NZ Friends of Israel Association Inc
Fighting racial intolerance in New Zealand and beyond
The Zionist Federation has kindly prepared a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) resource suitable for teens who may be confronted by pro-Palestinian relatives, friends and acquaintances.
You can download it from here.
Feel free to share it with friends and family.
If you’re looking for examples of spin in B’tselem’s latest anti-Israel document, in which the organization slings around the inflammatory terms “apartheid” and “Jewish supremacy,” there are plenty.
Consider, as one small example, the report’s charge that Israel has built “hundreds of communities for Jewish citizens – yet not a single one for Palestinian citizens.” The sentence was written to sound as damning as possible, which increases its shock value, but also left the authors in the uncomfortable position of having to immediately rebut their own falsehood. “The exception,” B’tselem admits in the very next sentence, “is a handful of towns and villages built to concentrate the Bedouin population.”
The town of Ararat an-Naqab, which Israel built for the Bedouin community.
Which is to say, Israel built “not a single” community for Palestinians, except for all the ones it did build: Rahat, Kuseife, Shaqib al-Salam, Ar’arat an-Naqab, Lakiya, Tel as-Sabi, Hura, Tirabin al-Sana, Mulada, Abu Krinat, Bir Hadaj, Qasr al-Sir, Makhul, Umm Batin. It’s Orwellian newspeak: None, but many. A lie, but with the truth appended as a throwaway-line.
This is far from the worst distortion in the document.
Benjamin Netanyahu
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s prime minister is defending a divisive new law enshrining the country’s Jewish character after tens of thousands of people demonstrated against it in Tel Aviv.
Benjamin Netanyahu said at Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting that the law doesn’t harm any citizens, and is needed to “ensure the future of Israel as the state of the Jewish people for generations to come.”
Members of Israel’s Arabic-speaking Druze minority, which is known for supporting the state and serving in the military, organized a major protest Saturday against the law. Opponents say the law passed last month relegates non-Jewish citizens to a second-class status.
Netanyahu said the “deep connection with the Druze community” was essential and that a ministerial committee would “advance the connection and these commitments.”
Israel’s new nation-state law has elicited a storm of criticism since it passed on July 19.
Evelyn Gordon JNS
Some of this criticism is justified; a law that manages to unite virtually the entire Druze community against it, despite this community’s longstanding support for Israel as a Jewish state in principle, clearly wasn’t drafted with sufficient care, as even the heads of two parties that backed the law (Jewish Home’s Naftali Bennett and Kulanu’s Moshe Kahlon) now admit. Nevertheless, much of the criticism stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of Israel’s constitutional system.
Israel doesn’t have a constitution. What it has is a series of Basic Laws to which the Supreme Court unilaterally accorded constitutional status. Many people, myself included, disagree with that decision, inter alia because constitutional legislation should reflect a broad consensus, whereas many Basic Laws were approved by only narrow majorities or even minorities of the Knesset. Nevertheless, both sides in this dispute agree on one thing: Each Basic Law is merely one article in Israel’s constitution or constitution-to-be. They cannot be read in isolation, but only as part of a greater whole.
Consequently, it’s ridiculous to claim that the nation-state law undermines democracy, equality or minority rights merely because those terms don’t appear in it, given that several other Basic Laws already address these issues. The new law doesn’t supersede the earlier ones; it’s meant to be read in concert with them.
Several Basic Laws, including those on the Knesset, the government and the judiciary, detail the mechanisms of Israeli democracy and enshrine fundamental democratic principles like free elections and judicial independence. There are also two Basic Laws on human rights, both of which explicitly define Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state.”
Of these human rights laws, the more important is the 1992 Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. It includes general protections like “There shall be no violation of the life, body or dignity of any person as such” and “All persons are entitled to protection of their life, body and dignity,” as well as specific protections for liberty, property and privacy. Though the law doesn’t mention “equality” or “minority rights,” the courts have consistently interpreted it as barring discrimination on the eminently reasonable grounds that discrimination fundamentally violates a person’s dignity (the one exception, which all legal systems make, is if discrimination has pertinent cause, like barring pedophiles from teaching).
