Anti-Semitism on rise in New Zealand, Jewish leader says | Stuff.co.nz

Anti-Semitism is increasing in New Zealand and those responsible need to better understand the implications of their actions, a Jewish leader says.

New Zealand Jewish Council president Stephen Goodman said hate speech towards Jews was particularly prevalent on social media.

“A lot of anti-Semitism comes out of ignorance and thinking this is a fashionable thing to do,” Goodman said. “I don’t think that legislating really works. The real issue is education.

Read more: Anti-Semitism on rise in New Zealand, Jewish leader says | Stuff.co.nz

A Life Story – Dora Suuring, Dutch resistance fighter dies, aged 102 | Stuff.co.nz

Dora Suuring once said she was only a small cog in the big machine that was the Dutch Resistance during World War II. But her work as a skilled forger helped save the lives of scores of fellow Jews.

Her story reads like a film script with tales of daring escapes, false identities and daily risks she took with the Dutch underground movement.

Read more: A Life Story – Dora Suuring, Dutch resistance fighter dies, aged 102 | Stuff.co.nz

Listen to her 2011 Radio New Zealand interview here:

Trump pushes for Mideast peace, but avoids thorny details – World – NZ Herald News

JERUSALEM (AP)  President Donald Trump on Tuesday pushed for elusive peace between Israel and the Palestinians, calling on both sides to put aside the “pain and disagreements of the past.”

Trump met with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during his quick stop in the region. S

peaking at the Israel Museum, he declared both sides ready to move forward, though there were no tangible signs of the dormant peace process being revived.

“Palestinians are ready to reach for peace,” Trump said.  Turning to the prime minister, who joined him for the speech, Trump said, “Benjamin Netanyahu wants peace.”

The president notably avoided all of the thorny issues that have stymied peace efforts for decades. He did not way in Israeli settlements, the status of Jerusalem or even whether the U.S. would continue to insist on a two-state solution giving the Palestinians sovereign territory.

Read more: Trump pushes for Mideast peace, but avoids thorny details – World – NZ Herald News

The big read: Israeli occupation turns 50 – A Palestinian’s commute through Checkpoint 300 – World – NZ Herald News

Like Taweel, four of every five Palestinians have never known anything but the occupation – an evolving system by which the Israeli military and intelligence services exert control over 2.6 million Arabs in the West Bank, with one system for Palestinians, another for Israelis.

This summer, the Israelis will celebrate their near-miraculous victory in the 1967 war, when in just six days, they took all of Jerusalem and their armed forces crushed the Arab armies thrown against them.

On the other side, the Palestinians will mark a military occupation going on for so long that many Israelis barely seem to notice anymore, except the young soldiers sent to enforce it.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refers to it, when he speaks of it at all, as “the so-called occupation.”

Some of his fellow citizens say there is really no occupation, because all the Land of Israel was awarded to the Jews by God. Other Israelis argue that Gaza is no longer occupied, because Israel unilaterally withdrew from the coastal strip a decade ago.

Read more: The big read: Israeli occupation turns 50 – A Palestinian’s commute through Checkpoint 300 – World – NZ Herald News

Ynetnews News – Czech Parliament recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel

On Jerusalem Day, the Czech Republic Parliament approved the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; Members of parliament call on the government to adopt the same position and stop payments to UNESCO.

Read more: Ynetnews News – Czech Parliament recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel

What the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive wants the world to know

  • Twenty-two SS officers responsible for the deaths of 1M+ people would never have been brought to justice were it not for Ben Ferencz.
  • The officers were part of units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job was to follow the German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and kill Communists, Gypsies and Jews.

Ferencz believes “war makes murderers out of otherwise decent people” and has spent his life working to deter war and war crimes.

It is not often you get the chance to meet a man who holds a place in history like Ben Ferencz.  He’s 97 years old, barely 5 feet tall, and he served as prosecutor of what’s been called the biggest murder trial ever. The courtroom was Nuremberg; the crime, genocide; the defendants, a group of German SS officers accused of committing the largest number of Nazi killings outside the concentration camps — more than a million men, women, and children shot down in their own towns and villages in cold blood.

Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive today. But he isn’t content just to be part of 20th century history — he believes he has something important to offer the world right now.

Read more.

BDS Suffers Another Defeat at University of California-Santa Barbara; Divestment Resolution Gets Zero Votes in Favor

Zero votes were cast in favor of a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) resolution at the University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) early Thursday morning following a marathon debate between pro- and anti-Israel activists.

Over 100 students signed up to speak for and against the Students for Justice in Palestine-backed (SJP) resolution at a meeting of the student government (AS) that ran from 6:30 pm local time Wednesday until 4:00 am on Thursday, according to campus paper the Daily Nexus.

Ultimately, 16 student representatives voted against the resolution, which was titled “Divest From Companies that Profit From Human Rights Violations in Palestine/Israel.” There were seven abstentions.

Read more.

Gerry Brownlee ‘premature’ in making Israel comments: Prime Minister Bill English

Newly appointed Foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee was “still trying to find the right language” when he claimed a New Zealand-sponsored United Nations Security Council Resolution on Israel was “premature”.
But Prime Minister Bill English says he is confident Brownlee is clear on New Zealand’s position now, and it had not changed since the Government pushed through a controversial resolution, condemning Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
At his post-Cabinet press conference, English said Brownlee was “still getting familiar” with the language used by his predecessor Murray McCully, who authorised New Zealand’s UN representatives to co-sponsor Resolution 2334, late last year.

Jews hail Macron’s landslide win as “victory over hate”

(JTA) — Emmanuel Macron, the centrist candidate in the French presidential elections, beat the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen 65 percent to 34 percent in the final round Sunday, according to exit polls.
The result marks both the best electoral result ever obtained by Le Pen’s National Front party — which leaders of French Jewry have said poses a threat to democracy and their community — and the first time in decades that a majority of French voters elected as president an independent candidate coming from outside one of the country’s main political parties.
Macron received the explicit endorsement of leaders and institutions of French Jews as well as Muslim and some Christian ones after he and Le Pen made it to the second and final round. Macron received 23 percent of the vote in the first round two weeks ago, with Le Pen trailing him by two points.
“We remain extremely concerned by the still large support for parties of the far right, not only in France but across Europe,” the president of European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, said in a statement.

Read more.

Brownlee statements about UN’s Israel resolution at odds with Prime Minister’s – National – NZ Herald News

Comments by new Foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee on New Zealand co-sponsoring a UN motion condemning Israel’s settlements in Palestinian territory are at odds with comments by Prime Minister Bill English.

Brownlee said on Wednesday the Security Council resolution passed last December had been “premature” and implied it should not have passed without Israel’s support.

He said on Radio New Zealand that the value of Security Council resolutions was in the “willingness of the parties who are having the resolution imposed upon them to accept what’s in it.”

But English, on the same day, said the resolution had been in line with New Zealand policy and that he did not regret New Zealand’s co-sponsorship.

Read more: Brownlee statements about UN’s Israel resolution at odds with Prime Minister’s – National – NZ Herald News