Author: Sh'ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices

Joint Statement on Proposed Amendments to the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002

Date: 1^st September 2025

Issued by: Islamic Council of New Zealand (ICONZ), Alternative Jews Voices (AJV), Palestine Forum of New Zealand (PFNZ), New Zealand Buddhist Council (NZBC), Aotearoa Alliance of Progressive Indians (AAPI), The Council of Christians and Muslims (CCM).

Aotearoa New Zealand — We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, express our deep concern regarding the New Zealand Government’s proposed amendments to the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. These changes seek to broaden the definition of terrorist activity and expand law enforcement powers, including warrantless searches and the criminalisation of planning or preparing for acts deemed as terrorism.

While we recognize the importance of safeguarding national security, we urge the government to ensure that any legislative changes are made with full transparency, meaningful public consultation, and in strict alignment with New Zealand’s domestic and international human rights obligations.

Global precedents demonstrate the dangers of vaguely defined counter-terrorism laws. Such laws have been misused to suppress legitimate dissent, advocacy, and humanitarian work. We highlight the following examples:

• United Kingdom: The proscription of the nonviolent protest group Palestine Action under terrorism legislation has led to over 700 arrests, many for peaceful actions such as holding placards. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned this move, warning of its chilling effect on freedom of expression and assembly.
• UN Global Study: Led by Special Rapporteur Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the study found systematic abuse of counter-terrorism measures across all regions, disproportionately targeting civil society actors, especially women, minorities, and human rights defenders.
• Gaza: Human rights defenders and humanitarian advocates have been targeted under vague terrorism laws, facing surveillance, smear campaigns, and even lethal attacks for documenting war crimes and advocating for relief.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the 15 March 2019 terrorist attack found that an “inappropriate” level of intelligence and security resources had been directed at the Muslim community prior to the attack. This underscores the risk of discriminatory enforcement and the need for safeguards.

We emphasize that Indigenous peoples, racial, ethnic, and religious minorities are particularly vulnerable to being over-targeted by counter-terrorism strategies. Ensuring non-discrimination is essential to maintaining trust and justice in our society.

We call on the New Zealand Government to:

1. Conduct a thorough and inclusive consultation process with civil society, legal experts, and affected communities.
2. Ensure precise and narrow definitions of terrorism-related offences to prevent arbitrary enforcement.
3. Include explicit protections for freedom of speech, human rights advocacy, and peaceful protest.
4. Establish independent oversight mechanisms to monitor the application of the law and prevent abuse.

New Zealand has a proud tradition of upholding human rights and democratic values. We must not allow fear to erode the freedoms that define our society.

We stand united in urging the government to approach this process with fairness, transparency, and a firm commitment to protecting civil liberties.

List of Organizations:

Dr. Muhammad Sajjad Haider Naqvi             (ICONZ)            info@iconz.org

Marilyn Garson                                               (AJV)              contact@ajv.org.nz

Robert Hunt                                                    (NZBC)            chair@buddhistcouncil.org.nz

Dr. Sapna Samant                                           (AAPI)             kia.ora@aotearoaprogressive.org

Irfan Qureshi                                                   (CCM)             admin@theccm.org.nz

Maher Nazzal                                                 (PFNZ)            palforum.nz@gmail.com

Starvation of Gaza a continuation of a decades old plan

By Jeremy Rose

Reading an NBC News report a couple of days ago about a Trump administration plan to relocate 1 million Gazans to Libya reminded me of a conversation between the legendary Warsaw Ghetto leader Marek Edelman and fellow fighter and survivor Simcha Rotem that took place more than quarter of a century ago.

In the conversation, first reported in Haaretz in 2023, Rotem said the Jews who walked into the gas chambers without a fight did so only because they were hungry. 

Edelman disagreed, but Rotem insisted. “Listen, man. Marek, I’m surprised by your attitude. They only went because they were hungry. Even if they’d known what awaited them they would have walked into the gas chambers. You and I would have done the same.” 