Granted, there are things this law can’t do, such as breaking the rabbinate’s monopoly on marriage and divorce, because it explicitly grandfathers all pre-existing legislation. But it applies to all legislation passed after 1992.
Thus to argue that the nation-state law is undemocratic because it doesn’t mention equality or minority rights is like arguing that the U.S. Constitution is undemocratic because Articles I and II confer broad powers on the legislature and executive without mentioning the protections enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Everyone understands that the Constitution’s provisions on governmental power aren’t supposed to be read in isolation, but in concert with the first 10 amendments, so there’s no need to reiterate those rights in every other article. Similarly, the nation-state law isn’t meant to be read in isolation, but only in concert with other Basic Laws enshrining Israel’s democratic system and basic human rights. Thus there’s no reason for it to reiterate protections already found in those other laws.
Nor are any of the law’s specific provisions undemocratic. For instance, the provision stating that “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people” doesn’t deprive Arabs of individual rights within Israel, nor does it bar the possibility of Palestinian self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza, which aren’t part of the State of Israel. The only thing it prohibits is an Arab state within Israel’s borders, which is problematic only if you favor replacing Israel with another Arab state.
As for the provision making Hebrew the state’s only official language, many other democracies also have a single official language despite having large minorities with different mother tongues. For instance, 17 percent of America’s population is Hispanic, only slightly less than the 21 percent of Israel’s population that’s Arab, yet Spanish isn’t an official language in America, and few people would argue that this makes America undemocratic.
Indeed, Israel’s new law goes much farther than many other democracies in guaranteeing minority language rights, thanks to one provision according Arabic “special status” and another stating that nothing in the law “undermines the status enjoyed by the Arabic language in practice before this Basic Law came into effect.” The latter provision actually preserves Arabic’s status as an official language de facto. It may have been stupid not to preserve it de jure as well, but “stupid” isn’t the same as “undemocratic.”
All of the above explains why even the heads of the Israel Democracy Institute—a left-leaning organization usually harshly critical of the current government—said at a media briefing this week that the law “doesn’t change anything practically,” “won’t change how the country is run,” and is merely “symbolic and educational.”
The law was meant to solve a specific constitutional problem: The courts have frequently interpreted the Jewish half of “Jewish and democratic” at a “level of abstraction so high that it becomes identical to the state’s democratic nature,” as former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak famously said. Yet no definition of “Jewish” can be complete without recognizing that Judaism has particularist, as well as universal, aspects because it’s the religion of a particular people with a particular history, culture and traditions. By emphasizing some of those particularist aspects, the law is supposed to restore the intended balance between the Jewish and democratic components of Israel’s identity. But it doesn’t eliminate those democratic components, which are enshrined in numerous other Basic Laws, nor was it intended to do so.
I’m skeptical that the law will achieve its intended purpose, but I see no good reason why it shouldn’t exist in principle. Israel isn’t just a generic Western democracy; it’s also the world’s only Jewish state. And its constitution-in-the-making should reflect both halves of its complex identity.
Evelyn Gordon is a journalist and commentator living in Israel.
Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammed Hussein
The Likud Party
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Naftali Bennett reached an agreement Sunday on a key change to the nation-state bill that will remove a controversial clause sanctioning housing discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or religion, and replace it with a new one celebrating “Jewish settlement” in general terms.
Clause 7B of the Likud-sponsored legislation, which the government hopes to have approved by the end of the month, previously would have allowed the state to “authorize a community composed of people having the same faith and nationality to maintain the exclusive character of that community.”
Politicians, legal advisers and others have warned that that version of the so-called Jewish State bill is discriminatory and could cast a dark shadow over Israel in the international arena.
Israel is in the throes of political upheaval as the country’s ruling party seeks to pass legislation that could allow for Jewish-only communities, which critics have condemned as the end of a democratic state.
For the past half-decade, politicians have been wrangling over the details of the bill that holds constitution-like status and that Benjamin Netanyahu wants passed this month.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s position that a permanent status agreement resulting in a two state solution must include explicit Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is rejected by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, and is a key point of contention in the peace process.
