Month: January 2024

MEDIA RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                              January 29, 2024

Food is not a weapon: Jewish groups call on MFAT to re-commit to lifesaving aid

“Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu call on Foreign Minister Peters to increase – or at a bare minimum to maintain – NZ’s funding to UNRWA for humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. In the midst of a humanitarian catastrophe, we cannot abandon people who are being starved,” says Marilyn Garson, co-founder of Alternative Jewish Voices (AJV) and former UNRWA contractor.

“UNRWA provides vital aid to the besieged population of Gaza. No other agency can replicate their logistics and infrastructure. Their ongoing operations are critical to mitigating the effects of the humanitarian emergency in Gaza. UNRWA employs over 13,000 people in Gaza. Israel has accused fewer than 0.1% of those staff of complicity in Hamas’s 7 October attacks. These staff members have been fired and their actions are being investigated by the UN’s highest investigative body. Suspending UNRWA funding because of a few allegedly bad apples is collective punishment of Gazans. Imagine how enraged Palestinians must feel, hearing that donor states are withholding food while they are starving in flimsy tents through Gaza’s bitter winter storms.” says Garson.

“On Friday, the International Court of Justice found that Israel must take action to prevent the genocide of the Gazan people. The Court also determined that Israel must ensure the delivery of basic services and essential humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. Suspending funding to UNRWA could make states complicit in genocide. New Zealand claims to have a principled foreign policy. On principle, we need to act against genocide and help save lives.” says Garson.

AJV co-founder Marilyn Garson was employed by UNRWA-Gaza from 2013 to 2015. She adds: “UNRWA is a diplomatic and humanitarian proof that Palestinians are one people. There have long been a few Zionist voices arguing that Palestinians’ national consciousness protracts their resistance. They say that, if Palestinians would just forget their nationhood, they could be dispersed quietly. In that sense, they say that UNRWA extends the problem. I would say that Israel’s refusal to acknowledge Palestinian rights extends UNRWA, not the other way around. Ask any Palestinian: their national consciousness is not going away.”

Background information supporting this media release

Alternative Jewish Voices is a collective of non-Zionist Jews. Dayenu is a group of New Zealand Jews opposed to racism and the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. More information can be found at https://ajv.org.nz/ and https://www.instagram.com/dayenunz/

The United Nations Refugee and Words Agency (UNRWA) is mandated to serve Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan until there is a just solution to their dispossession. By funding UNRWA, donor states refuse to normalise that dispossession.

In blockaded Gaza, UNRWA provides health, education, housing and services to 1.7 million refugees, 70% of the population. It is also a critical provider of employment, liquidity, population records and essential humanitarian aid. It is especially vital in emergencies. No other agency has a fraction of UNRWA’s skilled staff, logistics or infrastructure for shelter and distribution – whatever fraction of that capacity remains intact.

UNRWA and the UN’s highest investigative body are responding to unspecified allegations that a small number of staff somehow supported Hamas’s actions on October 7. Without waiting for their report, the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy ceased delivery of their aid commitments.

UNRWA is entirely dependent on voluntary funding. It is not funded through UN contributions. National voluntary contributions were committed some time ago. Budgets and plans have been made on the assumption that those promises would be kept.

ENDS

For further information contact:

Marilyn Garson

Shma.koleinu.nz@gmail.com

For as long as I have written about the equality of Palestinians, Jews have been insulting me in the language of the Holocaust. A small minority of my own community resorts to the ugliest imagery as if it will obscure their inability to disprove the equal rights and the full humanity of Palestinian people.

The effect of splattering ugly historic words around is to rob them of specificity. Even the most shocking reference is gradually emptied of any meaning beyond ‘someone who disagrees with me’.

That is what antisemitism is coming to mean: someone who protests Israel’s devastation, starvation and genocidal intent toward the people of Gaza. Those who purport to speak for the Jewish community are draining that word of its specific meaning by splattering it over anti-Zionism, expressions of Palestinian identity, and protest consistent with international law and our equal human rights. They have robbed us all of an essential category and they are distracting us from the rise and mainstreaming of real antisemitism by the far Right.

When ceasefire is equated with genocide or when the very sight of Palestinian protest is unbearably triggering, the speaker is making their own fragility the point of their statement. They are speaking of their own intolerance. We ask, what is the matter with you that you equate the cessation of violence with the very worst form of violence? More than one percent of Gaza’s people have been killed, the population is being starved and the cities are rubble – and you have fainting spells at the sight of a flag?

Such absurd efforts to proscribe the peaceful expression of Palestinian rights and international law are an evasion. Such sweeping claims say that the Jewish community need not engage in any conversation that is not predicated on seeing Jews in existential danger — a danger embodied by Palestinian identity and rights.