Edelman cut him off. “You would never have gone” [to the gas chamber.] Rotem replied, “I’m not so sure. I was never that hungry.” Edelman agreed, saying: “I also wasn’t that hungry,” to which Rotem said, “That’s why you didn’t go.”

The NBC report claims that Israeli officials are aware of the plan and talks have been held with the Libyan leadership about taking in 1 million ethnically cleansed Palestinians. The carrot being offered is the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Libya’s own money seized by the US more than a decade ago.

The Arabic word Sumud – or steadfastness – is synonymous with the Palestinian people. The idea that 1 million Gazans would agree to walk off the 1.4% of historic Palestine that is Gaza is inconceivable. 

But then the idea that my great grandmother and other relatives walked into the gas chambers is equally incomprehensible. But we’ve never been that hungry.

The people of Gaza are. No food has entered Gaza for 76 days. Half a million Gazans are facing starvation and the rest of the population (more than 1.5 million people) are suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, according to the UN. 

Last year, Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich was widely condemned when he suggested starving Gaza might be “justified and moral.” 

The lack of outrage and urgency being expressed by world leaders – particularly western leaders – after nearly 11 weeks of Israel actually starving the inhabitants of what retired IDF general Giora Eiland has called a giant concentration camp – is an outrage.

As far as I’m aware there’s been no talk of cutting off diplomatic relations, trade embargos or even cultural boycotts. 

Israel – which last time I looked wasn’t in Europe – just placed second in Eurovision. “I’m happy,” an Israeli friend messaged me, “that my old genocidal homeland (Austria) won and not my current genocidal nation.”

A third generation Israeli, she’s one of a tiny minority protesting the war crimes being committed less than 100km from her apartment. 

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez and Irish president, Michael Higgins, is an honourable exception to the muted criticism being expressed by western leaders.

Sanchez had declared Israel a genocidal state and said Spain won’t do business with such a nation,

And peaking at a national famine commemoration held over the weekend Higgens said the UN Security Council has failed again and again by not dealing with famines and the current “forced starvation of the people of Gaza.” 

He cited UN secretary general António Guterres saying “as aid dries up, the floodgates of horror have re-opened. Gaza is a killing field – and civilians are in an endless death loop.”

Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen argued in his 1981 book Poverty and Famines that famines are man-made and not natural disasters.

Unlike Gaza, the famines he wrote about were caused by either callous disregard by the ruling elites for the populations left to starve or the disastrous results of following the whims of an all-powerful leader like chairman Mao.

He argued that a famine had never occurred in a functioning democracy. 

It’s a horrifying fact that a self-described democracy, funded and abetted by the world’s most powerful democracy, has been allowed by the international community to starve two million people with no let-up in its bombing of barely functioning hospitals and killing of more than 2000 Gazans since the ban on food entering the strip was put in place. (Many more will have died due to a lack of medicine, food, and access to clean water.)

After more than two months of denying any food or medicine to enter Gaza Israel is now saying it will allow limited amounts of food in to avoid a full-scale famine.

“Due to the need to expand the fighting, we will introduce a basic amount of food to the residents of Gaza to ensure no famine occurs,” prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained.

“A famine might jeopardise the continuation of Operation Gideon’s Chariots aimed at eliminating Hamas.” 

If 19-months of indiscriminate bombardment, the razing to the ground of whole cities, the displacement of virtually the entire population, and more than 50,000 recorded deaths (the Lancet estimated the true figure is likely to be four times that) hasn’t destroyed Hamas to Israel’s satisfaction it’s hard to conceive of what will.

But accepting that that is the real aim of the ongoing genocide would be naïve.

In the first cabinet meeting following the Six Day War, long before Hamas came into existence, ridding Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants was top of the agenda.

“If we can evict 300,000 refugees from Gaza to other places … we can annex Gaza without a problem,” defence minister Moshe Dayan said.

The population of Gaza was 400,000 at the time.

