Month: June 2023

We did it!!!

Image: Freepik

Today Wellington City Council voted to initiate a Friendly City link with Ramallah, Palestine with the longer term aim of becoming sister cities.

In a rather lively session, Alternative Jewish Voices had this to say:

Mayor Whanau, councillors and neighbours, Tēnā koutou. Kō Marilyn Garson taku ingoa. Ngā mihi nui for the opportunity to speak for Alternative Jewish Voices of which I am a co-founder.

In 1982, the Wellington City Council declared Wellington a nuclear-free city. A few years later, the country agreed. Cities act in the interests of their citizens. Wellington has 13 sister city relationships and they have not brought the sky down. Taipei is our sister city, as are several Chinese cities – so which government do the no-voters believe we’re endorsing?

Or perhaps you have been told that Palestinians are a special case, that the people who live in the West Bank are essentially political beings, existing only in opposition to Jewish people like me.

Those comments are essentially political, but the West Bankers are not. No person’s identity is limited to politics. It is deeply wrong to think that Palestinians exist only through the issue of occupation. It is equally wrong to refuse to interact with them until Israel ends its occupation. The effect of reducing people that way is to further punish them for being an occupied people.

Our Palestinian neighbours are too often reduced to politics rather than being acknowledged as one more ethnic community which fully participates as of right in every venue, every aspect of Wellington’s life.

Friendly cities are the antithesis and maybe an antidote to all those politics. Sister city relations are cultural, profitable—curious. I worked four years in Gaza and I worked occasionally in Ramallah because it is the technology hub of Palestine. Ramallah hosted regular Start-up Weekends to feed its entrepreneurial incubators. We did much of our work in the cafes, of which Ramallah has many. Does that sound familiar? Those are the ways in which we hope to enjoy our Palestinian sister city – visiting, exchanging ideas, investing, maybe the odd joint venture.

This initiative should also foster positive encounters between the ethnic groups of Wellington, and AJV thanks you for promoting that.

It is misguided and misleading to hesitate to connect with Palestinian people out of fear of my Jewish community’s response. It’s misguided because the rights of my neighbours to expression, connection with their whanau and whenua, the peaceful enjoyment of our shared public space, robust political participation and the full realisation of their rights – in short, their wholeness is not at my expense. Palestinian identity and rights do not diminish me. They enrich the tapestry of the city we share.

No one, including my people, has the right to define our identity so expansively that they ask you to erase others.

It is misleading to imagine Jews and Palestinians in a zero-sum relationship. Alternative Jewish Voices was formed partly to say that we Jews are diverse in the ways that we love and express our Jewishness. We are here today to say in our Jewish voices that we welcome Ramallah to the Wellington whanau. Let’s break down the barriers that estrange us.

Friendly city, sister city, whatever – we welcome this opportunity to get to know Ramallah and make Ramallah better known to Wellingtonians.

Alternative Jewish Voices wishes to thank Mayor Whanau and this council for leading in the interests of Wellingtonians.

June 29, 2023

Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa – New Zealand

On June 29, Wellington City Council will vote on an initiative to add Ramallah to our existing 13 “city-to-city relationships around the world created to strengthen our cultural, educational and business connections.”

We will be thrilled to welcome Ramallah to the family. Ramallah, like Wellington, is a technology hub and a centre of government administration, its hilly streets dotted with cafes and cultural outlets. A sister-city relationship will emphasise that we have things in common to enjoy and explore.

This positive initiative has been challenged with reference to the Jews’ interests or sensibilities, as if the Jews is an object in zero-sum opposition to the Palestinians. Let’s unpack that, in order to bring the sister-city initiative into clearer view.

What is the Jews of Wellington? We don’t know how many Jews live in Wellington because our Jewish institutions make no effort to locate or include them. We only know the membership of a few Jewish institutions, for whom Zionism has become a litmus test of welcome. The boards of those institutions appoint members of the NZ Jewish Council. The erstwhile Wellington Regional Jewish Council was so unsupported at its last community meeting that they agreed to suspend their operations, draft a new constitution and seek a community mandate. That was 2021 and we’re still waiting . . .

Therefore, anyone claiming to speak for the Jews is at best speaking for the membership of a few Jewish institutions – not more. We are a diverse community. We do not all think the same way. There is no single Jewish position on this issue or any other.

On the steps of Parliament, a group of Christian Zionists recently disrupted the handover of a petition to MPs by shouting incessantly into their megaphones about the Jews. The Jews  this, the Jews  that. For them the Jews  is an abstract blunt instrument with which to batter the Palestinians, thereby advancing an agenda which benefits the Christian Zionists. Reductionist crackpot hooha.

As we have previously mapped, vocal civil society institutions whose names suggest that they are grounded in the Jewish community—like the Israel Institute and the Holocaust and Antisemitism Association—are in fact majority-Christian in their overlapping executives. For them, the Jews is a useful stand-in for the Israel  in whose interests they advocate.

We want our fellow Wellingtonians to understand that you are not hearing the voice of the Jewish community when you hear these voices. We Jews are not presently represented by any one voice. Alternative Jewish Voices was established partly to say just that: when you think of the Jewish community, please assume our diversity.

Neither sister cities nor access to Wellington’s public space is accurately configured by pitting Jews against Palestinians. Palestinian rights, Palestinian identity, expression and culture are not about Jews at all.

People simply have a full complement of human and political rights in this world. No one’s positive expression of identity – in this case Palestinian expression – should be sized to fit the space left over by others’ political ambitions. None of us has the right to define our identity so expansively that we demand the erasure of another.

Rights are not zero-sum: the full measure of your rights does not diminish me in any way. Instead, rights reside in the sphere of abundance. The more justice, equality and freedom we create, the richer we make our lives together.

Our normal relations with the occupier Israel stand in unhealthy contrast with our lack of interaction with occupied Palestine.  It’s time to level up aspects of that deficit. When Wellington City Council votes to establish a sister-city relationship with Ramallah, they will open a perfectly normal gateway to cultural, business and other exchanges.

We thank Mayor Tory Whanau and our city councillors for supporting this enriching initiative, and we look forward to getting to know Ramallah better.

Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa