NZ Friends of Israel Association Inc
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For Tanya Levy, the starting point of the Israel-Hamas conflict came at her daughters’ tennis lesson.
The siren indicating they had 90 seconds to find shelter before a possible missile hit sounded while they were in the middle of the courts.
Levy, a “born and bred Aucklander” who moved to Israel 20 years ago, compares her reaction to the siren to how residents of Wellington or Christchurch respond to the first signs of a quake.
“You just switch into business mode,” she said.
Wellington Phoenix have asked fans to refrain from bringing national flags into their two New Zealand home games due to the growing tensions in the Middle East.
The move comes after the club was issued with a “please explain” from the A-League following Israeli striker Tomer Hemed’s controversial goal celebrations against Melbourne City last weekend.
The former Israeli international was cautioned with a yellow card for unveiling a kippah – a cloth cap traditionally worn by Jewish men – and placing it on his head following his 88th minute equaliser, while he also draped himself in the Star of David after scoring a penalty in the 37th minute.
PRESS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
21 May 2021
Prime Minister’s Office Statement (Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser)
The Security Cabinet, this evening (Thursday, 20 May 2021), unanimously accepted the recommendation of all of the security officials, the IDF Chief-of-Staff, the head of the ISA, the head of the Mossad and the head of the National Security Council to accept the Egyptian initiative for a mutual ceasefire without pre-conditions, to take effect at a time to be determined. The IDF Chief-of-Staff, the military and the head of the ISA briefed ministers on Israel’s significant achievements in the operation, some of which are unprecedented. The political leadership emphasizes that it is the reality on the ground that will determine the future of the operation.
End.
The Green Party motion asking MPs to recognise Palestine as a state has failed in the House, with National and ACT MPs objecting to the effort.
Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman on Wednesday afternoon sought leave of the House to debate a motion asking MPs to recognise “the state of Palestine among our community of nations”.
New Zealand does not recognise Palestine as a state but supports a two-state solution to the conflict, which would mean the creation of a Palestinian state.
National Party foreign affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee told Stuff on Wednesday morning that, while the party supported a two-state solution, it would not support the motion.
“We have followed that two-state concept since it was first proposed in 1993 and there have been many attempts to get it together but it has not yet been achieved, and I think to leap ahead of the negotiations by recognising Palestine as a state is pretty much an act of bad faith,” Brownlee said.
NZFOI: Most NZ media mention the Sheik Jarrah property dispute as “the Sheik Jarrah evictions” as if they had come out of nowhere and implying they were just an Israeli abuse of power and a demonstration of all that is unjust about Zionism. In fact it is the subject of a long running legal dispute that has been through several layers of the legal system over nearly forty years. Here is a background article to help put some perspective on those who have open and enquiring minds.
(May 10, 2021 / The International Legal Forum) The case of Sheikh Jarrah is a complex and long-running legal matter, subject to competing property claims by Jewish owners and Palestinian tenants over a small area of land in Jerusalem. The affair also incorporates the area’s religious significance and spans a history dating back to the pre-1948 British mandate era. The case has been subject to legal proceedings since 1972 and is currently before Israel’s Supreme Court, where a final decision is expected in the next month.
This particular case has garnered unprecedented attention in the wake of the recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report accusing Israel of engaging in “apartheid” practices, the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation of alleged Israeli war crimes and a concerted campaign by the pro-Palestinian BDS and NGO network, as well as the Palestinian leadership, to exacerbate and inflame the currently tense situation in and around Jerusalem.
Where is Sheikh Jarrah?
Sheikh Jarrah is a predominantly, though not exclusively, Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, located about a mile and a half from the Old City.Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate
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What is the historical significance of the area?
Jews refer to the area as “Shimon Hatzadik,” “Simeon the Just,” a revered third-century BCE Jewish High Priest whose tomb is located there. The neighborhood is often visited by Jewish pilgrims.
Palestinians claim the area derives its name from Sheikh Jarrah, a physician to Saladin, the Islamic military leader who fought the Crusaders in the 12th century. His body is believed to be buried there.
What is the claim against Israel?
The pro-Palestinian community is claiming that Israel is unjustly evicting four Palestinian families from their homes in the neighborhood and that this exemplifies accusations against Israel in the context of the broader conflict with the Palestinians.
In response, the owners of the property (a private Israeli NGO, Nahalat Shimon), claim they have the legal title to the property in question and that, in the absence of rent being paid by the tenants, the tenants ought to be evicted for breaching the law.
What is the chronology?
Sheikh Jarrah is an Arab neighborhood that developed outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem in the 19th century.
According to Israel’s Supreme Court, the land in question was purchased by the local Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities from its Arab owners in 1875, primarily because of the area’s religious significance in housing the tomb of “Simeon the Just.” The property was registered in the Ottoman land registry as a trust under the name of rabbis Avraham Ashkenazi and Meir Auerbach.
A small Jewish community lived there peacefully in co-existence with the local Arab community until 1948, when the War of Independence broke out.
The Jewish owners had tried to register ownership of the property with the authorities of the British Mandate in 1946.
When the War of Independence broke out in 1948, the Old City of Jerusalem and its surrounding area, including Sheikh Jarrah, was captured by Transjordan (now Jordan) and the Jewish families were forcibly evicted. Custodianship of the property was transferred to the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Properties. In 1956, the Jordanian government leased the property to 28 families of Palestinian “refugees,” while maintaining ownership of the property.
After the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel regained control of Jerusalem, it passed a law allowing Jews whose families were evicted by Jordanian or British authorities in the city prior to 1967 to reclaim their property, provided they could demonstrate proof of ownership and the existing residents were unable to provide such proof of purchase or legal transfer of title.
In 1973, ownership of the property was registered by Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesset Israel Committee with Israeli authorities pursuant to the above law.
Subsequently, in 2003, the owners sold the property to “Nahalat Shimon,” an Israeli NGO that seeks to reclaim property for Jews evicted or forced to flee as a result of the 1948 War of Independence.
Beginning of legal proceedings
In 1982, the Jewish owners (Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesset Israel Committee) sued the Palestinian families residing in Sheikh Jarrah and demanded their eviction on the basis that they were squatters on the property. The Magistrate Court determined that the Palestinian families could not demonstrate their ownership of the property, but that they enjoyed Protected Tenant Status. As protected tenants, they would be able to continue living on the property as long as they paid rent and maintained the property. This arrangement was agreed upon mutually in an agreement signed by the parties, in which the tenants recognized the trusts’ ownership in exchange for protected tenant status.
Beginning in 1993, the trusts began proceedings against the residents based on their non-payment of rent and of illegal changes to the property.
In 1997, Suliman Darwish Hijazi, a Palestinian man, attempted to challenge the trusts’ ownership of the property, based on a kushan (Ottoman title) that he allegedly purchased from a Jordanian man, al-Bandeq, in 1961. The court ruled that Hijazi failed to demonstrate that the kushan refers to the claimed property in Shimon HaTzadik, and that forensic evidence raised the likelihood that the kushan had been altered or forged. Furthermore, Hijazi failed to prove that al-Bandeq had ever owned the property and thus had the right to sell it.
Finally, Hijazi had never acted to protect his property rights, both during the Jordanian and Israeli periods, by registering it, charging rent, or paying property tax.
Prior court rulings
Key points:
• The residents are protected tenants and must pay rent to the property’s owners.
• The residents never paid rent and carried out illegal construction on the property. The court previously ordered the residents to pay the outstanding rent and to immediately evacuate the illegally constructed additions.
• The court rejected claims that the Jordanian government had committed to transferring ownership to the residents and that this commitment never came to fruition due to the outbreak of the Six-Day War. The only document ever provided as evidence was a copy of an unsigned standard Jordanian Department of Housing form, that did not contain any agreement regarding the transfer of rights.
• The court rejected claims that a resident purchased ownership rights from a man named Ismail. The claimant could not demonstrate that Ismail had been the property’s owner, that he had purchased the property from him or that the claimant had ever been a protected tenant at the time of the alleged sale.
The current state of legal proceedings
Following the judgment of the Jerusalem District Court in February 2021, upholding an earlier court decision that, in the absence of payment of rent, the Palestinian residents must vacate the premises, the tenants appealed to the Supreme Court, with a final verdict expected in the next month.
Arsen Ostrovsky is chairman and CEO of the International Legal Forum, an Israel-based legal network of more than 3,500 lawyers and activists in 30 different countries committed to the fight against anti-Semitism, terror and the delegitimization of Israel in the international legal arena.
Questions over just how much influence the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has in New Zealand are being voiced following the NZ Super Fund’s recent divestment from five Israeli banks.
In March, the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, an autonomous crown entity and manager of the NZ$50 billion NZ Super Fund, announced it was ending its NZ$6.5 million investment in the First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank, Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, and Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot.
The NZ Super Fund said it was doing so on responsible investment grounds as there was “credible evidence” that the banks provide finance for the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
“In our view, based on the information available to us, the companies’ activities are inconsistent with the UN Global Compact, the key benchmark against which the Guardians measures corporate behaviour,” it said.
Predictably, well-known opponents of Israel, like the Palestinian Solidarity Network chaired by anti-Israel advocate John Minto, greeted the news enthusiastically.
Green Party foreign affairs spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman told the Spinoff the decision “exemplifies compliance with domestic and international (sic) in terms of investment in Israeli occupied Palestine, which all NZ institutions and companies should be meeting.”
However, National Party MP Nicola Willis reportedly said at a select committee meeting that the fund’s decision was controversial and “viewed by some groups as potentially aligning New Zealand with an antisemitic movement (i.e.: BDS).”
NZFOI: No surprises here.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday postponed planned elections amid a dispute over voting in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and divisions in his Fatah party.