But look, whose are the weapons and whose homes lie in rubble? What are the proportions of dead, missing, hostage, maimed, homeless and starving civilians? We Jews are more than victims. We are agents.

As part of this squandering of language, Israeli government leaders and others use the language of the Holocaust to help incite total, perpetual, genocidal enmity. They call Palestinians Nazis, subhuman, Amalek.

We will not repeat more of the offensive language here because repetition makes anything feel more normal. The Israeli settler-Right is adept with that language. The antisemitic far Right has long used it. It peppers Israeli government and military incitement against Gaza.

In our own country, Nazi imagery and language have been mainstreamed in particular through the website of David Cumin, former member of the NZ Jewish Council and Community Security Group; founding member of the Free Speech Union and director of the Israel Institute.

These Zionist voices are not really complaining about the use of Holocaust- or genocide-related language at all. They wield it freely. They are objecting to anyone else using it, too.

Well, we also object. Let the Holocaust stand alone as itself. ‘Genocide’ is a category for everyone to use wisely. Within that category, the Holocaust is specific. Cambodia is specific. Rwanda is specific. We remember each instance of genocide in its specifics. We ask the questions and teach the lessons, live with compassion for the people affected, and try to learn from it.

Holocaust Memorial Day is coming. One of the legacies of having watched the devaluation, dehumanisation and extermination of six million European Jews is the vow, never again. What have we learned from it?

First, to the degree that we vowed ‘never again’, we have failed. In a way more public than in any previous genocide, Gaza is being destroyed and starved before our eyes and we have failed to stop it.

Second, within the Jewish community, those who support or tolerate Israel’s genocidal campaign have learned only tribalism: never again to Jews. They are prepared to dispense with 2000 years of Jewish pluralism. In the interests of Jewish power, Zionism has sought to wrap Jewish identity in the Israeli flag. Having spent enormous energy insisting that ‘Jewish’ must mean ‘Zionist’, Jews everywhere now reap the consequences as Israel’s actions drag all of our good names through the mud. Israel’s actions frankly endanger us all. Not-Zionist Jews are attacked as never before in the interests of Jewish ethnonationalist power.

Jews, Palestinians, Muslims, tangata whenua and friends honour Holocaust memories by holding firmly to the language of our principled protest. This is a time for solidarity and impatience as we honour the dead and fight like hell for the living.

Gaza is the existential conversation, and we are deeply disappointed that our Jewish institutions continue to evade it. Perhaps they will use Holocaust Memorial Day to speak with a more humane vision.

Marilyn Garson for

Alternative Jewish Voices

Click to access press-release-first-national-jewish-and-muslim-forum-on-peace-in-gaza.pdf

Alternative Jewish Voices, Dayenu and the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand are so, so excited to have opened a national dialogue for peace – real peace with real justice. Our combined voice will be new and compelling.

The full text of FIANZ’s press release:

PRESS RELEASE:
FIRST NATIONAL JEWISH AND MUSLIM FORUM ON PEACE IN GAZA
At a time when there is an unending humanitarian tragedy in Gaza, Jewish and Muslim community elders and youth have met in a forum held at the Centre of Peace and Dialogue in Wellington. This was the initiative of FIANZ, the umbrella national Muslim organisation, to reach out to respected members of the Jewish community, to find a common platform for dialogue for a pathway to peace in Gaza, said Abdur Razzaq, Chairperson of FIANZ RCOI.

“Given there is polarisation of viewpoints, our social cohesion strategy calls for shared conversations on difficult issues and this has been the key objective of this peace initiative,” said Farouk Khan an elder of the Muslim community of Auckland and Senior Advisor of FIANZ.

“We need each other to make change. We came here to find common ground, and we agree that real solutions must recognise the equal human rights of all people”, said Marilyn Garson, co-founder of Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices (NZ). She also represented Dayenu, another national Jewish organisation working for peace in Palestine, whose speaker could not attend due to illness. The two organisations shall be merging soon.

The forum had both Muslim and Jewish speakers, with representatives of a number of government agencies present. “It was a first step in a difficult journey of seeking peace in a region which has seen over 75 years of violence and human tragedy. Here we had an opportunity to have a Aotearoa New Zealand approach, which is based on having respect and understanding”, said Mustafa Farouk, a prominent Muslim elder from Hamilton and Head of Interfaith Dialogue for FIANZ.

“Today’s event was a success, in two ways”, said Fred Albert, a member of the Jewish community in New Zealand. “Firstly, we chartered new approaches based on dialogue and secondly, we lay the foundation platform, so that
Jewish and Muslim youth can meet next month and continue this journey”.

