NZ Friends of Israel Association Inc
Fighting racial intolerance in New Zealand and beyond
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.
Heartwarming stuff!
–NZ Friends of Israel
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.
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.
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:
International financial markets lawyer, Dan Harris, has pointed out:
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”.
Israel was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic – it reported over 831,000 infections. But in just a few months, after launching a mass vaccination campaign, life is “back to normal”.
As of March 15, according to the World Health Organisation, 9.7 million vaccine doses had been administered in Israel. A total of 5.18m people, which is over half the population, have received at least one dose. A “green pass” has since been introduced allowing vaccinated people exclusive access to gyms, hotels and theatres and concerts.
Kiwi expat Jeremy Ross, who moved to Israel in 2007, received his second vaccine dose in January, a month after the programme launched.
“This is the end of the road for us … we’re at the end of the tunnel, this is it, the light is here,” Ross said.
Here are several possible options.
Ahead of Tuesday’s election, all the party leaders, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on down, spoke to reporters and analysts constantly, in order to try to get out the vote.
But once the polls closed Tuesday night, most of the politicians suddenly became completely silent. The quiet was not because they were tired.The only party leaders who sought the press on Wednesday were obvious winners like Ra’am (United Arab List) head Mansour Abbas and Labor leader Merav Michaeli.The others made a strategic decision to wait to talk again – at least until the results of the election were complete.
With 97% of the normal ballots counted, Netanyahu’s Likud won 30 seats, Yesh Atid 17, Shas 9, Blue and White 8, United Torah Judaism, Yamina, Yisrael Beytenu and Labor 7, New Hope, the Joint List and the Religious Zionist Party 6 and Meretz and Ra’am 5.
There still remain some 430,000 double envelopes, which are ballots from hospitals, nursing homes, emissaries, soldiers, prisoners and special polling stations for returnees at Ben-Gurion International Airport and for the sick and quarantined from COVID-19.
The double ballots are worth some 11 seats – enough to change the outcome of the election significantly in a race so close.
After months of pressure, a ski run and restaurant at Canterbury’s Mt Hutt are being renamed. David Williams reports
A ski field has quietly wiped a Nazi officer’s name from its slopes – but not from the entire mountain.
Willi Huber, a pioneer of Canterbury ski field Mt Hutt, lauded as the ‘father of the mountain’ in a 2017 TVNZ Sunday programme, died in August last year, aged 97.
However, the ski field’s promise to continue to honour him with the name of its restaurant and a ski run hit a swastika-shaped snag. The Austrian volunteered for the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the notorious SS, and became a decorated officer.
(SS is an abbreviation for Schutzstaffel, meaning “protective echelon”. It was founded by Adolf Hitler in 1925 as his personal bodyguards but grew with the rise of the Nazi movement, to 38 combat divisions comprising 950,000 men. Heinrich Himmler headed the SS from 1929.)
News of Huber being memorialised at Mt Hutt sparked a wave of outrage, especially in light of his comments to Sunday – the link to which was deleted last night – that Hitler was “clever”.
A petition was launched asking for Huber’s name to be scraped from the ski field was signed by thousands of people. The story was also picked up by the Jerusalem Post.
Last September, members of the NZ Jewish Council and the Holocaust Centre of NZ discussed the issue with Paul Anderson, the boss of NZSki, the company that operates Mt Hutt, and Queenstown fields The Remarkables and Coronet Peak. After the meeting, Mt Hutt’s manager told Stuff the names of the restaurant and ski run would only be changed if evidence was presented linking Huber to war crimes.
Nothing has been said publicly since.
But a search of Mt Hutt’s website this week revealed Huber’s Run has been removed from the ski field’s trail map and the restaurant had been renamed Ōpuke Kai. (Ōpuke is the Māori name for Mt Hutt. NZ Ski has asked iwi Ngāi Tahu if it’s comfortable for that name to be used.)
Anderson, the NZSki boss, confirms the changes. The decision was made early this year and the changes were implemented a month ago, he said.
“We’ve had to take care on the way through to respect the views of a wide range of people and recognise that there were diverse opinions on the issue. We’ve just come to our decision that it’s time to move forward.”
NZFOI: Wow!
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be able to form a government for the seventh time in his three-decade political career, according to exit polls on the three television networks Tuesday night.All three polls indicated that his bloc of Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism and the Religious Zionist Party received enough support together with the Yamina Party of Naftali Bennett, who said during the campaign that he was ready to join a coalition with either political bloc.
For the fourth time in two years, Israel is holding an election.
And for the fourth time in two years, no one knows who will win or what will happen next. In many ways, the election on Tuesday feels like the last three — some of the same central issues, the same dysfunction and many of the same candidates.
In other ways, however, it feels radically different, opening up new possibilities and directions for Israel’s future, no matter who wins.