Abbas, 85, issued a presidential decree postponing the May 22 parliamentary and July 31 presidential elections, the official news agency WAFA said.
He blamed Israel for uncertainty about whether it would allow the elections to proceed in East Jerusalem as well as in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
But many Palestinians regarded the Jerusalem issue as an excuse to avoid elections that Fatah might well lose to its Islamist rivals Hamas, as it did in the last parliamentary ballot in 2006.
The delay drew immediate criticism from opponents and from would-be voters – no Palestinian under 34 has taken part in national elections.
It also came on the day that campaigning was due to begin – preparations were already well under way, with thousands of new voters and three dozen party lists registered.
“As a young Palestinian citizen, I call for conducting elections, and I want my right to elect so I would see new faces, young faces, and see new political stances,” said Wael Deys, from Hebron.
The untold story of a former Waffen-SS soldier who lied his way into New Zealand — and got away with it.
By Andrew Macdonald and Naomi Arnold
Cover illustration by Ross Murray
Charlie Upham, in his mid-50s and reserved, was an infantry legend, the holder of the exceptionally rare Victoria Cross and Bar for battlefield valour in Greece, Crete and North Africa. Brian Rawson, a more sociable man of a similar age, had commanded Sherman tanks in North Africa and Italy. The third man was Willi Huber, a charismatic Austrian in his 40s with blond-brown hair and grey eyes, and he had a very different kind of war story.
Rawson, by then a banker in Christchurch, and Upham, who’d taken up farming in Hundalee, had hired Huber as a ski instructor for a few weeks at Amuri Ski Lodge near Hanmer Springs. Huber had emigrated to New Zealand in the 1950s, and told people he had been roped into the German army as a teenager — meaning he had fought for Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in World War II. Upham and Rawson accepted this. “We might have been shooting at one another,” Rawson joked to Huber.
“Soldiers understand that soldiers get called up, and that it’s all political,” recalls Debbie Rawson, Brian’s daughter, who Huber taught to ski. To the two Kiwi veterans, Huber was just a regular “good guy”, popular with the ski-lodge crowd and one of thousands of Europeans starting a new life in postwar New Zealand. Debbie remembers the three men drinking and chatting together in the lodge’s common room, “telling jokes and roaring their heads off with laughter”.
The Austrian went on to build a name for himself in the clannish Canterbury outdoors scene as an expert skier and alpine hiker. He took an interest in people and pitched in to get things done, in the Kiwi way. His crowning achievement was helping establish the internationally known Mount Hutt ski field, which memorialised him with an advanced 821-metre ski run named Huber’s Run as well as a plaque in his honour. Huber’s Hut restaurant served Huber’s Breakfast Burger, Huber’s Smoked Salmon Salad, Willie’s Angus Burger, and Willie’s Midweek Breakfast Special. His achievements were celebrated in a string of articles over the years in local and national media that only briefly touched on his past as a “war hero” in the “German army”.
Then, in 2017, came a shocking admission: Huber told TVNZ’s Sunday programme he had served in Hitler’s feared elite guard, the Waffen-SS. This was at stark odds with the narrative he had carefully maintained for 65 years. Far from being a naive conscript, Huber had volunteered for one of the most notorious criminal organisations the world has ever known. Following the interview, and particularly after his death in August 2020, pressure mounted to strip Huber’s name from Mt Hutt.
Nearly a year after Huber’s death, his past has never been fully unravelled. Many of his stories remain accepted without scrutiny. Now, for the first time, drawing on interviews with people who knew him and official documents from archives, libraries and private collections in five countries, North & South has pieced together the life of this Nazi warrior turned Kiwi alpine legend. We discovered that the true nature of his role in the war was very different from what he claimed, and that he lied on his immigration application in order to enter New Zealand. On multiple occasions over the years, he spoke of his service for Nazi Germany with pride.
In the 1960s, Huber and Upham’s paths crossed at Craigieburn Valley Ski Area, in inland Canterbury. Huber overheard some skiers talking excitedly about the presence of a double Victoria Cross winner. He later told his friend Len Vidgen that he became quite “peeved” at all the attention Upham was getting. “He thought, ‘Fuck that, I’ve got an Iron Cross’,” Vidgen says. Huber told Vidgen that he got into his car and drove the four-hour return journey to retrieve the medal from his home in Christchurch. When he got back, he showed it to Upham: a black cross pattée of iron with a silver frame — and in the middle, a swastika.
Read the article in the June issue of North and South Magazine. Available through your library or nearest bookseller.
A stampede at a religious festival attended by tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews in northern Israel killed at least 45 people and injured about 150 early Friday, medical officials said. It was one of the country’s deadliest civilian disasters.
The stampede began when large numbers of people thronged a narrow tunnel-like passage during the event, according to witnesses and video footage. People began falling on top of each other near the end of the walkway, as they descended slippery metal stairs, witnesses said.
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.
