, many Poles react viscerally when confronted with the growing body of scholarship about Polish involvement in the killing of Jews.
In Israel, home to the world’s largest survivor population, many remember anti-Semitism in Poland from before, during and after World War II.
“Netanyahu must stop trading in history as if it were his personal property,” read Sunday’s main editorial in the Haaretz daily, titled “History Is Not for Sale.”
“Instead of getting mired in controversial issues and clumsy attempts to decide matters at the heart of vital historical research, it would be better to publish a document that leaves the work with historians on both sides,” it added.
Poland is among a growing number of nationalist governments in eastern Europe that have become more supportive of Israel in recent years. Netanyahu has expressed pride in such deepening ties and has sought to enhance them.
Many in Israel, particularly on the left, fear the newfound diplomatic backing has come at a cost.
Tamar Zandberg, leader of the left-wing Meretz party, said she is convening a parliament vote this week to disavow the agreement.
“Netanyahu sold his soul to the devil in a document that the greatest anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers in Europe would gladly sign off on,” she said. “It is unbelievable that the prime minister of Israel is simply willing to sell out the history of our people for this nonsense.”
UNRWA employees protest against a US withdrawal of funding
Obama concealed a myth-smashing report. Trump can reveal it to the world.
If President Trump wants to promote peace in the Middle East, his first step should be to declassify a key State Department report that would end the myth of Palestinian “refugees.”
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is singularly devoted to the Palestinian refugee issue. Unrwa labels more than five million Palestinians “refugees”—an impossible figure. The first Arab-Israeli war, in 1948, yielded roughly 800,000 Palestinian Arab refugees. Perhaps 30,000 remain alive today, but Unrwa has kept the refugee issue alive by labeling their descendants—in some cases great-great-grandchildren—as “refugees,” who insist on the “right of return” to their ancestors’ homes. Israel categorically rejects this demand.
Unrwa’s operations run counter to the broader mission of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is to resettle those displaced by war. Unrwa’s mission, on the other hand, keeps the conflict’s embers glowing by refusing to resettle Palestinians in neighboring countries or even in the Palestinian territories.
Sara Netanyahu
JERUSALEM (AP) — The wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was charged Thursday with misusing some $100,000 in public funds to order lavish meals from celebrity chefs, dealing an embarrassing blow to the country’s first family and drawing fresh attention to a series of separate corruption investigations plaguing the prime minister.
Although the indictment against Sara Netanyahu did not directly affect the prime minister, it ended a period of political victories that had bolstered the Israeli leader and distracted attention from his legal woes. Her lawyers denounced the charges as “baseless and delusional.”
Sara Netanyahu has long faced allegations of abusive behavior and living extravagantly.
A kite with an incendiary device is readied for its launch
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s military says it has struck Gaza after Palestinians tried to launch flaming kites into its territory.
It said aircraft targeted “infrastructure” there Thursday, without elaborating. It said the strike came after Palestinians attempted to launch “arson kites” into Israel.
Israel has been battling large fires caused by kites and balloons rigged with incendiary devices or burning rags launched from Gaza that have destroyed forests, burned crops and killed wildlife and livestock.
Mahmoud Abbas
