Larissa Roberts holds up a sign as protesters gather to march against racism in Oakland, California in August. Antisemtism in Australia echoes what’s happening in the US. (Getty Images)

A few years ago, I sat in the office of a rabbi in Perth discussing the state of the local Jewish community. The rabbi spoke with effusive pride at the academic success of the city’s Jewish high school, the warmth and charity of his small but sturdy flock, and the overall security and comfort in which the community lived and worshipped.

Then his tone became grave. He recalled how a short time before, a group of Holocaust survivors arrived at his synagogue for a special sabbath service and was confronted with neo-Nazi slogans and swastikas emblazoned on the walls of the building. The rabbi shed tears as he recalled the horror on their faces in what he termed “an attack on the souls” of people who had already experienced the limits of human suffering.

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Confidence in scripture’s clarity and eloquence is, sadly, lacking in many Christian communities today. Focused public reading of passages from the New Testament, to say nothing of the Old Testament, is infrequent in many church settings.  One reason may be the acute embarrassment that some church leaders feel with respect to scripture’s unrelenting focus upon Israel. Scripture poses difficult questions. Is God faithful to his promises to his covenant people? Yes. Is the saviour of the world a Jew? Yes. Does God work through his people Israel in order to bless all people? Yes. Learning scripture is a lifelong joy. It is similar to learning a new language. One learns in scripture about a God who promises in Genesis 12 to bless the world through one man, Abraham.

Read more: Human words of scripture bear God’s voice | Otago Daily Times Online News

Juliet Moses articulates facts about Zionism and Israel, based on an article that was originally published by Shalom.Kiwi

Source: A Jewish New Zealander’s view on Israel – Israel Institute of NZ

May 13, 2017: Fifty years ago today, a false Soviet warning of large-scale Israeli troop concentrations along the border with Syria touched off a chain of events leading to the 1967 Six-Day War. However, as Middle East Quarterly editor Efraim Karsh explains in this advance-release article from the Summer 2017 issue of Middle East Quarterly, another all-out Arab-Israeli war was already “a foregone conclusion.”

Read more: An Inevitable Conflict: The Six-Day War :: Middle East Quarterly

Officially, NZ is against settlements, in line with a UN resolution, passed six months ago, which echoed the Geneva Convention.

Or to put it another way, facty-fact sentence, Palestine, multi-syllable words, one after another, Gaza, Golan Heights, each of which has its own Wikipedia entry, which at best I Google-glanced at, 1967, Six-Day War, West Bank (not a spoonerism,) Two State solution, only to give up, daunted, by the dense, dry and unending Dead Sea scroll of text.

Source: Raybon Kan: The ethics of watching Wonder Woman – NZ Herald

“That resolution undermines Israel as a whole, it makes it seem like we have no legitimacy here.

That resolution was seen as this revenge, personally, that Obama took against Netanyahu.

It called into question the right of Israelis to live in consensus areas.

From the point of view of Israel, Jerusalem is our capital, and saying that there was a problem with Israelis couldn’t build in Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem was seen as a non-starter.

And it really hurt the peace process because if Israelis see is coming against areas that are going to be part of Israel in any kind of peace agreement, then Israelis are not going to be willing to make concessions.

They are going to think that we’re damned if we do, and we’re damned if we don’t, there’s no point in trying to satisfy an insatiable international community.

The step that New Zealand took today, will really help the peace process get back off the ground.”

– Jerusalem Post reporter, Gil Hoffman

Listen to the rest of the Morning Report interview on Radio New Zealand here.

“Fifty years ago this week, Israelis were euphoric. Our young army had just won the Six Day War and our newly created country in our historic homeland had been spared what we thought was our inevitable death and destruction.

That euphoria was shattered six years later when Israel was attacked by Egypt and Syria on the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, and sadly it has never been regained.

As a Kiwi Israeli who divides my time between the two nations, I know it’s easy for people living on the other side of the world to blame Israel for the failure to achieve peace in the Middle East. Such views may arise from ignorance, from guilt, from antisemitism, from extreme political views of both the far Left and the far Right, but most of all from little understanding of the harsh reality of living in a country surrounded by neighbours who want to wipe you off the planet.”

“It is said that when the Palestinians want to have a Palestinian state more than they want to destroy the Jewish State, when they value life more than death, then maybe there will be peace.”

Read more: Shifra Horn: Palestinians spurning offers of peace | Stuff.co.nz

In June 1967, Arab leaders decided to crush Israel, then the only democracy in that divided region.

The Six-Day War followed and Israel prevailed, but the legacy of that short, sharp act of self-preservation festers to this day. Sadly, a resolution to one of the greatest tragedies of our time seems as remote as it ever was, maybe even more so. There is hardly an issue that so polarises opinion. Even discussing it in public, as UCC discovered, brings difficulties. Israel’s propaganda machine constantly challenges the equally questionable culture of shared victimhood that underpins international support for the Palestinian cause, a culture that saw the Palestinian flag flown over Irish public buildings in recent weeks.

Read more: Concessions are essential to win peace: Tragic legacy of the Six-Day War | Irish Examiner