When the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced New Zealand delegates to the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) earlier this month it was surprising to see all five New Zealand based delegates were approved by the New Zealand Jewish Council which appears to be the only community group consulted in the selection.
There is no disagreement the Jewish Council should have been consulted. After all it was European Jews who were the primary victims of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s when six million were mass murdered in the single greatest genocide in human history.
However it’s vitally important that the Holocaust be seen as more than a Jewish issue. It’s an issue for all humanity; we are all degraded by appalling human behaviour towards any group based on race, religion, culture etc. We must all take responsibility which is why a broader range of New Zealanders should be involved as delegates to the IHRA.
If we truly believe “never again” then we need a plan and programme to ensure this is embedded across our country and through the international human community.
A related concern is that as far as I can tell, all the NZ Jewish Council approved nominees support the Council’s backing for the hugely controversial IHRA definition of anti-semitism – a definition designed more to protect Israel from criticism than to deal with anti-semitism.
According to the New Zealand Jewish Council’s interpretation of the IHRA definition of anti-semitism it is anti-Semitic to call Israel an apartheid state (despite all major international human rights groups agreeing it is!) or to call for sanctions against Israel for its abuses of Palestinian human rights (Just as we called for sanctions against South Africa for its apartheid policies against black South Africans)
The New Zealand Jewish Council used this controversial definition of anti-semitism in their deeply flawed report on anti-semitism released earlier this year.
To use a contemporary description – the IHRA definition of anti-semitism is weaponising the Holocaust against the Palestinian struggle for human rights in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world.
This is not new. Activists advocating for Palestinian human rights have always faced false smears of anti-Semitism from the pro-Israel lobby – in fact this is the only defence Israel has to its racist, apartheid policies and dehumanising, degrading treatment of the indigenous people of Palestine.
The pro-Israel lobby doesn’t want the world to hold Israel to account as we held South Africa to account for its apartheid system against black South Africans. We must insist in the same human rights for everyone- including Palestinians – and the same accountabilities for any country pursuing apartheid policies.
It is precisely because we have not held Israel to account that the Palestinian struggle against racism and colonisation has gone on so long at such enormous cost to the lives and well-being of millions of Palestinians.
The New Zealand government has taken up “observer status” at the IHRA but has not endorsed the IHRA definition of anti-semitism. However we can be sure that before the end of their one-year appointments this group of pro-Israel delegates selected to represent us at the IHRA will recommend Aotearoa New Zealand adopt the IHRA’s bogus definition of anti-semitism – something we must reject outright.
The New Zealand Jewish Council revealed a dark streak of racism when they said there was no problem with one of their members saying “there will only be peace in the Middle East when Arabs love their children more than they hate us (Jews)”
To see just how awful this anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian racism is, reverse the ethnicities then read it again. Anyone who said the same thing about Jews loving their children less than their hatred for Arabs would be, quite rightly, pilloried by all of us as anti-semitic. But somehow this is lost on the pro-Israel lobby which seems to have found ways to “normalise” their racism against Palestinians.
They have always put Palestinian human rights second to Israel’s ongoing theft of Palestinian land and the sheer brutality Israel dishes out to anyone resisting its racist policies.
Meanwhile the Holocaust is far too important to be marginalised as primarily an issue for Jews alone and certainly shouldn’t be left in the hands of a group of hardline pro-Israel lobbyists and Christian Zionists.
Aotearoa New Zealand should adopt the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism and insist on Holocaust education in every school in the country as part of a comprehensive anti-racism education programme. Broadly based human solidarity is always the best defence against race hatred and the best way we can ensure “never again”.
Nah, the JDAs’ definition is no good either, it would make it anti-semitic to critise Israel for being a Jewish institution. Either the land is one country and a democracy, making apartheid and religious/ethnic rule abhorent (and it’s Israels own policy driving a one country solution), or they should accept a two country solution and accept that they aren’t a democracy.
As for the IHRA, where’s the Romni delegates? LGBTQ+? Disability? The holocaust didn’t just happen to Jews, and ethnic cleansing’s hardly new nor since abandoned.
Indeed, it is already part of the zionist ‘constitution’, the so-called ‘Basic Law’, that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people”.
In other words, the legitimate population of Palestine since time immemorial have no right to self-determination in Palestine, whether within the parts of Palestine currently claimed by ‘israel’ or not.
‘Apartheid Israel’ is the only liberal democracy in the M.E. It’s ties to head chopping, throat slitting monarch such as the Al Saud regime is joint at the hip by European colonization particularly British Imperialism. The UN has never issued sanctions on this regime even though its issued critical reports of HR abuses towards the indigenous Palestinians. Amnesty International finally had commissioned a report that the Jewish state was practicing ‘Apartheid’ The UN a toothless org can be seen as culpable in excusing these crimes against humanity and has not issued sanctions to prick apartheid Israel complacency. Here is some of the UN sanctioned countries to date noticeably absent from this list is the ‘only democracy in the M.E’??
North Korea.
Iran.
Mali.
South Sudan.
Central African Republic.
Yemen.
Guinea-Bissau.
Libya.
Hilarious hasbara as always, Stephen. How’s the weather in ‘tel aviv’?
But back in reality, those of us who recognize that your Palestinian victims are human beings also recognize that the Saud regime was put in place by zionists because they agreed to betray their fellow Arabs and coreligionists.
https://mondoweiss.net/2016/01/zionism-kingdom-arabia/
Mohammed Khan, I take it that you don’t do sarcasm? Can you actually read english?? Sounds unlikely cause if you continued reading the rest of my comments on ‘Apartheid Israel’ you’ll actually realize that I’m an ardent Palestinian supporters to the death!!
I also note that you keep referencing Mondoweiss an excellent source for combating hasbara trolls like Gaby and co keep up the support ‘Mohammed Khan’ the dispossessed Palestinians need every little bit of support they can get!!
FREE PALESTINE!!
Pull the other one. Everyone knows that there are 70 plus laws against Palestinians in Israel. And that is what you call a democracy.
I understand this was meant to be sarcasm, but it’s very difficult to tell the difference between people pretending the entity is a democratic nation and people just taking the piss. The fact is that anyone who says ‘Israel has a right to [oppress the native population of the land they invaded/] exist’ is taking the piss.
Very true John. All of these people are dangerous extremists who have openly supported the genocide of the Palestinians. I’ve heard from Jewish people with consciences that they deplore the appointment of these characters, although most are afraid to speak out about this in their community.
Let’s look at the individuals.
* Paul Moon called an attempt by an international convoy of humanitarians to bring medical supplies and other necessities that the zionist regime prohibits bringing into their Gaza concentration camp, a convoy that elected members of our New Zealand parliament participated in, in which MP Marama Davidson was brutalized by zionist stormtroopers a ‘media stunt’. To Moon, suggesting that Palestinians should be allowed MEDICAL TREATMENT is a media stunt.
* David Zwartz has repeatedly lied about the apartheid practices of the zionist regime. He also, interestingly, describes ‘whites-only toilets’ as ‘petty apartheid’- i.e. not real apartheid. I wonder if Mr. Zwartz would call it ‘petty apartheid’ if New Zealand had gentiles-only toilets? https://www.gisborneherald.co.nz/letter/opinion/20210722/a-disgraceful-and-dishonest-comparison/
* Shoshana Maasland lies about the zionist plan to expel or kill every Palestinian, and supports the suppression of anyone telling the truth about this. https://www.bsa.govt.nz/decisions/all-decisions/maasland-and-radio-new-zealand-ltd-2018-065-26-october-2018/ Maasland also lies about the strong relationship between the genocidal ‘state’ of ‘israel’ and its strong ally, Apartheid South Africa, which all serious researchers agree about. https://www.bsa.govt.nz/decisions/all-decisions/maasland-and-others-and-radio-new-zealand-ltd-2014-118/
* Deborah Hart is on the record lobbying that New Zealand media should always provide the zionist perspective where they justify their terrorist attacks on Palestinian civilians because sometimes Palestinians defend themselves https://www.bsa.govt.nz/decisions/all-decisions/hart-and-television-new-zealand-ltd-2003-099/
I realize I neglected to mention Dame Lesley Max herself. In 1991, for Michael King’s book that would become ‘Pakeha, the quest for identity in New Zealand’, Max described the illegal invasion of Palestine, which even Theodore Herzl, founder of zionism, admitted was a ‘colonial’ project in a letter to his fellow colonialist and alleged enthusiast of young boys Cecil Rhodes, as “the renewal of independence after nineteen hundred years”.
