By Tony Wall, Sunday Star Times, 22/12/2013

Dead Sea beauty kiosks are turning over millions of dollars – despite continual complaints about aggressive and deceptive sales tactics. Tony Wall reveals who is behind the kiosks, and why the malls won’t clamp down on them.

The money flowing through Dead Sea beauty kiosks is staggering, according to insiders. Sources familiar with the Israeli-run operation here and overseas have told the Sunday Star-Times it’s a licence to print money.

“They’re literally doing 10 to 12 grand a day per stall, and that’s a bad day,” an informed source claimed of the New Zealand business.

A source involved with Dead Sea companies in the United States at corporate level – who has seen accounts for a single kiosk at a mall in Las Vegas – said it was making profits of up to US$250,000 a month, or US$3 million a year.

“The real money is made at Christmas, it’s crazy,” he said. “I was blown away by how much these guys were generating, it just got bigger and bigger every year.”

The source claimed the US operations avoided tax by sending profits back to Israel and paying staff their commissions from there.

Dead Sea kiosks began in the US about a decade ago but expanded around the world, reaching New Zealand and Australia around 2010 when the market in the US became saturated.

The US source said he was speaking out because he felt the businesses there were unethical, charging customers who were perceived as wealthy hundreds or even thousands of dollars for beauty products that cost only a few dollars to produce. Customers perceived as “poor” would be charged a fraction of that, he claimed.

“They are predators, it’s just an ugly business.”

In this country, malls are themselves making huge money from renting space to Dead Sea kiosks, which is why they won’t move against the kiosks even though there are complaints from shoppers, insiders say.

The Star-Times arranged for someone to call a Westfield leasing manager to inquire about rental prices for a 9sqm site in the thoroughfare of a mall. He was quoted $90,000-$124,000 a year, depending on whether it was a “prime” location.

“You actually pay more for a prime spot [in a mall] than you do for a shop,” a source said. “It’s walking space, there’s no extra lighting or amenities or anything, it’s almost like a gross profit to the shopping centre.”

Several people told the Star- Times they had complained to mall management about Dead Sea sellers but had been told “we’re just the landlord”.

Jessica Wilson, a researcher for Consumer NZ, said the malls needed to take any complaints of harassment seriously.

“We’ve had reports from consumers where the mall has helped to resolve a problem with a kiosk, however, this hasn’t always been the case. In our view, the mall management has a responsibility as the landlord to respond to complaints about the behaviour of kiosk staff.”

Westfield spokeswoman Linda Trainer insisted the company took customer complaints seriously, but would not say if a Dead Sea kiosk had ever had a lease terminated.

She said all operators had to comply with legislation such as the Fair Trading Act and Consumer Guarantees Act and Westfield had the right to revoke a licence should an operator fail to comply.

She wouldn’t discuss Westfield’s commercial arrangement with the Dead Sea kiosks, but said “all negotiations for space are market- led, and a number of factors determine the value, for example location within the centre”.

The US source said malls there started off charging as little as US$1500 a month in rental, but now charged around US$25,000.

Bidding wars had broken out in places like Las Vegas, with malls awarding rental space to the highest bidder, and there had even been shootings as operators fought for control of the Dead Sea carts.

“The shopping centres know what’s happening, they are even worse in my opinion – every year they keep putting the rent up. I wrote to a president of a mall saying ‘this is criminal what you’re allowing here’,” the source said.

Napier Grandmother Debbie Dagg said she felt she had been “scammed” by a Dead Sea seller at a mall in Palmerston North. She thought she was getting four nail kits for $99 but got home and found her card had been debited $200.

She felt the saleswoman had deliberately distracted her.

“I paid by eftpos and she kept me busy with her chatter, asking my name and complimenting me, telling me she was from Israel, that she had done two years’ military training and on it went.

“I feel sick to think I gave them $200 of my hard-earned money, I’m a solo grandmother raising a grandchild and working for a living.”

Dagg eventually got hold of the kiosk manager and got a partial refund.

An Auckland grandmother in her 70s, who asked not to be named, said she too fell for the saleswoman’s repartee at a mall in Albany, north of Auckland. She said the seller demonstrated a number of products and she agreed to buy some, but lost track of the prices. When she later got her bank statement, it showed she had spent $470.

“I feel foolish. I don’t know what was wrong with me, really. I didn’t realise the second lot [of products] was so expensive.”

She complained to mall management. “They said ‘we’re only the landlord here’. They gave me a number for the [kiosk] head office and said ‘good luck’.”

The woman said she eventually had $70 refunded. In a shocking case last year, a man with Asperger’s syndrome had his credit card and bank account debited $6232 by a Dead Sea operator at The Plaza in Palmerston North in 17 separate transactions in one day.

The Manawatu Standard reported the man was left broke and suicidal. His money was eventually refunded.

LVS Retail and Dead Sea Beauty (2006), the related companies behind most of the Dead Sea kiosks in New Zealand, issued a statement through their lawyers saying customers were “not forced or intimidated in any way”. If a customer wanted to return goods, the companies would abide with the law at all times.

The statement said the companies had “letters of thanks and customer appreciation which show a high level of satisfaction”.

The kiosks employed workers from a number of different countries, not just Israel, and they were all legal, the statement said. The New Zealand businesses were in no way connected with operations in the US.

The Israeli embassy says it knew of cases of Israeli citizens being apprehended for “illegal commercial activities” and had informed Jerusalem. A note warning travellers to abide by New Zealand laws had been placed on the website of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Immigration New Zealand said its compliance officers had regularly visited malls in Auckland, Palmerston North, Wellington and Christchurch since becoming aware in 2011 that foreign nationals without authority to work in New Zealand were selling Dead Sea cosmetics.

Dozens of illegal workers were rounded up in raids and many deported, but Immigration NZ says all now seem to be legal.

This follows the introduction, in November 2011, of an Israeli Working Holiday Scheme, under which 200 Israelis each year receive visas that allow them to work here temporarily.

Tony Kan, president of NZ Friends of Israel, said he was concerned that the aggressive sales tactics of the Dead Sea sellers could contribute to “negative stereotyping” of Israelis and Jews.

“Some of it can be due to a cultural misunderstanding. Having travelled in the Middle East and also in Asia I have encountered enthusiastic salespeople which seems normal in their context but would be seen as aggressive in ours.

“It may be that they haven’t realised that what is normal there, may not be culturally acceptable here.

“In our experience, once disinterest is clearly expressed the [sales] pitch ends pretty quickly.”

THE STORY SO FAR

April 2011: The Star-Times reveals Immigration officers raided Sylvia Park shopping centre in Auckland, where they found young Israelis working illegally selling Dead Sea beauty products. Others fled before officials could catch up with them. Some of the workers said they were “volunteers” doing it “for Israel”.

August 2011: A previously secret diplomatic cable by US ambassador to Israel James Cunningham , released by WikiLeaks, alleges the Dead Sea industry involves immigration fraud, illegal labour, money laundering and worker exploitation, and is worth $1 billion.

May 2012: The Star-Times reports Israelis working for a Dead Sea beauty product company trashed a rental property in Cambridge, using it as a warehouse and causing $24,000 damage.

– © Fairfax NZ News

By Daoud Kuttab, December 13, 2013

The question to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was appropriate in time and place. At a news conference in Johannesburg where he was attending Nelson Mandela’s funeral, Abbas was asked about his position regarding the international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) of Israel.

Abbas’ answer, while not surprising for many considering that he’s involved in negotiations, angered supporters of the BDS movement. The Palestinian leader said flat out that he doesn’t support the boycott of Israel…

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/12/abbas-attacks-bds.html##ixzz2nrOVnuqK

By: Shifra Unger

For a long time, New Zealand had been a friendly and welcoming place for Israeli tourists to visit and work.

However, lately, the immigration authorities in New Zealand, began deporting Israeli citizens from their country as soon as they land.

Their reason is said to be a fear that Israeli citizens will stay in the country to work illegally.

Last week, at least 6 Israelis were refused entry to New Zealand. They were put on the first flight back to the country they came from.

Recently, during an immigration raid by the New Zealand authorities, several Israelis were caught working in malls illegally. They were all deported.

