NZ Friends of Israel Association Inc
Fighting racial intolerance in New Zealand and beyond
NZFOI held a gathering of members to review the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal (aka JOCPA) and to discuss the high-level issues arising from the Biden administration’s moves to resurrect the deal.
For those who missed the gathering, you may download the slide deck here.
President Joe Biden filled the months before Inauguration Day lining up a slate of Cabinet secretaries, assistants and advisors, many of them Jewish.
Biden’s choices reflect a diverse cross-section of American Jewry and possess expertise gleaned from decades of experience in government, science and medicine and law.
Here’s a rundown of the Jewish names you should know as the Biden administration begins.
President Joe Biden spoke Wednesday with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, ending what had been a lengthy stretch without a call after Biden took office.
The period without communication had raised questions about what was behind the delay, though the White House insisted the two men had a strong relationship and that Biden was simply calling leaders in other regions before arriving at the Middle East.”
It was a good conversation,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office shortly after the call ended, without elaborating.
In a post on Twitter, Netanyahu said he had spoken with Biden for roughly an hour in “friendly and warm” terms, affirming the US-Israel alliance and discussing issues related to Iran, regional diplomacy and the coronavirus pandemic.
NZFOI: The vote was 97-3. Who were the three? Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tom Carper (D-Del).
The U.S. embassy in Jerusalem won near-unanimous support in the Senate on Thursday night when all but three lawmakers voted to retain the diplomatic post in the city, following its move from Tel Aviv under the Trump administration.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Israel and Morocco agreed on Thursday to normalize relations in a deal brokered with U.S. help, making Morocco the fourth Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past four months.
It joins the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan in beginning to forge deals with Israel, driven in part by U.S.-led efforts to present a united front against Iran and roll back Tehran’s regional influence.
In a departure from longstanding U.S. policy, President Donald Trump agreed as part of the deal to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, a desert region where a decades-old territorial dispute has pitted Morocco against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, a breakaway movement that seeks to establish an independent state.
President-elect Joe Biden, due to succeed Trump on Jan. 20, will face a decision whether to accept the U.S. deal on the Western Sahara, which no other Western nation has done. A Biden spokesman declined to comment.
While Biden is expected to move U.S. foreign policy away from Trump’s “America First” posture, the Democrat has indicated he will continue the pursuit of what Trump calls “the Abraham Accords” between Israel and Arab and Muslim nations.
The first flight carrying Israeli tourists to the United Arab Emirates landed Sunday in the city-state of Dubai, the latest sign of the normalisation deal reached between the two nations.
FlyDubai flight No. FZ8194 landed at Dubai International Airport just after 5.40pm (local time), bringing the tourists to the skyscraper-studded city after a nearly three-hour trip. The low-cost carrier had sent one of its Boeing 737s to Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv earlier Sunday morning to pick up the passengers.
The flight flew across Saudi Arabia and then over the waters of the Persian Gulf to reach the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms also home to Abu Dhabi.
In many minds, Anti-Semitism has disguised itself as advocacy for Palestinian Arabs and opposition to Israel’s existence. Unsurprisingly therefore, NZFOI is keenly interested in NZ’s policies toward Israel in its fight against Anti-Semitism. Those following the many articles setting out the policies, the statements and the track records of the various NZ political parties in relation to Israel, will have noticed something:
Over the last few years, no matter what they have said prior to entering government all have become subordinated to the “long-standing” and “even-handed” foreign policy set out by previous administrations and closely guarded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Each administration has parroted these two catch-phrases, “long-standing” and “even-handed” policy (or their synonyms) over and over whenever the Middle East Conflict has arisen.
These two phrases or variations of them are being recited by each administration because this is the advice given by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT). We know this because of the good work of the Israel Institute of New Zealand who obtained the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s advice on NZ’s UN voting between 2015-2018 through the Official Information Act. In those documents, the Ministry says:
“New Zealand has for many years endeavoured to take a balanced and even-handed approach to Middle East issues in the UN, with the primary objective of supporting a sustainable two-state solution, best achieved through direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.”
In defending Resolution 2334, Bill English said it “expressed long-standing international policy.”
Based on his 2017 pre-election statements, Winston Peters looked like an opportunity to reset NZ’s relations with Israel in the aftermath of NZ’s unwise sponsorship of Resolution 2334. Yet in 2020, he too repeated that NZ’s policy was a “consistent” one and it was “balanced” when questioned as to why his government supported anti-semitic bias at the UN.
During a casual conversation with Gerard van Bohemen, a previous NZ Representative to the UN and now High Court judge, he too re-affirmed that NZ’s stance on the Middle East was “long-standing” and “even-handed.” It’s been crafted over many decades and transcends individual administrations. He then said, we shouldn’t have a go at the Ministry as they are just a civil service, there to implement the policies of the current administration. NZFOI needed to get to the academic experts who helped shape the policy in the first place.
It’s almost as if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has frightened each incoming administration with disastrous consequences if it dared to touch the “long-standing” and “even-handed” policy which embodies the collective wisdom of previous governments, that in their eyes, has performed so well in protecting New Zealand’s interests.
Without focusing on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the “experts” it uses to form its views on international issues, NZ’s interests, and therefore how it advises each incoming administration, NZ’s stance on the Middle East Conflict will not be diverted from its current course.
Because of this, when it comes to Israel it doesn’t matter that much which major party forms the government.
More and more Gulf Arab state officials recognize that the Palestinian people, the Arab states, and the United States (not to mention Israel) would all be better off if new, more constructive Palestinian leaders came to power. At the same time, there is less and less adherence to the conventional view that Israel must make peace with the Palestinians before it can make peace with the Arab states.
By noting that greater strategic cooperation between Israel and the Arab states against Iran would “set the stage for diplomatic breakthroughs,” the Trump peace plan anticipated the UAE-Israel and Bahrain-Israel accords. It implied that such deals could usefully increase pressure on the Palestinians to reform their politics, which is the key to a breakthrough on the issue of Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The message to the Palestinians from yesterday’s White House signing ceremony is that they need a political upheaval—new leaders, new institutions, new ideas—or they are going to become utterly irrelevant in the eyes of the world, including the broader Arab world. As they lose attention, they will lose diplomatic support and economic aid. If they cannot make war and they will not make peace, their hopes to shape their own future will diminish to nothing.
Israeli airlines will be allowed to cross through Saudi Arabia on a regular basis, shattering a 72-year taboo as Gulf Arab nations and the Jewish state draw steadily closer together.
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia approved a United Arab Emirates request to use the kingdom’s airspace “for all flights coming to the United Arab Emirates and leaving to all countries,” a consequential, if oblique outreach to Israel.
The short statement by the state-run Saudi Press Agency, citing an unidentified official at the aviation authority, was quickly followed by a tweet from the foreign minister.
Israel will not move forward with its West Bank annexation plan without U.S. approval — and that consent won’t come for some time.
That’s what Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, told reporters from Middle East media outlets on Monday. Kushner said the Trump administration had gained Israel’s trust by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and thus Israel will honor its commitment not to advance its idea to annex parts of the West Bank.
“That land is land that right now that Israel, quite frankly, controls,” Kushner said. “Israelis that live there aren’t going anywhere. There shouldn’t be any urgency to applying Israeli law.”
Kushner said the focus now has to be on implementing the peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that was announced on Thursday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to suspend annexation as part of the deal.
