Hatred Of Jews Is Condemned In Aotearoa New Zealand
Press Release – Holocaust Centre of New Zealand
Ms Hart commented, Its chilling to recall the horrific events over 80 years ago, half a world away. The Holocaust started with hate. It ended in the Holocaust. Its time for all to condemn antisemitism, in all its forms and to take care in …
The Holocaust Centre of New Zealand and the New Zealand Jewish Council condemn the vile antisemitic graffiti that appeared overnight in our capital city, Wellington.
Holocaust Centre of New Zealand, chair, Deborah Hart said, 'This graffiti is, alas, quite accurate. It would appear, once again, to be cool to hate Jews. We actually see that in a stark increase in Jew hatred, the lacklustre response of schools when Jewish children are subjected to abuse, the deplatforming of Jewish artists, hate mail, property damage and the lack of concern for Jewish people generally. The small Jewish community in New Zealand is vulnerable and has suffered ongoing hate, which shows no signs of abating.'
New Zealand Jewish Council spokesperson, Ben Kepes, says, 'Under the guise of protest against Israel's war in Gaza, classic antisemitic tropes, insults and abuse are rife. The Jewish community has been targeted, intimidated and discriminated against through physical attacks, threats of violence, boycotts of Jewish businesses and careers and harassment of students. Such actions would never be justified or tolerated against any other minority under the guise of opposition to overseas events.'
'The graffiti we saw daubed across a public space in Wellington this morning could have been once daubed across German streets in the 1930s. Then, like now, some leaders are emboldening citizens to find a scapegoat on whom to place blame for all manner of ills. For example, when New Zealand political leaders support calls to 'Globalise the Intifada', they are repeating a call for an armed, violent uprising not only against Jews, but against Western society more generally. We call on all leaders to think before they parrot slogans from overseas that could target our vulnerable Jewish community here'
Ms Hart commented, 'It's chilling to recall the horrific events over 80 years ago, half a world away. The Holocaust started with hate. It ended in the Holocaust. It's time for all to condemn antisemitism, in all its forms and to take care in their messaging.'
Mr Kepes said, 'No matter what is going on internationally or politically, New Zealand Jews should be safe and secure in New Zealand. They should not wake to hateful messages in our streets'.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Business Review
2 days ago
- National Business Review
Iron Ladies show their mettle
Publishers have never under-estimated the appeal of prime ministerial memoirs, particularly if they are female. A primary example is Margaret Thatcher, a conviction politician who revelled in her reputation as the ''Iron Lady' who resisted any concession to communism. In fact, the epithet was first used in a Soviet newspaper in 1977. Thatcher pursued radical economic reforms and fought the Falklands War. She was tough on her cabinet colleagues and was 'not for turning' once she had decided on a course of action. As a woman, she was also judged for her emotional quotient, being reduced to tears on occasions of national and personal tragedy, while showing courage after an Irish bombing attempt on her life. Yet her period in power ended badly and Thatcherism is still a catchcry on the left for all of Britain's economic and other ills. Margaret Thatcher, by Iain Dale. A new biography, Margaret Thatcher, by Iain Dale, has just appeared, aimed at a new generation who were born after she left office in November 1990. Dale says he isn't trying to replace Charles Moore's magisterial three-volume biography or the dozens of others on her 11 and a half years as prime minister. Rather, it was to explain those 'basking in the glory of her achievements, or formed in the shadow of her failures … [and] to bust the many myths that have grown up about her'. Future task That will also be the future task for political scientists and historians studying the phenomenon of Dame Jacinda Ardern, the third of New Zealand's female prime ministers. Her autobiography, A Different Kind of Power, was launched globally this week, in the same way as books by the Clintons and the Obamas. The world's largest publisher, German-owned Penguin Random House, specialises in getting returns from million-dollar-plus advances. It must be emphasised, despite the widespread publicity about the strengths and weaknesses of its insights into the local political scene, New Zealanders are not the book's primary audience. Instead, it has been honed by a gifted communicator, aided by skilful editors and marketers, as an inspirational story about a woman's rise to international celebrity status and empathetic power from humble beginnings. It's mainly a human drama with strong emotional content, sufficient doses of levity to keep you reading, and an uplifting message of self-help if you want it. Most book buyers are women, and many of them want to read a true-life story of someone who aspired to make the world a better place, while also raising a family. The Ardern story is hard to beat in ticking those boxes. Two-thirds of the book is devoted to her rise to fame and overcoming the mental doubts of anxiety, imposter syndrome, and inferiority complex. Early childhood It starts with an early childhood growing up in a gang-infested forestry town, Murupara, that would rate among this country's worst. Young Jacinda and her older sister, Louise, had to be removed from the local school because of bullying. Her hard-working parents moved on to dairying and orcharding in Waikato to supplement their incomes (her father was in the Police). They were unusual among other Kiwi families because of their Mormon religion, which emphasised family values and women's roles as mothers. They spurned caffeine and alcohol. (Mormon families are also required to have three months' supply of food, we learn.) The outside world penetrated this life only through the six o'clock news. The Lockerbie bombing, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the tanks in Tiananmen Square, and Nelson Mandela walking free from prison all made their mark on young Jacinda. She writes, in italics: 'The world is so big and life could be fragile, I understood. But not so big that one person can't do something to change it.' Anecdotes abound through life in high school and university, as the 'political' Ardern takes shape through organising youth events, debating, and culminating in helping to run an election campaign for Harry Duynhoven, Labour MP for New Plymouth. You can almost hear the intervention of an editor as Ardern is prompted, 'Tell us more about this and that.' She kept a diary, so readers learn about the boy who robbed the fish-and-chip shop where she worked, later turning up at a party that night; the tragic account of a teenage suicide; an heirloom violin that was lost in a swindle; a long-buried family secret; and, in a longshot coincidence, a boy from Murupara who played with the Ardern girls later turning up as a drag queen in Wellington. Jacinda Ardern and Helen Clark, posted on Clark's X feed. Rapid rise As they say, you can't make this stuff up. The Duynhoven campaigning was followed by an internship in Parliament and a rapid rise to working in Helen Clark's Office of the Prime Minister. Only in New Zealand, overseas readers might wonder, could a 20-something be so quickly employed by the country's most powerful politician. This closeness to power proves too intoxicating. A brief interlude follows of an OE in London. Older sister Louise is already there, and Labour connections provide a public servant job advising on policy for Tony Blair. A single reference is made to the International Union of Socialist Youth, where at 27, Ardern was elected unopposed as president for a two-year term at the world congress in the Dominican Republic in 2008. This should be big news but only her opportunity for travel is recorded. Nothing is said about these travels to places such as Hungary, Jordan, Israel, Algeria, and China. That editor must have signalled – 'don't bother with the political stuff'. (IUSY has 122 leftwing, non-communist member organisations from more than 100 countries.) The story moves back to New Zealand as Ardern's political career takes off, landing her 20th on the Labour list of candidates in the 2008 election, which Labour lost. She begins her parliamentary career in opposition, but that nosey editor ensures the boring stuff is left out. The focus remains on the personal as the young politician begins dating on advice that she should have a life outside politics. Readers are introduced to the alpha male Clarke Gayford, who has a higher profile as a broadcasting personality. That changes when Andrew Little steps aside as leader and Ardern, deputy for just five months, is elevated just weeks before the 2017 general election. Clarke Gayford, Jacinda Ardern, and baby Neve at the United Nations. Worlds collide The couple's desire for a family becomes paramount and the two worlds collide in a dramatic climax as Ardern learns she is pregnant on election night after years of failed fertility treatments. Again, you can't make this stuff up. As coalition negotiations start on the formation of a Labour-New Zealand First Government, Ardern is chomping on water biscuits and salt-and-vinegar chips to stave off bouts of morning sickness. Amazingly, her pregnancy remains secret from her colleagues and the Diplomatic Protection Service, who do not twig when they drop the couple off to a medical appointment, thinking they are calling on a friend with a bottle of wine. The birth of baby Neve in June 2018 and the beginnings of motherhood are given as much prominence as other early milestones of the prime ministership. The visit to the annual United Nations annual leaders' meeting is a logistical nightmare if you are a breastfeeding mum, and Neve makes history as the first baby to appear on the UN General Assembly floor. We are reminded of the editor's presence as a teenage infatuation with the 'Peace Train' song by Cat Stevens contributes another flukey coincidence – the appearance of Yusuf Islam at the We Are One memorial concert for the victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings. Only four brief chapters, out of 30, are left to cover subsequent events, including the most contentious period of Ardern's term as prime minister. This has disappointed reviewers, who note the lack of references to issues that saw a sharp drop in support for the Government after Labour's 2020 election win that produced the first single-party majority under MMP. It comes as a surprise, in the memoir's final melodramatic reveal, that the resignation announcement on January 19, 2023, was partly caused by a cancer scare rather than not having 'enough fuel in the tank' to continue the onerous duties of public leadership and raising a family. A Different Kind of Power: A memoir, by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin). Nevil Gibson is a former editor at large for NBR. He has contributed film and book reviews to various publications. This is supplied content and not paid for by NBR.
Scoop
3 days ago
- Scoop
Bad Old Habits: Israel Backs Palestinian Militias In Gaza
It is one of those things that should be recorded and replayed for eternity: Israel, in order to guard some misplaced sense of security, happily backs Palestinian groups in order to divide themselves. Hamas, seen now as an existential monster, was tolerated and even supported for lengthy stints in efforts to undermine the various factions in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation represented by Fatah. In his 2008 work, Hamas vs. Fatah, Jonathan Schanzer, writes how the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the inspirational font for Hamas, was seen as an opportunity by the Israelis when taking root in Gaza. 'By the late 1970s, the Israelis believed that they had found Fatah's Achilles' heel.' Israeli strategy permitted the Brotherhood to thrive, going so far as to allow the cleric Sheikh Ahmed Yassin to operate a network of welfare, medical and education services. These had been sorely neglected by Fatah in the Gaza Strip. This approach effectively licensed the emergence of fundamentalism, seen, curiously enough, as more manageable than the military adventurism of the PLO. The First Intifada in 1987 spurred on the creation by Yassin and his followers of Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya ('Islamic Resistance Movement'). The 1988 charter of the organisation we know as Hamas, more youthful, and leaner, and hungrier than their Fatah rivals, made its purpose clear: 'There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad'. In 2009, while surveying the ruins of a neighbour's bungalow in Moshav Tekuma, the retired Israeli officer Avner Cohen, who had served in Gaza for over two decades, was rueful. 'Hamas, to my regret,' he told the Wall Street Journal, 'is Israel's creation.' Sustenance and encouragement from the Jewish state had effectively emboldened a mortal enemy. Such a record should chasten wise legislators and leaders. But the only lesson history teaches is that its grave lessons are left unlearned, with disastrous, inimical mistakes made anew. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proof of that contention. His various governments proudly backed the policy of division between the Gaza Strip and West Bank, defanging Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the latter while propping up Hamas in the former. Every now and then, the Israeli Defense Forces would keep Hamas in bloody check, a strategy that came to be called 'mowing the grass'. Israel's support for Hamas has come in the form of work permits (up to 3,000 granted to Gazans in 2021, rising to 10,000 during the Bennett-Lapid government), and suitcases, heavy with Qatari cash, entering the Strip through crossings since 2018. In 2019, Netanyahu was quoted as telling a Likud faction meeting that opponents of a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Hamas. Five years prior, Bezalel Smotrich, the current firebrand, pro-ethnic cleansing Finance Minister, declared with candour that 'The Palestinian Authority is a burden, and Hamas is an asset.' With Hamas now the target and sworn enemy, the PM feels that the same, failed experiment adopted at stages since the 1970s can be replicated: backing and encouraging yet another group of Palestinians to undermine any sovereign cause. The central figure and beneficiary of this latest folly is the shady Yasser Abu Shabab, a Rafah resident from a Bedouin family known for a spotty criminal record. Calling itself the 'Anti-Terror Service' or the Popular Forces, and possessing assault rifles and equipment seized from Hamas, his 'clan', as reports have described it, has a committed record of looting humanitarian aid in Gaza. In Netanyahu's eyes, these rapacious poachers have turned into opportunistic game keepers, partially guarding the paltry aid that is currently being sent into Gaza under the supervision of the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Georgios Petropoulos, a senior United Nations official based in Gaza last year, calls Abu Shabab 'the self-styled power broker of east Rafah.' For his part, Abu Shabab admits to looting aid trucks, but only 'so we can eat, not so we can sell.' The looting proclivities of such groups is well noted, with the head of the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in occupied Palestinian territories, Jonathan Whittall, making a damning accusation on May 28: 'The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point in Gaza.' On May 21, Abu Shabab's group posted on Facebook that '92 trucks were secured and entered areas under the protection of our popular forces, and exited safely under our supervision.' Details on which organisation was behind hiring the transporting vehicles were not given. With rumours bubbling that the Israeli government had embarked on this latest course of action, Netanyahu came clean. 'On the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas,' he announced in a posted video with usual, glowing cynicism. 'What's wrong with that?' The strategy 'only saves the lives of Israeli soldiers and publicising this only benefits Hamas.' The advice purportedly given by Shin Bet to Netanyahu to arm Gaza militias opposed to Hamas was an expedient measure, largely occasioned by the PM's continued refusal to involve the Palestinian Authority in the strip. Not all Israeli lawmakers were impressed by Netanyahu's latest effort at supposed cleverness. Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats in the Knesset, condemned him as a threat to Israeli security. 'Instead of bringing about a deal, making arrangements with the moderate Sunni axis, and returning the hostages and security of Israeli citizens, he is creating a new ticking bomb in Gaza.' The leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Avigdor Lieberman, is of the view that the transfer of weapons to Abu Shabab's outfit was done unilaterally. 'The Israeli government is giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons, identified with the Islamic State group,' he told the public broadcaster Kan. 'To my knowledge, this did not go through approval by the cabinet.' With humanitarian aid now at the mercy of a group scorned by UN officials, humanitarian workers and certain Israeli politicians – a rare coming together of minds – the next round of errors is playing out with rich, quixotic stupidity. Israel further adds to its own insecurity, while Abu Shabab knows all too well the views of his family, expressed in chilling statement: 'We affirm that we will not accept Yasser's return to the family. We have no objection to those around him liquidating him immediately, and we tell you that his blood is forfeit.'
Kiwiblog
5 days ago
- Kiwiblog
Maybe it is time for a Korea type partition for Gaza?
I am a resolute defender of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state (as are all two state solution proponents), and of its right to defend itself after the terrible 7 October attacks which saw civilians, women, children tortured, raped and murdered. A huge amount of the criticism of Israel's response has been hysterical and illegitimate. Those who label it genocide just wish to smear Israel, and make the Holocaust seem less uniquely evil. No country in the world would not respond with ferocity and military might to an attack like October 7. However being a defender of the right of Israel to respond, doesn't mean you have to agree with everything the Netanyahu Government does. While many of the attacks on the response are bad faith, there is considerable division inside Israel about whether the continued military action is a good idea. The way you can tell a good faith criticism from a bad faith criticism is often by whom the criticism is targeted at. If they refer to Zionists of the State of Israel, it is almost always bad faith. If they refer to the Netanyahu Government, then it is more likely to be good faith – recognising Governments take actions that not everyone in a country supports. I am now one of those who finds it hard to see a coherent strategic end game from the Netanyahu Government. I can't honestly say that I see a military strategy that will result in a safer Israel. Look there are no easy options. The longer the military action goes on, the more Palestine civilians get killed, and the more future terrorists you end up with. But leaving Hamas in power isn't a great idea either. However the ratio of legitimate targets to collateral damage is getting uncomfortably high. One solution I have been toying with, is to abandon Gaza entirely. Don't just have one wall, but have a massive DMZ like between North and South Korea. Build two massive walls around a km apart, and have the space in between littered with mines so no attacks can be made through the DMZ. This would mean abandoning the policy of allowing people to cross from Palestinian territory into Israel for work. It was a noble goal that boost incomes through employment, and working together would lead to peaceful co-existence. Around 200,000 Palestinians were able to cross into Israel every day to work. Peace through prosperity gas failed as a strategy though. If Hamas remains in Gaza, you can't have border crossings. So build a huge DMZ to secure Israel's border with Gaza. Drop bombs on it every so often to take out any attempted tunnels. That will prevent another 7 October. Sure there may still be missile attacks from Gaza, but you just retaliate to those as they occur (as you do with the Houthi etc). So I am no longer convinced that the current military strategy of the Netanyahu Government is justified. If 21 months of military attacks hasn't got rid of Hamas, then how confident are you another six months will? Or another 12 months or 24 months? Do you have continual war? But returning to pre-October 7 settings is not an option either. I think you need to be pragmatic and say that peaceful co-existence is off the agenda for decades. Therefore Israel should effectively recognise Gaza as part of a Palestinian State, and build a huge DMZ to prevent any crossings between Israel and Gaza. This is not an ideal solution, but it works in Korea and has kept the peace for decades.