Max further describes concern that developed among those of us who have some concern for the rights of people whose skins are of an off-white colour, whom she stereotypes as “New Zealand’s liberal social democrat camp” (frankly, rather exclusionary- I have known conservatives who oppose genocide too) about the rampant violation of the rights of the legitimate Palestinian population of Palestine, targeted for extermination by the zionist occupiers, as “a hostility towards Jewish national revival (among all the movements of national liberation) so intense that… it is felt necessary to obliterate what is reviled, retrospectively and currently.”
This is not someone who should be involved in an endeavor where the intention is to educate AGAINST genocide.
A very well crafted piece of work John.
No doubt the usual flee-pit of racist Zionist trolls will cover the comments section with the usual bile and bullshit but that is par for the course
Sounds to me like you’re worried you might have to curb your mouth on Israel in the not too distant future, Mr. Minto, and put the brakes on your vicious, brutal, racist demonising (just to use some of your favourite epithets.)
Israel is no more racist than any other country and accusing Israel of apartheid is nothing more than hollow rhetoric which no longer has any impact.
https://www.adl.org/resources/glossary-terms/allegation-israel-is-an-apartheid-state
37 nations have adopted the IHRA so far, along with 865 entities around the world.
because free democratic countries like israel like gagging opponents gaby?
speaking about ‘curbing your mouth’ any evidence of my pro-palestinians posts yet, or are you content to be seen as a liar who’s input isn’t worth anything…your choice, of course you could apologise for your deliberate attempt at slander…but you haven’t the decency for that have you gaby?
Your braying, and that of your henchmen, for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state and the genocide of its people is the only obscenity here, spaceman.
lying again gaby the only post you’ll find on Israels existence from me is one from ages ago supporting isreals ‘right to exist’ and bemoaning the ‘we must push the jews into the sea’ horse shit
you can bitch whine and moan as much as you like because another unresearched lie confirms both your ineptitude and stupidity….but carry on feel free to humiliate yourself and support ukrainian nazis who hate jews that’s about your mark innit.
Boy, it sure makes you mad when you’re told you can’t torture and rape and kill Palestinians, doesn’t it, Gaby?
No it makes you mad (madder). Perhaps go lecture ISIS with your bloodthirsty fetishes.
New Zealanders like there was the same as they like there interlectuals, quiet.
liar lies again
Yes Gaby and he’s silent on the apartheid creep here.
Bob the first, Is apartheid happening in NZ? Please provide proof????
Aaah Gaby so you think that leaving the homosexuals, the disabled, the gypsies and all the others that Nazi Germany descended on is okay. You and your mates make a great play of being the victims, you were the victims but there are laws that would never ever be able to allow a holocaust to happen again. You are no more the victims now than the LBQT community are and we have no separate entity worrying about them you can be sure of that.
Kia ora Gaby
If you think Israel is Not a Racist Apartheid state, it suggests that you don’t know the International Legal Definition of Apartheid.
Most people who say that Israel is not an Apartheid state are giving us their “Opinion” rather than referencing the Legal Definition.
I see that you seem to have fallen into that hole.
Some research for you – https://lettersforpalestine.weebly.com/apartheid-israel.html
On the IHRA definition, the very person who wrote it decries the use of the definition to shut down debate on Israel.
Maybe you could look up NZ’s Alternative Jewish Voices perspective on the IHRA definition.
Here – https://ajv.org.nz/2022/08/29/we-filed-an-oia-to-ask-how-racism-became-foreign-policy/
Here – https://ajv.org.nz/2022/07/03/mfat-please-explain/
And here – https://ajv.org.nz/2022/07/18/no-ihra-for-aotearoa-this-does-not-define-us/
Come over to the Moral side of supporting Equal Human Rights for All people in Palestine/Israel.
Please say No to Apartheid.
Please say no to antisemitism, Neil, and spare us your patronising drek. Changing the definition of apartheid to try and make it fit Israel’s inviolate right to self-defence just won’t cut it. Israel is not an apartheid state by any stretch of the imagination, but the Palestinians sure practise it. Where are the Jews in Gaza and PA controlled Judea/Samaria? None, for obvious reasons. They’d be massacred. Israel, however, has over 2 million Arab citizens with full civil rights and equality. Even Germany just
rubbished Abbas for his apartheid smear. Sticking silly labels on a nation doesn’t work when the truth is plain.
https://insidesources.com/israel-is-not-an-apartheid-state/
neil isn’t the one excusing the ukrainian nazis gaby that’s you
and we all know when the ukraine loses, jewish president or not it’ll be time for the age old eastern europian cry of ‘beat the jews’ but hey that seems ok with you….can’t expect better from a slanderer and liar named gaby
The thing about yoiu Gaby is you never ever answer the questions or engage in real debate. You make this statement time and time again:
‘Israel, however, has over 2 million Arab citizens with full civil rights and equality.’
But you know there are 70 plus laws that are directed and discriminate all Palestinians who are living in Israel. Why can’t you engage in this part of the discussion perhaps because there is no defending such policies.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/7/19/five-ways-israeli-law-discriminates-against-palestinians
Your constant name calling is not even a sideshow anymore.
Oh, give over, there are no such laws. You people are so steeped in lies and propaganda you don’t know which way is up. and if you want name-calling, look to aom and gagarin. I’m happy to say that Israel is REALLY safe if the dross here is any indication of the calibre of the enemy.
The questions…..second section….anti Israel anti Semitism. Talk about setting the language and agenda. I am not anti Semitic, far from yet I am anti Israeli entirely from a political stance. Weaponising the Holocaust, one of the most awful genocides in history, to justify unjustifiable behavior is despicable.
And disgustingly, not only is the government paying the zionist lobby to subvert our democracy via the IHRA, but they gave the NZJC the money to run their disgustingly anti-semitic survey too.
Whoa! Getting your panties in a bunch there, Mo. The barely restrained violence of the classic antisemite is an ugly thing, as these posts reveal.
Actually, Gaby, human beings don’t like your campaign to rape, torture, and kill every Palestinian (and Lebanese, and Syrian….)
Another typically uninformed non-erudite comment from the village idiot who lost most of his brain as a child. Pity he can’t read, rationalize or discern fact from the fictions he generates in his tiny mind.
What a dreadful way of debating.
Hurl insults.
Don’t worry, the target is such a thick prick it won’t hurt him a bit!
Classic aom, resorting to tantrums and abuse because he’s got nothing else. Glad I was able to prick your nasty antisemitic nerve once again! Always so satisfying, especially the way it makes you describe yourself, the pitfall the scapegoater always falls into. Mo is the same..
says the liar who can only reply with lame insults when cornered like the slanderous rat you are…yup that’s you gaby
Water off a duck’s back. Another one who can’t handle the truth describing himself.
An excellent analysis of why it is so wrong to attempt to separate anti-Semitism from any other form of racism.
One point which Zionists seem to miss is that under international law, everyone has equal human rights – including Palestinians. These rights should be entrenched in the national legislation of all countries.
While Zionists are free to believe they are the “chosen people” according to their religious tenets, those religious beliefs do not and should not trump international and humanitarian laws governing equality, not least anyone else’s right to equal enjoyment of human rights anywhere in the world, including in Palestine.
Whilst anyone at all is free to believe they are “chosen”, they do NOT have any right whatsoever to impose that belief on anyone else. Religious belief does not, should not, and cannot be allowed to over-ride fundamental human rights, a point many Jews, but not many Zionists, seem able to grasp.
Ah, the old Jewish supremacism trope…classic antisemitism. You people are really revealing your true colours. You do realise that the Palestinians are muslim? Yes? Well, in their world view you are a useful idiot infidel whose life has no value. The irony is exquisite.
Why are you pretending that your Palestinian victims are all Muslim, Gaby? Is it because you know that your ‘counterjihad’ rhetoric that inspired the Christchurch shootings doesn’t work so well when Christians realize that you’re performing barbaric acts against native Palestinian Christians just like Palestinian Muslims?
Would those be the Palestinian Christians who have fled to Israel where all faiths are welcomed and tolerated? The presence of Christians in the Palestinian territories has dwindled from 15% to less than 2% because of muslim persecution. Like all your fulminations you prove you know nothing except hysterical tropes, empty slogans and outright lies.
‘outright lies’ that’s rich coming from you gaby..