“We should take them to the East Bank [Jordan] by the scruff of their necks and throw them there,” minister Yosef Sapir said.

Fifty-eight years later the possible destinations may have changed but the aim remains the same. And a shamefully indifferent western world combined with a malnourished and desperate population may be paving the way to a mass expulsion.

If the US, Europe and their allies demanded that Israel stop, the killing would end tomorrow.

Jewish groups call for resignation or removal of Stephen Rainbow as Chief Human Rights Commissioner

In a recent meeting, Dr Rainbow made Islamophobic comments to Philippa Yasbek, spokesperson for Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu: Jews Against Occupation.

“Dr Rainbow asserted that the SIS threat assessment shows that Muslims pose a greater threat to the Jewish community in New Zealand than white supremacists. I was shocked that Dr Rainbow is so prejudiced that he misrepresented the SIS report to say the complete opposite of what is written in the document. The SIS report states that it should not be used to single out any ethnic community as a threat. It also says that white supremacists make up the bulk of violent extremists in Aotearoa,” says Philippa Yasbek.

“The Human Rights Commission is meant to promote human rights and racial equality, as well as encourage harmonious relations between diverse groups. Dr Rainbow’s comments in our meeting were Islamophobic and completely contrary to everything that the Human Rights Commission is supposed to stand for. He is clearly unable to perform the role of Chief Human Rights Commissioner. He should immediately resign or be removed by the Government,” says Philippa Yasbek.

The Prime Minister said in Christchurch on 15 March “Islamophobia – like all forms of hatred – has absolutely no place in New Zealand, and it is our duty to challenge it wherever it appears, whether it’s in words, policies or in the silence that allows prejudice to fester.” “I expect the Government to live up to these words. I have written to Paul Goldsmith, the Minister of Justice, asking for an independent investigation into Dr Rainbow’s fitness for the job. This is the first step to remove him from the role,” says Yasbek.

ENDS 

Text of the letter of complaint to the Minister of Justice, Paul Goldsmith, by Philippa Yasbek concerning Dr Rainbow, can be assessed here: https://ajv.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/rainbow-complaint-to-pg_redacted.pdf

Links to other stories about this issue:

https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/02-04-2025/chief-human-rights-commissioner-accused-of-islamophobia-by-jewish-groups

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/556990/chief-human-rights-commissioner-apologises-to-muslim-community

https://www.tickaroo.com/e/FPyBiaHkaQ3alXfVhttps://www.1news.co.nz/2025/04/03/stoush-between-human-rights-commissioner-and-jewish-leader/

MEDIA RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                              7 June 2024

Food is not a weapon: Jewish groups congratulate Winston Peters for re-committing to lifesaving aid

“Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu congratulate Foreign Minister Peters for maintaining 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. In the wake of the recent Israeli attack on the UNRWA school in Nuseirat refugee camp, New Zealand  should increase its support of UNRWA.” says Justine Sachs, co-founder of Dayenu and a member of Alternative Jewish Voices (AJV).

“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 saving lives in the humanitarian emergency in Gaza. UNRWA employs over 13,000 people in Gaza. New Zealand suspended its donations to UNRWA after Israel made unsubstantiated allegations about a few UNRWA employees. The Israeli government was unable to provide any evidence to an independent investigation, which has since cleared UNRWA of wrongdoing.” says Sachs.

“The International Court of Justice recently ruled that continuing the ongoing Rafah offensive would constitute a violation of the Palestinians’ right for safety and therefore must cease immediately. The Court has 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 Israeli war crimes. New Zealand claims to have a principled foreign policy. On principle, we need to act against genocide and help save lives.” says Justine Sachs.

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. AJV and Dayenu are in the process of merging. 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.

The Colonna report was not provided with any evidence to verify Israel’s unsubstantiated allegations that a small number of UNRWA staff somehow supported Hamas’s actions on 7 October.

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. Winston Peter’s announcement was made on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

ENDS

For further information contact:

Justine Sachs

022 353 7045

Anti-Zionist Jewish activist in New Zealand speaks out against genocide in Gaza

Tom Peters, John Braddock 15 February 2024

World Socialist Web Site reporters in New Zealand recently spoke with Rick Sahar, the son of two Holocaust survivors, about his decision to speak out publicly against Israel’s genocidal war against the people of Gaza.

Sahar lived in Israel as a young man and since moving to New Zealand in 1981 has had a long career as an entertainer and performer. For several years he worked as a volunteer for the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand, helping to educate people about the genocide of the Jewish people during World War II.

He is one of many Jewish people across the world who have spoken out against the actions of the Netanyahu regime and joined protests against Israel’s ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Palestinians. The prominent participation of Jews in protests against the war exposes the lie, repeated incessantly in the media and by politicians, that the Israeli state represents the Jewish people and that any opposition to it constitutes antisemitism.

In January, Sahar addressed a protest in Wellington—one of dozens held across New Zealand since Israel’s bombardment of Gaza began—where he said: “I condemn the intentional murdering and maiming of innocent people by Israel in Gaza and in the West Bank. Collective punishment was used by the Nazis and was condemned after the Holocaust amid cries of ‘never again,’ and yet it is happening again.”

Born in the US city of Detroit, Sahar was one of four children of two survivors of the Holocaust in Poland. “At home we didn’t speak at all about the Holocaust. My mother was still very distressed by it all, she was traumatised,” he said. Many years later, his father told him that he had a first wife and twin boys in Oświęcim, Poland, all of whom were killed at Auschwitz in 1944.

Because his father had some medical skills as a barber, he was sent to work in the adjacent Birkenau camp, where “he would treat cuts and bruises, breaks and things like that, and that kept him alive because he was able to speak German as well.”

It was only later in life, after moving to New Zealand, that Sahar began to research his parents’ history. “I became more involved in my own heritage of how my people were impacted by the Nazis, and that’s when, after I put together a bit of research, I was asked to present it at the Holocaust Centre as one of their speakers for adult education. That was really hard to do the first time, to present my parents’ survival story. I learnt how to deal with that and I went presenting it at high schools around the country and other adult groups.”

Sahar was elected to the board of the Holocaust Centre, an institution founded in 2007 in Wellington to promote awareness and education about the Holocaust. In 2020, Sahar was recognised for his work bringing together Polish and Jewish people through shared events with the Centre and the Polish Embassy by being awarded the Gold Cross of Merit from the Republic of Poland.

He told the WSWS that he initially felt that Israel had a place in the work of the Centre, but his views changed over time. “I started realising how it was limiting our choices and decisions, impacting on who we can see that human rights are being taken away from, because Israel has a different idea on that. Certain instances there led to me resigning from the board and getting more involved now in the Palestinian cause.

“I feel it’s important for me to speak out about Palestinian rights and the atrocities that I see are being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank,” he said.

“There are so many war crimes in Gaza being perpetrated by Israeli armed forces. It’s all detailed there in the media how the Gazans are being impacted by the siege. I see it as a genocide that’s being committed. And, you know, you can’t wait to the end and then call it a genocide. It’s in the process of happening, it definitely qualifies as a genocide.”

Asked what he thought was motivating Israel’s actions, he said: “It’s in retaliation for the 7th of October. It’s anger, revenge against all Palestinians, who they see as below them, as the perpetrators.”

He added that Netanyahu had “selected people with similar views to be part of his war cabinet, especially those right-wing religious representatives, who to me are not Jewish, they don’t represent the beauty of beliefs that exist in Judaism as they do in other religions. They don’t represent Judaism to me.”

He criticised the United States-led bombing of the Houthis in Yemen, which New Zealand military personnel are actively assisting. He said the Houthi militias were attacking shipping in the Red Sea in response to the bombardment of Gaza. “If the US was really interested in trade they would make sure that the bombing stops, they wouldn’t supply the armaments for Israel.”

Sahar said he recently wrote to Foreign Minister Winston Peters opposing the decision to stop funding for the United Nations agency UNRWA, which provides food and aid for starving people in Gaza.

“Israel’s done an incredibly successful campaign of vilifying UNRWA,” he said. “There’s no reason for that other than their paranoia as to whether or not any assistance can be made through UNRWA to Hamas.” He said it was “ridiculous” that the alleged participation of a handful of UNRWA employees in the October 7 operation “could be the basis for stopping the aid to just over 2 million people. They’ve relied on this aid ever since the siege was implemented. Everyone relies on aid there.

“So it’s a travesty to stop funding UNRWA and things are just going to get worse and worse, even after the International Court of Justice finding that Israel is committing acts that could be considered a genocide. They didn’t call it a genocide but they said it may be leading to that. Israel is taking no notice and is increasing its bombing of Gaza, and also environmentally impacting it with the flooding of the tunnels, which is something horrible for whoever will be there again, because it’s ruining any kind of chance of there being water from wells, groundwater, pure water to drink.

“They’re destroying so much infrastructure. It also really angers me how they go into the West Bank and destroy the infrastructure there, as well. It’s just so spiteful and it’s not in my name.”

Speaking about the dehumanisation of Palestinians, Sahar described it as “a caste system within [Israel’s] borders and outside its borders against Palestinian people. Within Israel, Palestinians who live there are definitely a second-class people, and the ones in the territories that they have been exiled to are at least second- or third-class, and they really are hated.

“The sadness I have is that Israel theoretically started as, according to the tenets of Zionism, ‘a light unto the nations’ and to make peace with the other countries around them, and to accept all people. I think they confused the issue by calling it a Jewish state and a democracy. It’s not possible to do both. You have to allow for other religions and other peoples if you’re a democracy.”

He said Israel had to come to terms with its past by “accepting the wrongs that have been committed, and how they are the perpetrators in this disaster that’s happened of displacement, of persecution, of killing, murdering people.” This was the only way to have reconciliation and peace. “I think the best thing that’s happened recently is South Africa’s bringing the case [accusing Israel of genocide] to the International Court of Justice. I just wish Israelis would see that too.”

Sahar praised the small number of young Israelis, including the outspoken Tal Mitnik, who have opposed conscription and refused to fight in Gaza.

He explained how he had become disillusioned with Zionism while living in Israel during the 1970s. “I served in the Israeli army, I was conscripted because I had to be in order to stay in Israel. I was there for 11 years, and after two-and-a-half years they said: you either have to leave the country or become a citizen.”

After an incident that occurred while he was on reserve duty in the West Bank, Sahar said he felt he could no longer stay in Israel. “Our commander called me and two other soldiers into his office and he addressed me. He said: ‘Rick, here’s the name and address of a suspected PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] operator nearby. I want you to go to him with these two soldiers, arrest him and bring him here.’ And I didn’t think about it, I just said: ‘I’m not doing that.’ He said: ‘What?’ I said: ‘I refuse to do this.’ He said: ‘Oh, you’re refusing an order?’ I said: ‘Yes, I’m here to protect, not to go out and arrest.’”

As punishment, Sahar was confined to guard duty for three weeks, four hours on, four hours off. “That’s where I sat and thought and knew that I couldn’t serve in the army again because I was going in a different direction in my beliefs about what was going on in Palestine.”

He also described an earlier incident that led him to question the role of the military and the occupation. “I had an experience in Bethlehem on an earlier reserve duty on what happened to be Easter Sunday. I’m there in the square with other soldiers, full kit, and these beautiful families of Palestinian people were walking by in their lovely clothes on their way to church, and I said: ‘Happy Easter!’ And they couldn’t look at me, they couldn’t acknowledge me. And then I remembered who I am, what I represent. I suddenly realised: I’m the occupying force here, and it could even be seen as intimidation, me calling out and wishing them a happy Easter. That was very sad for me.

