A couple of days ago, we debunked a webinar that had been advertised by New Zealand synagogues. It was hosted by the Indigenous Embassy, which is co-directed by Alfred Ngaro, a former National MP and current New Zealand First candidate.
The presenter urges listeners to –
Since the webinar, three different articles in Aotearoa and Australia have followed its strategy, some mapping the medieval Catholic Inquisition over rights-based protest. A second webinar is now being promoted here. Then the presenter wrote to threaten various ‘avenues’ . . . and say that he would ‘relish’ a public debate or podcast.
Hmm. Someone wants a platform – but the best response to disinformation is to refuse to recirculate it. Repetition makes any statement feel more possible. So here’s our reply.
Joshua,
Your email boils down to a request to engage, recirculate and dispute your statements on their own terms. You advise listeners not to engage with goodwill. We take you at your word and we decline to engage. When a person instructs listeners to regard rights-based protest as racial hatred or incitement, we decline any exchange that might normalise such falsehoods.
Frankly, we refuse to be diverted onto your narrative ground. We had been concerned that debunking your distortions involved writing, even once, on your terms. Thanks for tipping the balance. We’re content to give you much less space. On April 22, at minute 42 of your YouTube presentation, you said:
‘Label [anti-Zionism] under the umbrella of antisemitism. Whether or not it is a type of antisemitism, it doesn’t matter. If we want to believe that anti-Zionism nests within antisemitism, that’s fine.’
That will suffice. We’re not interested in the use you make of your false premise. The truth does matter, and the truth is that anti-Zionism protests decades of Israel’s actions.
When a person conjures an anti-Zionism without Palestinians at its beating heart, we reply with these truths:
- The ongoing genocide in Palestine is not a story about Jews. It is the Zionist project of Israel; a regional hegemon defending genocide accusations in court, whose leaders are wanted for crimes of genocide, whose government ministers openly incite genocide.
- We understand Zionism through the lived and ongoing experience of Palestinian people. They tell us what Zionism means. Only when we learn to listen without being defensive; only when we imagine and work for Palestinian freedom will we also be free.
- Anti-Zionists protest against Israel’s actions including apartheid, illegal occupation and the illegal blockade of Gaza, illegal wars of aggression waged at overwhelming and intentional civilian cost, the starvation and bombardment of civilians, the horrifying abuse of prisoners, the targeting of healthcare workers and journalists and children.
- Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. Israel’s actions may endanger Jews, but anti-Zionism does not seek violence against the Aotearoa Jewish community.
- We strain to distinguish Jewish from Zionist from Israel, notwithstanding the efforts of Zionists to confuse them.
- Aotearoa’s Jewish institutions are not responsible for Israel’s actions. They are responsible for their own political choices, including their support of / silence regarding genocide committed in our names.
- Human rights and the laws which centre the value of life are the much-battered framework by which we insist on human equality. Jewish safety is inextricable from everyone’s safety. Jewish safety will be secured by working with others against all forms of racism and deprivation.
- Anti-Zionism opposes that which prevents our Palestinian whānau from realising their full, equal individual and collective rights. We Jewish anti-Zionists understand our solidarity as part of our essential Jewish obligation to stand with the oppressed.
Sh'ma Koleinu - Alternative Jewish Voices (NZ) 