Many of our members host Israelis travelling through New Zealand and many of our website users are Israelis who may be investigating travelling to New Zealand or who are already travelling through New Zealand.

Over the last few Summers, Freedom Camping has been a hotly debated issue.

This article gives an update on one New Zealander’s experience as a Freedom Camper:

Tourist season is in full swing and with it comes the inevitable coverage of hordes of freedom campers, descending on some of our prized beauty spots and turning them into a giant rubbish dump and public toilet.

It’s a far cry from the idyllic scenes shared globally of solitary motorhomes nestled at the foot of snow-capped mountains, or sun-kissed couples toasting one another outside a camper van at the edge of a secluded beach.

Contrary to popular belief, freedom campers are not all young overseas tourists. There are thousands of New Zealanders of all ages and backgrounds living on the road all year round who routinely use freedom camps also.

Read more.

The Church of the Nativity and the 19th century mosque of Omar ibn al-Khattab  Photo by Najeh Hashlamoun flash90

Following American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, thirteen of the city’s prominent Christian leaders, representing a variety of denominations, signed a joint letter condemning the decision. Amit Barkat explains that they did so more out of fear of the Palestinian Authority (PA) than of animosity toward the Jewish state.

Most of the political activity of the Christian community [is undertaken] in response to pressure from the Palestinian Authority. The denominations centered in Jerusalem also have churches and monasteries in the PA, Gaza, and Jordan, and additional ties throughout the Middle East. Figures in the PA successfully exploit this fact and use the Christians for their propaganda purposes to cover for the injustices they commit against Christians in Judea and Samaria.

But as much as [Palestinians] try to hide [the reality of persecution of Christians], it’s difficult to debate numbers. . . . The best example of their disappearance on the ground is Bethlehem, the city of the birthplace of David and Jesus. Bethlehem was once a clearly Christian city where Christian residents formed an 86-percent majority. Today, that figure stands at fewer than 10 percent, and the negative trend is not stopping. The situation is even worse in Gaza, where among the thousands of Christians who used to live there, only a few hundred remain under the constant threat of persecution, with serious limitations on Christian ceremonies and holidays, and effectively without rights. . . .

Steps like the [Christian leaders’ letter about Jerusalem] are aimed against Israel to protect the security of religious figures in the PA, and Israel for its part gives its silent consent on the matter. Official publications of heads of churches and Christian parties in the PA and the world generally portray Israel in a negative light, with politics and fear serving as the main factors in this distortion of reality and transformation of lies into truth. . . .

While the PA and in fact the entire Middle East are restricting the moves of Christians and harming their freedom of religion, the situation is different in Israel. Alongside the corrupt and violent PA, which is systematically erasing Christians from its territory, the Jewish and democratic state of Israel [allows] a safe life for all religious minorities.

Read more.

https://www.nzfoi.org/2018/01/25/1655847/

I guess I could boycott travel to Israel – but I doubt it would make much difference. No one really cares when you make grandiose statements and you’re a nobody.

A few Israeli restaurants would miss out on some business as a result of my decision. A few bars would sell fewer beers. Maybe a hotel or two would miss out on a booking.

In other words, my boycott would serve only to hurt the normal nobodies of Israel – the people such as myself. A few businesses might be harmed, slightly, but world leaders wouldn’t blink an eye.

A pro-Israeli group took out an advert to criticise the singer.

If I were Lorde, however – if I were a musician who’d sold millions of records and had almost 8 million followers on Twitter – then a boycott of Israel would mean something. Then, people would take notice.

And of course, it has, and they have. A few weeks ago the Kiwi singer announced she was cancelling a concert in Israel after fans wrote to her, claiming that to perform in the country would show tacit support for its continued encroachment on Palestinian territory.

So Lorde pulled out, and people in certain quarters have obviously been upset. Jewish leaders, plus the Israeli ambassador to New Zealand, plus, you know, lots of angry people on Twitter, have criticised the decision. An American rabbi took out an ad in the Washington Post to label the 21-year-old a “bigot”.

For the record, I’m on board with Lorde’s decision. While I don’t think a boycott from me would make any difference in the world to the situation in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, a boycott from Lorde does. If nothing else, it starts a conversation. It increases worldwide awareness that maybe there’s a problem here that needs addressing with more than just America’s ham-fisted neo-diplomacy.

See for yourself

For us regular travellers, however, I would definitely not encourage any similar actions, regardless of how you feel about the situation in the Middle East. Maybe you think Israel’s increased occupation of Palestinian territory is wrong. Maybe you think Israelis are in an incredibly precarious position and should do whatever they can to protect themselves.

Whatever you think, you should go to Israel and the Palestinian Territories. You should see these places for yourself. You should meet the people involved. You should judge it for what it is, rather than what you’ve been told.

And that’s not to say that your opinion, once you arrive, will necessarily be swayed one way or the other. Maybe a visit there will change your mind; maybe it will just serve to confirm the things you already believed.

I spent a few weeks in 2016 touring Israel and the Palestinian Territories and I loved every second of it. I loved the people I met, Israeli and Palestinian. I loved the history of the place. I loved having the chance to taste and feel this amazing part of the world.

Food tours are taking off in an area that is far better known for its religious tourism.

On the final night of my stay there I was sitting with a few fellow travellers, talking about the things we’d seen, saying how amazing it had been to see everything with our own eyes and better understand it all. “Exactly,” one of the people there said. “I mean, the things the Israelis have to go through just to survive … It’s horrific.”

That’s kind of funny, I thought, because I was feeling the exact opposite. I’d been touched by the stories I’d heard in Palestine, by the sight of walls dividing territory, by the experience of queuing up in a car to get into Ramallah, by the clear case of haves and have-nots – those with rights and those with no rights – that was taking place in front of me. Surely it’s the Palestinians who are suffering?

But not everyone sees things the same way, and that’s fine. The important thing is simply that you see it.

I’ve never been a fan of travel boycotts. You don’t strike a blow against a powerful and detested regime by staying at home. You just strike a series of small blows against everyday people in foreign lands who could very well feel exactly the same way as you do.

You don’t just deny yourself the chance to meet these people and hear different stories and make judgments for yourself. You also deny those citizens your business, and your viewpoints, and your experiences. Everyone remains as they were. Everyone loses. Except, of course, that hated regime.

Lorde’s decision to boycott Israel is a powerful one that has a lot of meaning. But as travellers, your decision, and my decision, means very little to the world at large. In fact electing to boycott a country inevitably does more harm than good.

So yes, you should go to Israel and the Palestinian Territories. You should go to Tel Aviv and Haifa, Jerusalem and Ramallah. You should go to Nablus and Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jericho. You should meet people there. See things. Make your own decisions.
And then tell the world.

Source

Jerusalem

On Friday, Dec. 8, the UN Security Council convened an “extraordinary debate” to discuss the US Trump Administration’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

This seems like an “extraordinary” thing to do. Why would the Security Council, whose primary role is overseeing the “maintenance of international peace and security” need to discuss the fact that one country recognised another country’s capital?

The explanation offered in a joint statement by France, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Britain, was that the decision was “not in line with Security Council resolutions and is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region.”

But wait. Russia, also a major international player and a permanent UN Security Council member, recognised west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in April. Not only did the UN fail to convene any “extraordinary sessions” to discuss Russia’s move, hardly anyone even bothered to publicly criticise the Russian decision. So apparently, the terrible consequences caused by recognition of Israel’s capital only apply when this is done by the US. When Russia does the same thing, it’s fine and dandy.

So calling the “extraordinary debate” in itself illustrated the extent to which absurdities, illogic and political game-playing dominate discussion of Israeli-Palestinian issues at the UN.

The content of the UN Security Council debate on Dec. 8 also illustrated this in a different way.

Hopefully readers of this column are aware that west Jerusalem has been part of Israel since its foundation in 1948 and Israel’s capital since 1949. The primary reason it has not been recognised as Israel’s capital since that time has not been because of any conflict with the Palestinians over land and “occupation”, but because of a long-obsolete element of the UN partition plan of 1947. That plan called for all of Jerusalem, as well as neighbouring Bethlehem, to be a “Corpus separatum” – a separate legal entity under UN control. The UN never made any significant effort to implement this provision, so it has been a dead letter for a very long time.

Yet international diplomats initially hoped a peace deal might include a revival of this internationalised Jerusalem provision, so they refused to recognise Israeli sovereignty in any part of the city. In later decades, it became very obvious this was never going to happen, yet this zombie policy – dead but not buried – gained a strange inertial impetus of its own. To even talk about changing it was impossible because this was seen as endangering peace hopes and likely sparking violence.

Here’s the thing about the Security Council debate on Jerusalem. Lots of speakers and countries – among them, Uruguay, Sweden, France and Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process – invoked the partition plan and its long-dead call for an internationalised Jerusalem as a reason one should not recognise any part of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

So the UN continues to argue that west Jerusalem is not necessarily Israeli because it might potentially be part of a “corpus separatum”.

Yet UN representatives and diplomats never say the same thing about east Jerusalem, even though that was just as much a part of the proposed “corpus separatum” as west Jerusalem – as indeed was Bethlehem, which is today under full Palestinian Authority control. Those areas are almost always referred to at the UN – including in the recent Security Council debate – as “occupied Palestinian land.”

So the bizarre politics and biases of the UN have led to this blatant logical inconsistency – Israel should not be considered fully sovereign in west Jerusalem because this was once to be part of a proposed “corpus separatum”. Yet even though east Jerusalem and Bethlehem were also part of this “corpus separatum”, no one should imagine that these areas are anything but sovereign Palestinian territory (even though no sovereign Palestinian state has ever yet existed.)

In other words, it should be obvious that supposed international law definitions and interpretations applied by the UN to the Israeli-Palestinian situation are essentially nothing but blatant pretexts to support Palestinian and Arab claims against Israel.

Source

Singer-songwriter Lorde has cancelled an upcoming visit to Israel. Here, one 15-year-old fan writes an open letter explaining why she is so disappointed by the decision – and asks the singer to reconsider.

Dear Lorde,

My name is Jess, I’m a big fan of yours, and I am a 15 year old student from London. When I found out yesterday that you had cancelled your tour date in Tel Aviv, I was quite honestly heartbroken. As a Jew in a school where the majority of my friends are Muslim, I have been heavily exposed to both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. I believe that cancelling your concert was the wrong decision to make, and sends out a very confusing message.

Read more

“THOSE GREAT WHITES, they have big teeth”, sings Ella Yelich-O’Connor (Lorde) in “Green Light”. Her decisions to play – and then not to play – Tel Aviv are showing how much damage those teeth can inflict. Right now, there’s a lot of blood in the water and, unfortunately, most of it is hers.

How did it come to this? What possessed Lorde to include Tel Aviv on her 2018 touring schedule? If there is one shark school a young performing artist should avoid at all costs – it’s the Middle East. Put your foot into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and you may be sure of only one thing: you will be bitten. The smartest move is always to give Israel/Palestine a very wide berth.

That’s not so easy, however, when Lucian Grainge, the CEO of your record label, the Universal Music Group (UMG) is the 2013 recipient of the Foundation For Ethnic Understanding’s (FFEU) 2013 Humanitarian Award.

The FFEU was established in 1989 by Rabbi Marc Schneier to promote understanding and reconciliation between Muslims and Jews. Presumably, the decisions of the UMG’s chief executive were seen as contributing significantly to that worthy objective. Presumably, that’s why they honoured him. Presumably, that’s also why building bridges between Israelis and Palestinians is seen as “a good thing” in Lucien Grainge’s UMG.

Did Lorde know about this? When she saw Tel Aviv on her 2018 touring schedule, did her interior moral traffic light flash green or red? Was she reassured that playing Tel Aviv was “a good thing” because it promoted understanding between Muslims and Jews? Did her “people” tell her that the boss of UMG believed very strongly in the power of music to bring people together? Is that why, like that other big UMG star, Elton John, she agreed to perform in Israel?

Standing back from all this, it is difficult not to see Lorde as a pawn in a whole host of people’s games.

As a propaganda tool, the music industry is every bit as effective as the film and television industries – maybe more so. It would be naïve in the extreme to think that the Israeli Government and its “assets” in the Jewish diaspora were ignorant of the effect Lorde’s playing Tel Aviv would have had on global opinion. How else to explain their reaction to her green light switching to red?

But, if Lorde has been treated as a pawn by Israel’s friends in the global music industry, her treatment by the ‘Boycott, Disinvest, Sanctions’ (BDS) movement hasn’t been much better.

When the BDS movement discovered Lorde was scheduled to play Tel Aviv, it must have whooped with delight. Here, at the mercy of the social media platforms it has learned to manipulate so ruthlessly, was a young singer-songwriter earnestly committed to doing good in the world. How long would she be able to resist the orchestrated pressures of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram? Not long – as it turned out.

The Great White Sharks are not confined to corporate waters exclusively. The Left have teeth of their own.

Pity is an emotion all-too-easily evoked: and the situation of Palestinians living on the West Bank and Gaza is pitiable in the extreme. That the BDS movement exploits their pitiable circumstances is unsurprising – Public Relations 101.

Beseeching Lorde and her fans to boycott “Apartheid Israel” offers them the opportunity to strike a blow without firing a shot. What young entertainer anxious to prove her progressive credentials is going to turn down an offer to become the John Minto of her generation?

Upon closer inspection, however, the BDS movement is nothing more than a sophisticated front organisation in the service of Palestinian nationalism. Just one more weapon in a war that has been raging since 1947. It’s never been a war for two states in the Holy Land. Rather, it’s been a war to determine who inherits the Holy Land – Jews or Arabs? Sometimes the war’s been fought with fighter-bombers, tanks and artillery; sometimes with martyrs on buses wearing explosive vests; and, yes, sometimes with singer-songwriters like Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Nick Cave and Elton John.

The BDS movement hasn’t the slightest chance of defeating the State of Israel, nor of liberating the Palestinians. What it can deliver, however, is the occasional, morale-boosting, Palestinian propaganda victory.

On this occasion, that victory’s collateral damage was Ella Yelich-O’Connor.

Source

Opinion: Yesterday Justine Sachs and Nadia Abu-Shanab penned an open letter urging Lorde to cancel her concert scheduled for next June in Tel Aviv. Here Dane Giraud, a member of the NZ Jewish community, offers a counterview.

Dear Lorde,

I’m not often asked to be the mouthpiece for political movements. Funny that. Not really. Who’d want a schmuck like me to front anything? I can’t relate to the pressure you no doubt find yourself in constantly – with demands to endorse this and condemn that. What doesn’t help is that in this new age of social media, activism seems inescapably tied up with celebrity brands. Hell, I’m starting to think that the old days when sex was used to sell everything from Coca-Cola to bicycle pumps was a more innocent time. Today it’s a commitment to “causes” and artists like yourself don’t just have to take a position, you’re told to take the correct position.

Here’s what it comes down to: you’re being asked not to sing in front of a stadium full of Jews. Sounds pretty crappy when put that way. And, of course, Arabs, too. Israel has over 1.5 million Arabs – many of whom are no doubt fans of yours. Who isn’t a fan of yours? All right, my 80-year-old mother is a bit mystified by your success, but don’t let that get you down; Steven Seagal is her favourite actor.

Read more

VANCOUVER, BC – SEPTEMBER 03: Singer-songwriter Lorde performs on stage during day 1 of iHeartRadio Beach Ball at PNE Amphitheatre on September 3, 2017 in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo by Andrew Chin/Getty Images)

Opinion: Lorde has announced a concert in Tel Aviv for June. Jewish New Zealander Justine Sachs and Palestinian New Zealander Nadia Abu-Shanab make the case for her to reconsider.

Dear Lorde,

We’re writing to you about your planned performance in Israel. We’re two young women based in Aotearoa, one Jewish, one Palestinian. We write this with the knowledge we might be imposing on some Vogels-fuelled downtime here, but we feel strongly about this and we’d really appreciate it if you would take a few minutes to hear us out.

Our names are Justine and Nadia. Justine is part of Dayenu. Dayenu is a group of young New Zealand Jews against the occupation of Palestine. ‘Dayenu’ is a popular holiday song, sung during Passover. It translates roughly to “it would have been enough for us”. The driving principle of Dayenu is saying “enough” to Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.

Read more