For Netanyahu, and for most Israeli Jews, mutual recognition of Jewish and Palestinian national rights is integral to the logic of a lasting agreement based on two states for two peoples.
Most Israeli Jews wish to preserve Israel’s current character as a democratic state with a Jewish majority; a state that allows Jews to express the universal legal right to national self-determination, but which also protects fully the rights of non-Jewish minorities.
At the Davos Summit in January, US Secretary of State John Kerry said: “We all know what the endgame looks like: … mutual recognition of the nation-state of the Palestinian people and the nation-state of the Jewish people.”
Why is this an issue now?
Since accepting the principle of creating a sovereign Palestinian state in 2009, Binyamin Netanyahu has stressed that a permanent status agreement must include Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. In a recent statement he clarified that he wanted the Palestinians to “recognise the national rights of the Jewish people in the State of Israel.” While stating that this must be part of the final agreement, at no point has Netanyahu made this a precondition for talks with the Palestinians.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas has taken a firm stance against this demand, creating a significant obstacle in John Kerry’s search for an agreed framework for continuing talks.
What do Israelis mean by a Jewish state?
For Netanyahu, and for most Israeli Jews, mutual recognition of Jewish and Palestinian national rights in the territory west of the Jordan River is integral to the logic of a lasting peace based on two states for two peoples.
Most Israeli Jews want to preserve Israel’s character as it is today, as both democratic and Jewish. Israel today is ‘Jewish’ in the sense that it has a Jewish majority, allows that majority to express the universal legal right to national self-determination, and is open to Jews who wish to immigrate. This is no different to most other states which express the right of the ethnic majority to self-determination, whilst still protecting the rights of minorities.
Reference to a ‘Jewish state’ does not mean a state based on religious precepts, or a state which discriminates against non-Jews.
All Israelis today – both the 75% Jewish majority and non-Jewish minorities – enjoy equal rights before the law and freedom of religion. Non-Jewish minorities enjoy collective rights in education, language and religion. Discrimination based on religious or ethnic identity is illegal.
To maintain Israel’s Jewish majority, and its character as the nation state of the Jewish people, Israel wants Palestinian refugee claims to be resolved through the creation of a Palestinian state.
Why are the Palestinians resistant to this idea?
Rejection of Jewish national rights – indeed rejection of the idea that the Jews constitute a distinct national group – is deeply rooted in the Palestinian-Arab narrative. It is linked to the belief that all of Palestine is rightfully an Arab territory and that Arab refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants should have the ‘right of return’ to territory now within Israel’s borders.
However, Palestinians have not always been so opposed to recognition of the Jewish state. The Palestinian declaration of independence in 1988 referenced the UN 1947 Partition Plan, which explicitly refers to the creation of a Jewish and an Arab state side by side.
When former US President Bill Clinton addressed the refugee issue in his parameters for a peace agreement in 2000, he noted Israel could not accept a right to immigrate that would “threaten the Jewish character of the state,” adding that, “A new State of Palestine is about to be created as the homeland of the Palestinian people, just as Israel was established as the homeland of the Jewish people.” The PLO’s detailed response raised no challenge to this basic principle.
In a June 2004 interview with Haaretz, the late PA President Yasser Arafat was asked explicitly whether he understood that “Israel has to keep being a Jewish state.” He responded, “Definitely, definitely, I told them we had accepted [this] openly and officially in 1988.”
However, since Netanyahu has raised the profile of the issue, the PA leadership has become very resistant. They claim not only that it prejudices Palestinian refugee claims but that Israel’s demand threatens minority rights in Israel, or involves asking Palestinians to renounce their identity or history. Israel rejects these latter two objections.
What have world leaders said?
Secretary of State John Kerry: “We all know what the endgame looks like: … mutual recognition of the nation-state of the Palestinian people and the nation-state of the Jewish people.”
US President Barack Obama: “Palestinians must recognise that Israel will be a Jewish state.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “We in the federal government support a two-state solution – a Palestinian state and a Jewish state of Israel.”
French President François Hollande: “France’s position is known. It is that of a negotiated solution for the State of Israel and the State of Palestine – both with Jerusalem for a capital – can coexist in peace and security. Two States for two peoples.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron: “Britain has played a proud and vital role in helping to secure Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people… imagine, as John Kerry put it: ‘mutual recognition of the nation state of the Palestinian people and the nation state of the Jewish people.'”
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper: “We share with Israel a sincere hope that the Palestinian people and their leaders will choose a viable, democratic, Palestinian state, committed to living peacefully alongside the Jewish state of Israel … Our view on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is absolute and non-negotiable.”
What is the historical background?
• The founder of modern political Zionism Theodore Herzl helped launch the movement with a pamphlet published in 1896 entitled Der Judenstaat (“The State of the Jews”). Following many centuries of antisemitic persecution in Europe, he and most other Zionist leaders envisaged a secular, democratic, Jewish majority state in which non-Jews would live as full and equal citizens.
• The British government committed to support “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” in the 1917 Balfour Declaration. This goal received international legal sanction under the League of Nations Mandate granted to Britain in 1922, which gave recognition to, “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”
• In 1947 the United Nations General Assembly approved with a two thirds majority a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The proposal was accepted by the Jews but rejected by the Arabs, who then launched the 1947-48 Arab-Israeli War.
• Israel declared its independence on the basis of the UN resolution on May 1948. Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion declared the establishment of: “A Jewish State in Eretz-Israel [the Land of Israel], to be known as the State of Israel,” which would ensure “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants.” The State of Israel was admitted to the United Nations in May 1949.
Source: BICOM (British-Israel Communications and Research Centre)
The Huffington Post | By Kia Makarechi
Scarlett Johansson has been the subject of intense scrutiny since she became a brand ambassador for SodaStream, a company that has drawn criticism for operating a factory in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
In a statement released exclusively to The Huffington Post, Johansson says she “never intended on being the face of any social or political movement, distinction, separation or stance as part of my affiliation with SodaStream,” but wants to “clear the air.”
“I remain a supporter of economic cooperation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine,” the actress said. “SodaStream is a company that is not only committed to the environment but to building a bridge to peace between Israel and Palestine, supporting neighbors working alongside each other, receiving equal pay, equal benefits and equal rights. That is what is happening in their Ma’ale Adumim factory every working day.”
Oxfam International, which Johansson also promotes, had earlier criticized the actress over the SodaStream deal. “Oxfam respects the independence of our ambassadors,” a statement on the organization’s website reads. “However Oxfam believes that businesses that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support. Oxfam is opposed to all trade from Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.”
In her own statement, Johansson made direct reference to Oxfam.
“As part of my efforts as an Ambassador for Oxfam, I have witnessed first-hand that progress is made when communities join together and work alongside one another and feel proud of the outcome of that work in the quality of their product and work environment, in the pay they bring home to their families and in the benefits they equally receive,” Johansson said. “I believe in conscious consumerism and transparency and I trust that the consumer will make their own educated choice that is right for them. I stand behind the SodaStream product and am proud of the work that I have accomplished at Oxfam as an Ambassador for over 8 years. Even though it is a side effect of representing SodaStream, I am happy that light is being shed on this issue in hopes that a greater number of voices will contribute to the conversation of a peaceful two state solution in the near future.”
A representative for Oxfam told the New York Times that the organization has not asked Johansson to abandon her relationship with SodaStream. Susan Sarandon has previously promoted the product.
SodaStream, which offers products that allow users to carbonate beverages at home, has said its West Bank factory employs 550 Palestinians who are afforded the same benefits as Israeli workers. The company has 25 factories around the world, and has released videos illustrating its claims that the West Bank factory operates in equitable conditions. An unnamed Palestinian worker disputed the claim that workers at the plant are treated well in a report published by The Electronic Intifada.
Johansson’s full statement is available below.
While I never intended on being the face of any social or political movement, distinction, separation or stance as part of my affiliation with SodaStream, given the amount of noise surrounding that decision, I’d like to clear the air.I remain a supporter of economic cooperation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine. SodaStream is a company that is not only committed to the environment but to building a bridge to peace between Israel and Palestine, supporting neighbors working alongside each other, receiving equal pay, equal benefits and equal rights. That is what is happening in their Ma’ale Adumim factory every working day. As part of my efforts as an Ambassador for Oxfam, I have witnessed first-hand that progress is made when communities join together and work alongside one another and feel proud of the outcome of that work in the quality of their product and work environment, in the pay they bring home to their families and in the benefits they equally receive.
I believe in conscious consumerism and transparency and I trust that the consumer will make their own educated choice that is right for them. I stand behind the SodaStream product and am proud of the work that I have accomplished at Oxfam as an Ambassador for over 8 years. Even though it is a side effect of representing SodaStream, I am happy that light is being shed on this issue in hopes that a greater number of voices will contribute to the conversation of a peaceful two state solution in the near future.
John Minto, the famous campaigner against Apartheid South Africa, also accuses Israeli of practicing Apartheid and calls for everyone to boycott Israel, divest themselves of any Israeli investments and to sanction Israel until it bends to the movement’s demands:
By John Minto , February 2, 2014
The parting of the ways between actor Scarlett Johansson and aid agency OXFAM was inevitable.
The parting of the ways between actor Scarlett Johansson and aid agency OXFAM was inevitable.
Johansson is advertising Sodastream which operates a factory in a Jewish-only settlement on occupied Palestinian land. Under international law such production is illegal and Johansson should be supporting a boycott of Sodastream but she’s doing the opposite – for money of course.
Here in New Zealand a boycott campaign of Sodastream is just getting underway and it’ll be a big job because major retailers like Harvey Norman, the Warehouse, Farmers, Foodtown, Countdown, Pak n Save, New World, Briscoes, Noel Leeming and Mitre 10 are among the companies which sell these boycott-breaking contraptions.
In the meantime the boycott debate is heating up further with the Israeli Batsheva Dance Company due to perform at the New Zealand Festival of the Arts in Wellington later this month.
Palestinian human rights groups have written to the government asking that visas be denied to this group because it also breaches the international boycott campaign called by Palestinian groups.
No-one’s holding their breath that our obsequious Foreign Minister Murray McCully will step in despite the United Nations General Assembly proclaiming 2014 “the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People so a protest is being organised for the Batsheva performances. (If you are in Auckland then come down in the bus to Wellington for the 22nd February protest)
Israel is subject to an international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign because of its unashamedly racist treatment of its Arab-Israeli citizens (See www.adalah.org/eng/ for the more than 50 laws which discriminate against Arab-Israelis); the on-going construction of illegal Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land; its brutal military occupation of the West Bank Palestinian territory and its inhuman blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Even the US Department of State has criticised Israel’s system of “institutional, legal, and societal discrimination” against its Palestinian citizens.
The BDS campaign was launched in 2005 by some 260 Palestinian civil society organisations as the best way for the international community to support the Palestinian struggle for justice and human rights.
It is similar to the calls for an international boycott of South Africa which were made by black South African organisations from the late 1950s. So for the same reason New Zealanders called for the end to rugby links with apartheid South Africa we are calling for the cutting of ties with apartheid Israel – economic, academic, cultural, political and sporting links are all in the frame.
What makes Batsheva so much worse is that it is part of the Israeli propaganda effort to deflect criticism of its appalling policies towards Palestinians.
The Dance Company is largely funded by the Israeli Ministry of Culture & Sport, the City of Tel Aviv and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs who praise the troupe as “ambassadors of Israeli culture”. The company’s participation in the NZ Arts Festival is also partially sponsored by the Israeli Embassy in Wellington.
We stood alongside black South Africans in the struggle against South African apartheid – now it’s time to stand beside Palestinians in the struggle against Israeli apartheid.
Source: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/02/02/the-boycott-campaign-against-israeli-apartheid-heats-up-sodastream-and-the-batsheva-dance-company/#comment-185608