.now about my pro-palestinian posts having any luck finding the non-existant, no thought not…
No human believes your lies, Gaby. Everyone loves the Christian heroes who fight against you monsters, from Palestine to the heroic defenders of Lebanon, heroines like Sana’a Mehaidli.
so gaby plese elucidate on what the fundamentalist parties who run the knesset actually belive….g’wan darezya….and no lies please we’re sick of your halfbaked slanders.
Oh, give it up, spaceman. You’re the biggest fantasist on the planet, along with your cronies here. Israel is the only functioning democracy in the MENA….and you can’t stand it.
so when lies don’t work you have nothing left gaby…I see you avoided the jewish fundamentalistparties policies..
tell you what your starter for 10 name this group…
we hate the government
we breed like rabbits
we live on benefits
our sons are too good for the IDF
(and their position on women leaves a lot to be desired)
I expect the usual tirade of weak insults because you have no other reply
Pointed, as sharp as an arrow.
The Holocaust is not a Jewish issue alone. It’s about minority scape-goats everywhere. It’s more about the Palestinians than Israelis. The Jews, being brilliant, the best of them knew from the start. Give the best withering criticism of the racist ‘crusader’ state of Israel.
All sorts of solutions, but it will require a skilled threader to put the cotton through the eye of the needle. On the bad basis of stealing a country from its people.
Nice people Minto et al defend. Do you consider terrorist group, Hamas, to be ‘Palestinians’, or do you just mean Fatah (PA, Judea/Samaria), their bitter rivals, who are equally as corrupt and brutal? Your poor, helpless, homogeneous, victim ‘Palestinians’ don’t even exist! You’ve invented them to demonise Israel.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/04/middleeast/hamas-executions-intl/index.html
Why did you people (zionists, Gaby, not jews- many decent Jews oppose your disgusting love for killing Palestinians) throw a baker and his son into his oven at Deir Yassin?
gaby your lies are getting increasingly desperate…..
what’s your personal position on
the haganah
irgun
and the stern gang…
freedom fighters or terrorists?
I don’t expect an answer out of ignorance or evasion but go on give it the old college try.
Ah, the foundations of the IDF, the best army in the world. The original heroes who took on the antisemitic Arab terrorists and the Arab-supporting British. What’s your take on the Munich Massacre, spaceman? Brave ‘freedom fighters’ murdering helpless unarmed Jews, I guess. You never produce a single fact but sling off in your semi-literate, ponderous style at those who do. Maybe find a new obsession, like playdough.
splutter and lie as much as you like gaby, I’ve never mentioned munich but you can feel free to mention deir yassin …g’wan you can explain that one…or shabra and shatila…
at least my ‘ponderous’ contains actual facts….
now back to the point you tried to avoid …. the religious nutters that control the knesset leach off the state but won’t let their sons serve in the IDF please explain..
and just for clarity my position is both sides are spoilt children who will carry on with their arseholery until the people outside who fund them stop and force them to the table…
I’ll go back to my playdough when you stop lying through your arse.
Your’e the one with the badly inflamed arse, spaceman. Your lies never stop. Deir Yassin was debunked years ago. (The Massacre That Never Was, Eliezer Taubman.) Shatila and Sabra camps were attacked by Christian Druze in retaliation for the murder of their leader by the Pals. Arab massacres of Jews are too numerous to mention, of course. Your silly comments about the Knesset are too puerile for words and only serve to bolster your prejudiced image. You should be protesting about our appalling govt instead, but then you, Minto et al have a whole other double standard for Israel, don’t you? I find most antisemites become apoplectic over the concept of strong Jews defending themselves, which is why you support vicious, racist, islamist fascist terrorists, of course.
and those druze militias were armed by, encouraged by, and the massacres overseen by and the camps sealed by?…do tell
haaretz would tend to disagree with you on deir yassin…or are they antisemitic liars?
if my comments on the power balance in the knesset are silly and purile you should have no difficulty in telling us why..
please don’t try assigning beliefs and attitudes to me that I don’t hold it just undermines your own shaky position…go back to outright lies it’s more your style.
The Holocaust was an attack on human rights, the liberty of everyone, especially minorities. Jews thinking it was all about them get it wrong. Astounded me when I encountered … him. Very clear about his racism toward Blacks. And for dictatorship.
And then there is Israel. And the otherwise liberal Jews defending it.
You can’t have it both ways and , as you’d expect, the best of that great people, are disgusted by conquered Palestine.
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