This is a drastic change in New Zealand’s approach to Israeli travelers.

In 2011, Israel and New Zealand signed an agreement allowing Israeli backpackers, who are below the age of 26, to legally work in in New Zealand for a year to finance their trip during their stay in the country.

The agreement called for granting 200 Israelis work permits, however, hundreds of Israelis applied for the work visas.

Due to the increased flow of young Israelis entering the country in search of work, authorities in New Zealand began giving them a less than warm welcome.

The Israelis who were deported from the country said that immediately after landing they were detained for extensive questioning at the airport.

During interrogation, the travelers were asked about the length of their stay, the amount of money in their possession, and were even asked to show a return ticket.

This was done to determine if they came to the country for the purpose of travel or work.

Those that were not considered credible were deported from the country immediately, and were banned from entering New Zealand for at least five years.

Due to the many cases of deportation, the Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a travel warning for New Zealand.

Immigration authorities also provided tips on how to avoid deportation. They recommend people to show a complete list of their planned trips, arrive with a return ticket and bring enough cash for the duration of their stay in the country.

Source:  http://www.yourjewishnews.com/2013/11/w8175.html. Accessed 4/12/2013

JNF emissary Shlomo Ben Haeim, after the attack in Sydney

Five Jews were viciously attacked in an apparent anti-Semitic assault at a popular beach town near Sydney, Australia on Saturday October 26.

Police said four men ages 66, 48, 39, and 27, along with a 62-year-old woman, were walking along the street in Bondi beach when eight young males began shouting anti-Semitic comments towards them. They began to attack the victims; the incident lasted for 15-20 minutes.

One of the victims was Jewish National Fund emissary Shlomo Ben-Chaim.

“They started yelling ‘dirty Jews’ at us and then they just assaulted us. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” Ben-Chaim told Israel Radio.

Police said that attackers fled the scene, but they arrested three men, two 17-year-olds, and a 23-year-old near the scene.

Stepan Kerkyasharian, the president of the Anti-Discrimination Board of New South Wales, said he will investigate the incident and that “anyone found guilty of racial vilification should be dealt with appropriately.”

The victims were taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. They suffered concussions, fractured bones, lacerations, and bruises. Hospital spokesman David Faktor said that they were attacked because they were Jewish.

“You certainly don’t come to Bondi and expect that,” Faktor told Australia’s ABC News.

“Maybe in Germany in the 1930s and Russia in the 1970s, but certainly in Sydney, Australia, Bondi, you just don’t expect an unprovoked attack,” he said.

The attack provoked sharp comment and debate from community leaders regarding the extent of Anti-Semitism in Australia.

Here is the complete text of our Address to the Ambassador at his reception given to welcome him to NZ in Christchurch on Sunday November 3, 2013.

Click here to download.

Last Sunday (27 October) Radio New Zealand broadcasted on National Radio, a play written by Joe Musaphia, based on a true story about David Zwartz’s family.  David Zwartz has been honorary Consul for Israel and is Chairperson for the Wellington Jewish Association.

Before leaving Germany in 1938, and an SS man, having heard that the family were emigrating to New Zealand, bargained with David’s grandfather for his Marklin model railway.

Musaphia has adapted the story for his play.  On the Radio New Zealand website, the following blurb can be found:

THE TRAIN SET

Berlin 1939. The Nazis are making life uncomfortable, even dangerous, for Jewish families to stay. The Stern family is packing up the apartment, preparing to go to the other side of the world — to New Zealand. An SS officer arrived one evening to check out a model railway track for his young son. But is that his only reason for visiting?

You can hear the play here.

Forty years after the Yom Kippur War, an eventually triumphant campaign that cost over 2,500 Israeli lives and left an enduring scar on the national psyche, Israel on Thursday released Prime Minister Golda Meir’s long-classified testimony from the commission of inquiry that investigated the actions of the military before and during the early stages of the war.

Meir, in her newly released testimony, steadfastly defended her decision not to launch a preemptive strike on the Yom Kippur morning of October 6, 1973, by which point it was virtually certain that war was imminent, and pleaded ignorance of most military matters, explaining that her decision, that same morning, to draft the reserves, and at full strength, despite defense minister Moshe Dayan’s hesitations, was born of “a lack of knowledge and a lack of expertise.”

Regarding the preemptive strike, Meir acknowledged that it would have saved lives but said that, even in the aftermath of the war, she did not regret her refusal to unleash the air force on the amassing Egyptian troops on the western side of the Suez Canal. “I knew then, and I know now, too, that it’s possible, maybe we could even say certain, that boys who are no longer would still be alive,” she acknowledged. “But I don’t know how many other boys would have fallen due to a lack of equipment.”

In recounting the events of the morning of October 6, Meir told the commission that her “heart was very much drawn to” a preemptive strike, “but I am scared.” In both the cabinet meeting on the morning of Yom Kippur and in previous meetings with Dayan and chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. David Elazar, she testified to having said: “1973 is not 1967, and this time we will not be forgiven, and we will not receive assistance when we have the need for it.”

Had Israel fired the first shot of the war, Meir testified, the US would have claimed “you started” and, based on her knowledge of the Pentagon, she continued, “I can say with 100 percent (certainty)” that the airlift of arms and supplies would not have been delivered.

Israel received 26,000 tons of crucial supplies during the war, Meir noted, including 40 Phantom and 53 Skyhawk fighter jets.

Offering a glimpse into her psyche during the early days of the war, when Israel appeared to be losing on both fronts, she revealed that she had suggested flying to the US on the second day of the war to go “see Nixon incognito.”

“Ask me now how I would have done such a thing, I don’t know. But out of desperation, when something dramatic must be done in order to move them,” she had suggested leaving the country, she said.

The war itself, a stunning military victory, which ended with Israeli forces in control of more territory than at the onset and perched a mere 30 and 50 miles from Damascus and Cairo respectively, nonetheless rattled the Israeli public and shattered the notion of invincibility, which had bloomed in the aftermath of the six-day victory achieved in 1967.

Angered by the price paid in blood and shaken by the accomplishments of the Arab armies during the early days of the war, when the Bar-Lev Line crumbled in the south and Syrian tanks tore through the meager Israeli forces on the Golan Heights, the public demanded a national commission of inquiry.

The five-person commission, headed by Chief Supreme Court Justice Shimon Agranat, released its initial finding in April 1974, six months after the war. The members of the commission, which included Supreme Court justice Moshe Landau, state comptroller Yitzhak Nebenzahl and former IDF chiefs of the General Staff Yigal Yadin and Haim Laskov, called for the heads of five officers, including Elazar, who died two years after the publication (age 51), but cleared Dayan and Meir of all direct responsibility.

Nonetheless, one week after the commission’s preliminary report was published, in April 1974, Meir stepped down, saying she could no longer ignore the swell of public ire.

The commission focused on two main issues in its February 6, 1974, questioning of the prime minister: her reaction to the aerial battle between Israeli and Syrian planes on September 13, 1973, and her subsequent preparations for war.

On that September day, Israel, in what is largely seen today as an ambush, sent a pair of IAF Phantom fighter jets into Syrian airspace on a photography mission in the north of the country. As the Israeli jets concluded their mission, rising up to a detectable altitude, Syria dispatched more than a dozen MiG-21s to engage the Israeli jets over the Mediterranean. Israeli planes hovered low, waiting for them, and in the dogfight that followed the IAF downed 12 Syrian jets and lost only one, with the pilot emerging unscathed. The following day’s papers, and Meir’s testimony, put the score at 13-0, and the result was seen as evidence of Israel’s military superiority.

The following Sunday, at the weekly cabinet meeting, Meir said, the defense minister and the chief of the General Staff were asked “what we could expect, what was reasonable” in the way of a Syrian reaction.

The response was that the Syrians “will make use of this and try to start something on the Golan Heights.”  The something, Meir told the commission, was likely to be a random bombing of an Israeli residential area, “because the easiest thing from their perspective is to bomb villages.”