“That both the Muslim and Jewish community members can have a shared narrative at this time of immense societal tension and polarisation with the unfolding ‘crisis of humanity’ [quoting the UN Secretary General], is rare in any other part of the world. We have to harness our smallness and our shared experience in this country”, said Abdur Razzaq. “Plans are progressing for a national gathering of Muslim and Jewish youth next month, so that the hard issues can be discussed, and a unified approach taken towards our response
to the current tragedy”.

We would also like to convey our gratitude to all the government agencies who have been fully supportive and encouraging such dialogue. This all-of-society and all-of-government approach is precisely what the March 15 Royal Commission had advocated as the way forward. It is nice to see this taking shape, particularly at these challenging times”, said Abdur Razzaq.

PRESS RELEASE – FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Abdur Razzaq
E: fianz.advocacy@gmail.com
Marilyn Garson
E: contact@ajv.org.nz

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 11, 2024

Contact: 

Donna Nevel, globaljewishcollective@gmail.com

CALL TO THE WORLD FROM GLOBAL JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS:

STOP THE GAZA NIGHTMARE

The International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine (IJCJP)—an organization with Jewish organizational members and associates from 14 countries across the globe—deplores the continuing death and starvation being foisted on the people of Gaza by a vengeful and genocidal Israeli regime.  Statements this week by the Israeli government indicate the possibility that this war may go on through 2024, a prospect unimaginable in its horror.

We abhor the complicity of powerful governments that have failed to act vigorously to achieve a meaningful ceasefire, particularly the United States, which not only has bypassed its own normal fiscal procedures to fund this atrocious war on Gaza but prevented for weeks the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian goods through vetoes and abstentions at the United Nations.  

We find it particularly reprehensible that this war is being conducted by the so-called “only democracy in the Middle East” and supported by the self-defined “greatest democracy in the world,” which has systematically ignored the views of 61 percent of its own citizens who support a permanent ceasefire.

As a community that is no stranger to calamity, we call on the world’s leadership to act immediately to halt the Gaza nightmare. Other states should follow the example of South Africa, whose initiative to charge Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice we vigorously support.

Signed by:

International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine

 (Canada, U.S., UK,  Ireland, Germany, France, Luxembourg, South Africa, New Zealand, Israel, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 9, 2024

Contact: 

Donna Nevel, globaljewishcollective@gmail.com

Israel’s War on Gaza and our Jewish Communal Institutions

The International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine (IJCJP) wishes to express our abhorrence for the many ways in which Israel-supporting Jewish organizations in our countries have stoked the flames of racism and have embraced genocidal military violence through their support of Israel’s war on Gaza.  It is unfathomable that Jewish leaders choose to justify Israeli violence when two million Gazans are starving, displaced, ill, wounded, and in mourning for the nearly 25,000 Palestinians killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombing and land incursions. The International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine fully supports South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in the Gaza war and calling for an immediate suspension of it military campaign. 

Jewish community leaders have vilified those protesting the war by labelling them “terrorist supporters,” “gangs,” “mobs,” and other epithets intended to operationalize the anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia so ubiquitous in the west. Our communities have also been deeply implicated in the suppression and criminalization of speech on Palestine which disproportionally impacts racialized individuals. Dissident Jews who are demonstrating openly in their tens of thousands worldwide against this immoral war have not been immune to slander from Jewish institutional leaders and are characterized as “useful idiots,” “self-haters,” “un-Jews,” and worse; this betrays the long Jewish tradition of theological debate and political diversity.  

 While millions around the world march in the streets demanding an end to the inhuman devastation of Gaza, many of our communities choose to characterize this unprecedented demand for an end to genocide as antisemitic. We are appalled that there is not even a glimmer of humanity or compassion expressed for the thousands of Palestinians killed and the families who have been decimated in this horrific war. Jews who are challenged in the streets with vocal opposition to Israel’s genocidal violence and eliminationist racism are portrayed as victims for whom the sight of a Palestinian flag or the sound of chants for Palestinian freedom pose an existential threat despite little evidence that this is true. In the meantime, attention is diverted from the actual threat of antisemitic white supremacism which is growing exponentially. 

Histories of Jewish suffering must never be used justify inflicting unimaginable misery on the civilian population of Gaza. We call on all Jews to reject this politics of Jewish exceptionalism and to hold our communities accountable for supporting and enabling this wholly unjustifiable war, a war that is destroying Palestine and which imperils Jews while defiling our prophetic tradition. 

Signed by:

International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine

(Canada, U.S., UK,  Ireland, Germany, France, Luxembourg, South Africa, New Zealand, Israel, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina)