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→ 7 November 2019
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Anniversary of Kristallnacht shows why hateful words matter | Stuff

When 18th-century Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke said that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”, he could not have imagined what the future would hold, and how his words would resonate for the world we live in today.

History is inexorably defined by the actions of those who live in the world, and the impact they have on generations that follow.

The Holocaust is one of these historical events. The murder of six million Jews and more than five million others who were seen as enemies of the Nazi ideology did not start with the plan of mass murder, but with words.

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→ 29 October 2019
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Being Jewish in New Zealand and the concerning rise of antisemitism | North & South

Juliet Moses

Growing up in Auckland, I knew I was a bit different.

Christmas wasn’t a big deal for me. My family didn’t have a Christmas tree and a wreath on our door, and 25 December was the most boring day of the year. Often, we would travel to a holiday destination on that day. Once, we excitedly discovered the movies were on, and had pretty much the entire theatre to ourselves.

Around Easter, my customary school lunchbox sandwiches got replaced with thin, dry tasteless crackers that my friends would ask to try, but only once.

On Sunday mornings, I begrudgingly went to a special school – listening to Bad Jelly the Witch on the radio as we carpooled there – where I learned a script we read from right to left. Sometimes I would use words I thought were part of every family’s lexicon, but when I was greeted with blank stares I realised they were Yiddish. When the subject of World War II came up, or what was happening in the world, I often sensed a raw and bitter pain in my grandmother.

Yes, I knew I was a bit different, but I was proud to be Jewish. My family, although not religious, was observant. I had a bat mitzvah (a coming-of-age ceremony) when I turned 13. Some of the highlights of the year for me were the Jewish festivals, when we took a day off school to attend synagogue and gather together with close family friends for a ceremonial dinner that included much rowdiness and hilarity.

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→ 16 October 2019
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Israel could get an Unity Government |AIR

While the make up of Israel’s next government remains unclear, what was striking in the aftermath of the September 17 election is that Israel’s democracy remains alive and feisty.

firstly, despite an unprecedented second election within five months and widespread predictions of higher voter apathy, voter turnout increased 2% from April’s poll to around 69%.

Secondly, Arab-Israelis showed their desire to participate in Israel’s democratic process. Bouncing back from a low turnout in April, approximately 10% more Arab Israelis voted this time around.

Moreover, highlighting the absurdity of critics alleging “apartheid” in Israel, the Arab-dominated Joint List now holds the third-largest number of seats in the Knesset (13, up from 10), is an active participant in the horse trading to form a new government, and its head, Ayman Odeh, may possibly become the country’s official opposition leader.

Thirdly, ultra-orthodox party Otzma Yehudit, followers of the late extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, again failed to win any seats – a welcome outcome for a party whose extremism and racism deserve no place in the Israeli mainstream.

Meanwhile, the results — Blue and White winning 33 seats, Likud with 31 — have seen most commentators agree that a national unity government is the most likely outcome of the coalition negotiations which follow any Israeli election. This may also be a good outcome.

Unity governments have frequently governed Israel in the past and the results have been mixed. Some broad-based coalition governments have become virtually paralysed with infighting. However, unity governments have also served Israel well at times of grave national challenge, such as the Six Day War in 1967, or the hyper-inflation crisis of the mid-80s.

Today, there are grave and persistent security threats to Israel from the north and Gaza — all of which derive from Iran and its local proxies. While these threats are not new, there is good reason to believe that they are reaching a critical turning point — suggesting that a united government reaching across the political spectrum might be the best way for Israel to confront these challenges.

Source: Rubinstein, C (October 2019). Australia Israel Review. Page 4. Abridge.

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→ 13 August 2019
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NZ, Israel and UNRWA w/ Stephen Hoadley | 95BFM

Associate Professor Stephen Hoadley, University of Auckland

NZFOI: After interviewing John Minto, 95BFM was criticized for a lack of balance in their interview of John Minto. In response to that criticism, the station interviewed Associate Professor Stephen Hoadley, a lecturer in International Relations from the University of Auckland.

You can listen to it here.

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→ 7 August 2019
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Are we forgetting the Holocaust? | Newsroom

A new poll shows that a nearly a third of New Zealanders know little or nothing about the Holocaust and less than half know that six million Jews were killed by the Nazis. Mark Jennings reports.

Next year will be the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz but what happened there and in other Nazi death camps is drifting from our consciousness.

Nearly a million Jews were killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Poles, Gypsies and Russian prisoners of war made up another 100,000.

Auschwitz was the most efficient killing machine but Treblinka and Belzec, two more death camps in Poland, were close behind with a combined 1.4 million victims.

There are thousands of survivors still alive today, including a small number in New Zealand, but our knowledge of the Holocaust is fading or increasingly, non-existent.

In a poll of 1000 New Zealanders taken last month, 27 percent said they knew little about the Holocaust, 28 percent said they were unsure about how much they knew and 2 percent admitted to knowing nothing.

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→ 26 July 2019
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Is Jesus Good for the Jews? | Wall St Journal

NZFOI: A particularly relevant and timely piece, after Golriz Ghahraman’s recent allegations that Jesus was a “Palestinian refugee.”

Was Jesus a Jew? The idea shouldn’t be controversial. Yet there have been plenty of attempts to challenge his connection to Judaism. Dissociating Jesus from his Jewishness has a dark history that continues to poison discourse today.

In the early 20th century, the anti-Semitic and racist German-British philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain argued that while Judaism provided the religious background for Jesus, he “had not a drop of genuinely Jewish blood in his veins.” The Nazis picked up on this thread. As Hitler consolidated power, German theologians insisted that Jesus was not a Jew but an Aryan, descended from Galilean gentiles.

In the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has sought to sever Jesus’ religion from his nationality or ethnicity. In a 2014 Christmas message, Mr. Abbas called Jesus “a Palestinian messenger of love, justice and peace.” This remains a common refrain from anti-Israel activists.

Sometimes this rhetoric is aimed at erasing Judaism from the religious and moral history of Western civilization. Other times it’s an attempt to undercut Jewish appeals to a uniquely ancient relationship with the land of Israel. Either way, these objections place Jews in a complicated position.

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→ 22 July 2019
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An important connection between communities in the wake of terror | Stuff

By Juliet Moses and Anwar Ghani

Juliet Moses

Many New Zealanders have apparently been surprised by the warm and respectful relationship between the Muslim and Jewish communities of Aotearoa New Zealand that has become evident in the wake of the horrific events of March 15.

It is understandable that New Zealanders who are neither Muslim nor Jewish have been unaware of and are surprised by this relationship, given certain geopolitical matters and other events in the news. But our communities have a shared, if unarticulated, understanding that those matters are to be left on the other side of the world; that we are New Zealanders first and foremost. We embrace a harmonious society and the Kiwi way of life.

Anwar Ghani

Our community members have celebrated together the inauguration of a new Torah (sacred scrolls) in our Auckland synagogue, we have grieved together at the loss of Dr Hashem Slaimankhel, a friend of the Jewish community who was killed by a suicide bomb when visiting his homeland of Afghanistan, we have broken bread together and collaborated on interfaith initiatives. 

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→ 16 July 2019
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Green MP Golriz Ghahraman guilty of clumsiness, not racism | Stuff

Liam Hehir

One summer as a teenager I had a temporary job and became friendly with one of my coworkers, with whom I enjoyed talking to about the news.

One day this person took me aside and offered to lend me a book but wouldn’t tell me what it was about. I felt a little bit put out by the secrecy but agreed nonetheless.

I received delivery of the book next day and took it home to read. It was all about the people that the author thought really run the world and who are responsible for everything bad that happens. That is to say, it was a book about the Jewish people and their imagined crimes.

It was a bit of a shock to me and an early lesson in just how insidious conspiratorial thinking can be. We probably all know at least one person who is sunny, helpful and honest in their personal dealings who also harbours some absolutely crazy views about the world. And antisemitism is so persistently among those insane outlooks that i daresay we can assume it will never die.

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→ 15 July 2019
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Israel-Embassy-Sponsored Scholarship Should Be Terminated Kristin Crowe | Salient

NZFOI: This article describes Student for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) campaign to have an Israeli government academic prize withdrawn. It is a step toward mounting further pressure on the Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) to adopt BDS. Salient is the VUW weekly student magazine.

On Thursday, 16 May, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) held a meeting at Berrigan House to protest a scholarship for essays on the Israeli State—a state whose political systems they say are inherently “racist” and “brutal”.

The Embassy of Israel Prize in Political Science and International Relations is listed on Victoria’s website through the Department of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations. The $250 scholarship is awarded to one student per year on the merit of an essay on one of the given topics—including ”Israel and the Middle East”, ”Israel’s bilaterial relations with its neighbours”, and ”Israel’s democracy in the context of the Middle East”. The winner is selected by the Head of Department, and the winning essay “may be provided” to the Ambassador.

In the wake of a century of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, US interventions have failed to produce peace. Israel’s continued presence in Gaza and the West Bank—including building settlements illegally in Palestinian territory, restricting the flow of commercial goods to Palestine, and denying Palestinians the right to vote—has sparked an international protest movement. Proponents are calling for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli state.

Many universities in the US, Canada, and New Zealand have SJP groups which promote BDS on their campuses. Victoria is not currently participating in BDS protest, and maintains ties with Israeli universities. Lecturers from these universities have appeared on Kelburn campus, drawing criticism.

SJP at VUW are calling for the university to terminate the prize, calling VUW’s partnership with Israel “unjust” because the political climate in Israel is “directly comparable” to Apartheid South Africa.

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→ 20 June 2019
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DOCEDGE FESTIVAL: “GAZA”: A REVIEW

 – A slanted take on life there

You would have thought that the collaboration between a Northern Irishman and his Republican counterpart (Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell) would yield a truthful insight into Gaza, that tiny 40km by 11km strip. They, after all, know what it’s like to come from different sides of a conflict, the importance of showing life accurately and should well know how “The Troubles” ended. Alas no. The documentary brief as outlined in the Doc Edge festival, was to show real life in Gaza, not just shapshots of war. In that they do in part, but without crucial explanation of key elements and all set to a very emotive score. It’s a story that began when Andrew McConnell went to Gaza to photograph surfers, so the sea plays a key role.

What we see is a collection of vignettes on the lives of different inhabitants and events that happen. The cast of characters is extremely varied with a great deal of emphasis on children who roam about and the role of the sea in their varied lives. We meet a taxi driver, a fisherman, a frustrated tailor, a man with three wives and 40 children, a theatre director, a vain lifeguard, a wealthy family with a sensitive child, a handicapped rapper, a paramedic et al. Thematically the documentary explores how people cope, living in what former British PM David Cameron described as an “open air prison” with unemployment standing at 50%, only 4-5 hours of power a day and undrinkable water.

What makes this documentary poignant is the UN has declared Gaza uninhabitable by 2020 – well that’s next year. Many watching this documentary will miss the points being shown; especially as it ends with a targeted Israeli attack and the consequent injuries and destroyed buildings invalidating the stated purpose. Meantime here are some questions unanswered:

  1. Why is there no reference to the impact of the Eqyptian border closure?
  2. Why does Israel get the blame for this situation not of their making? They withdrew.
  3. Why is there a refugee camp in Gaza, aren’t they all the same people?
  4. Where is the money coming from for food and supplies if there is no work?
  5. Why are women wearing the Hijab when they didn’t previously?
  6. Why aren’t some of the children going to school?
  7. Why only 4-5 hours of power?
  8. Who is responsible for fixing the utilities?
  9. Why does Hamas engage in indiscriminate shooting in the streets?
  10. Why are they handing out sweets to the crowds after the prisoner is released?
  11. Rubbish is everywhere. Yet people are sitting around playing cards, not cleaning up things? Don’t they care for their country? Is it someone else’s responsibility?
  12. Why are there posters of Yasser Arafat?
  13. Why aren’t bombed buildings fixed so people can go and live there. Isn’t that why they need concrete and building materials, so where is it going? Tunnels perhaps?
  14. Are all fishermen innocent people just catching fish?
  15. Why are they burning tyres and harming their health on the Israeli border alone?

By ending with an Israeli bombing and its aftermath, the documentary can only lead you to blame Israel for all Gazan woes.  Clearly, misleading.

About the Author:  Joanna Moss is a writer, researcher and the NZFOI Wellington Regional Coordinator.

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