By September, the Syrian armed forces had amassed 800 tanks on the Syrian side of the Golan – eight times more than the IDF – and they had moved their artillery cannon out of a defensive position near Damascus toward the front. The head of the Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Hofi, told the General Staff, on September 24, two days before Rosh Hashanah, that the situation was “very serious,” according to Abraham Rabinovich’s authoritative account “The Yom Kippur War: The epic encounter that transformed the Middle East.”

On the 24^th of September, Meir said, when it became clear that “the Syrian army was on a full emergency footing on the front, the IDF’s assumption was that the deployment was a response to their fears about a possible attack of ours on the Syrian front.”

Commission member Yigal Yadin, a former IDF chief of the General Staff and Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, asked the prime minister why it was “logical” to assume that after a bruising defeat Syria feared another Israeli strike, rather than the more natural explanation that the Syrians were readying themselves for retaliation.

Meir said that IDF military intelligence believed that “the Syrians thought this was some sort of a beginning on our part.”

On September 25, 1973, King Hussein, the ruler of Jordan, was helicoptered into a Mossad building outside Tel Aviv and met with Meir. They spoke for over an hour and, after some idle chatter, the king essentially warned her of war on two fronts

Conspicuously, there is no mention in the testimony of the events of the following day. On September 25, 1973, King Hussein, the ruler of Jordan, was helicoptered into a Mossad building outside Tel Aviv and met with Meir. They spoke for over an hour and, after some idle chatter, the king essentially warned her of war on two fronts. Lt. Col. Zussiya Keniezer, the military intelligence officer in charge of the Jordan desk, listened in on the conversation from another room. When the conversation was over, he promptly called his superior officer, Brig. Gen. Aryeh Shalev, and told him, according to Rabinovich’s account, that “the bottom line of what Hussein had to say was that there’s going to be war with Egypt and Syria.” [Asked whether the Agranat Commission had questioned Meir about this meeting and whether her testimony had been stricken in order to avoid bruising the ties between Israel and Jordan, where the king’s son now rules, the Defense Ministry, which has handled the dissemination of this information from a committee headed by Justice Yitzhak Engelhard, said, “On the basis of the harm that may be caused to the security of the State of Israel, the committee decides what to publish.”]

Instead the protocol skips ahead to September 30, when Meir set off for Strasbourg to address the Council of Europe. Before departure, at the airport, she was told that the Syrian front had been further strengthened and that the Egyptians had embarked on a large-scale drill near the canal. Nonetheless, she said, quoting from a copy of an intelligence report from that day, “our estimation stands that the strengthened front is part of the Syrian fears of an Israeli attack, which they have been anticipating for two weeks.”

On October 2, well after midnight, Meir returned. Dayan met her “in some corner of the airport,” and said, as she recalled, “I want to report about developments on the front.”

They met the following morning, along with Elazar, Brig. Gen. Shalev and IAF commander Benny Peled. The members of the commission had a copy of the minutes of the meeting and did not ask Meir any specific questions about it. She volunteered that all parties were in agreement about the unlikelihood of immediate war; that she decided to summon Elazar and the head of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Eli Zeira, to the first cabinet meeting after Yom Kippur; and that, in the interim, she decided “to focus on one thing” — narrowing down the Israeli military wish list from the US and pushing for its urgent delivery.

The following day, Zeira, the strongest advocate of “the concept” that the Arab armies would not dare attack Israel, informed the prime minister that he had a piece of news that “could be worrying”: the families of the Russian advisers were leaving Egypt.

Zeira, who critics say crushed dissenting opinion from within the ranks of the military intelligence community, and who was effectively removed from his post by the commission, explained this, though, as the likely result of a feud or a capricious decision by Egyptian ruler Anwar Sadat, whom Meir described as someone whom she once thought was “unreasonable” and “now I can almost ask his forgiveness.”

Zeira also informed Meir, who was strangely not kept in the loop, that the head of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, had received an urgent warning signal, at around midnight, and had left the country. “I did not know that he had left,” Meir told the commission. “Usually he calls me. But he received an urgent call and left immediately, and we knew that he had gone to meet with source ______.”

The source, Ashraf Marwan, former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s son-in-law, had told his Mossad handler that Egypt would wage war on Saturday, Yom Kippur.

“Did you know this was about war?” Agranat asked Meir. “Were you told that?”

“No,” Meir said. “At the time, I think not. But I understood that if he called him and he immediately got up and left, that he had some information to pass on.”

Asked if it was common for the head of the Mossad to depart without informing the prime minister, Meir said that it was not. It had never happened during their years of working together. “I can explain it only in one way. He knew what was happening on the fronts. He knew this was a source from whom he could hear something important, he received the code word, got up and left. It’s good he did that.”

“But had he called you directly, maybe you would have heard the code word,” justice Moshe Landau remarked. “Maybe it would have changed something.”

“Yes. But it wouldn’t have changed a thing, for I would have told him: of course, go. And I can’t say that I would have said that, based on that, something must be done.”

Meir described her state of mind during those days before the war as “unquiet” but said, “I didn’t think I could argue with the military intelligence people, with the chief of the General Staff.”

In fact, throughout her testimony she scoffed at her own understanding of military affairs.

Speaking of the October 5 cabinet meeting, on the eve of Yom Kippur, she told the commission that although none of the government ministers present demanded that the army summon the reserves, “I, afterwards – since the war, not right away – have chastised myself, why didn’t I propose it.” Haim Bar-Lev, a former chief of the General Staff and a minister in her government, she told the commission, told her: “I don’t understand you. There are generals, me, Bar-Lev, who just two years ago was the chief of the General Staff, the chief of the General Staff, the defense minister, who also knows a bit about the army, a general who is the head of military intelligence, and all of these people don’t suggest a call-up of the reserves, and you, the civilian, are supposed to recommend it?”

On Saturday, the morning of Yom Kippur, she described her decision to authorize the call-up of the reserves as an amateur’s decision. Some argued that calling up the reserves, and certainly at full strength, might be used a pretense to attack Israel, and that a show of calm might soothe regional tensions, “but I, out of a lack of knowledge and a lack of expertise said: We’ll draft.”

She described herself as “glad” about that decision.

Meir further revealed that Zeira’s decision to dilute the information he had about the airlifting of the Russian advisers out of Syria and Egypt, wording it in an ambiguous way in his Friday report to cabinet, was a miscalculation in her opinion, but explained that he was not alone in his constant fear of information leaks. “It’s a terrible plague,” she said. “Sometimes I think it’s an idée fixe of mine. I’m not entirely rational on this matter. There’s fear, there’s terror, that what is given to the government or any other forum might be leaked.”

Landau remarked that had this information been passed on properly to the entire government – Meir already knew – it would have given the situation “an entirely new shade of urgency” and that some of the former generals in her cabinet might have sounded the alarm.

At four in the morning on Yom Kippur, Meir said, her military attaché, Brig. Gen. Israel Lior, called and effectively announced that war was about to start. “There’s information from Zvika that this is it.”

Meir went to her office, she said, and read the Mossad commander’s three-page report “from the first word to the last.”

At two p.m., the Syrians and the Egyptians opened fire in a devastating, coordinated onslaught.

Meir’s testimony, over 100 pages long and given in the course of a single day, does not touch on her handling of the war, which was considered to have been very solid under very trying circumstances. “We’re not touching on that?” she asked the commission.

The answer, which she already knew, was no.

In parting, she thanked the members of the commission, with whom she seemed to enjoy a familiar and at times even playful banter. “My work colleagues are witnesses to [the fact] that I am thankful three times a day that you took this on yourselves,” she said. “I think that to a great extent this has saved us, even before you submit your recommendations. The very fact of your work.”

Source:  The Times of Israel

70 years after the Second World War a special prosecutor office in Germany recommends that 30 people suspected of being guards in Auschwitz consecration and death camp be indicted.

Read more.

Daniel Morgan and Yosef Livne (Image by Zahn Trotter)

Daniel Morgan, a NZFOI committee member, welcomed the new Ambassador Yosef Livne at a reception in Auckland.  Attended by over 200 people, the audience was treated to a number of items by local performers.

Yosef spoke about how the Jewish people were “here to stay.”  Many people have sought the demise of the Jewish people, the Babylonians, the Nazis among the prominent ones that come to mind.  But all have gone but the Jews have survived.

Long may that continue.