“I used to believe, when I was in Israel, for a little while, that the only way to security is through armed forces, that the only way to have a lasting peace is to fight. Ever since I’ve been here and been more objectively viewing the situation in Israel, I know for sure that peace is only possible through negotiations and showing a willingness to forgive the other, and to accept one another.”

Sahar mentioned that he had two grown-up daughters living in Israel, one of whom was among tens of thousands of people evacuated from the area near the border with Lebanon soon after 7 October, as Israel ratcheted up tensions with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“She was able to pack her car, all the things that they needed, and to drive to a known destination, which eventually happened to be a tourist resort near the Dead Sea. So 80,000 people were removed and put into different resorts and safe places away from the fighting in sharp contrast to the ongoing forced evacuations [in Gaza] to crowded areas without proper amenities to sustain healthy life,” he said.

Sahar criticised the very limited media coverage of the anti-genocide protests in New Zealand. Many have gone completely unreported, and oppositional voices within the Jewish community have not been highlighted.

He mentioned that members of Alternative Jewish Voices, a Wellington-based group of anti-Zionist Jews, and Dayenu: New Zealand Jews Against Occupation, had written to the media and their letters had not been published in any form. “It’s disappointing,” he said. “The Israeli embassy has done a thorough job of influencing the press, I think.”

Sahar concluded by thanking the WSWS for its coverage and for interviewing him. Rick is a member of Dayenu: New Zealand Jews Against Occupation.

We thank the World Socialist Web Site for permission to use this interview with Rick. : https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/16/xryx-f16.html

Israel’s War on Journalism

By Jeremy Rose

Ahmed Alnaoug appearing in one of numerous interviews following the massacre of 21 of his family members in Gaza on 21 October last year.

Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq’s first published story dealt with what he described as Israel’s murder of his brother Ayman in 2014.

The IDF would call it self-defence or mowing the lawn – a common phrase in Israel for the periodic attacks on Gaza aimed at depleting Hamas’s military capacity.

The essay – published on the We Are Not Numbers website –  describes Ayman coming home, in the early 2000s, after five of his primary school mates had been killed by Israeli soldiers, and another 12 injured while playing.

By the time Israel invaded Gaza in what it dubbed Operation Cast Lead, in 2008, Ayman was in secondary school and once again he saw friends being killed.

Operation Cast Lead left 1400 Palestinians dead, 46,000 homes destroyed and more than 100,000 homeless. Thirteen Israeli soldiers died during the invasion. 

The blockade that followed the war left Ayman and Ahmed’s disabled, taxi driver father unemployed as the supply of petrol dried up. As the eldest son Ayman took on the role of breadwinner.

Then in 2012 Israel again “mowed the lawn” in Operation Pillar of Defence – and once again hundreds were killed and thousands left homeless.

“When this war was over, Ayman was not the same,” Ahmed wrote.

His older brother joined Hamas’ armed resistance force – the Al Qassam Brigades.

It was a decision that would cost him his life. In 2014  Israel yet again invaded Gaza and Ayman was killed by a missile fired from an F16 as he as he made his way to battle the IDF

The world is divided on what to call the likes of Ayman. To Palestinians he’s a martyr, a freedom fighter, and a patriot – to Israelis  he’s a terrorist.

Some will praise him for his decision to join the armed struggle. Others will condemn him.

Ahmed chose another form of resistance: journalism.

In 2014 he helped set up We Are Not Numbers, a website that provides a platform for young Gazans to share their stories, in English, with the outside world.

Then in 2019 he teamed up with Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham to bring the stories to an Israeli audience in Hebrew in a project called We Beyond the Fence.                 

On October 21 of last year Israel dropped a bomb on Ahmed’s family home killing 21 members of his family – including 14 of his nieces and nephews all under the age of 13.

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The house was in the south of Gaza in an area Israel had declared a safe zone.

Ahmed heard of the massacre in the UK where’s he’s on scholarship.

He’s been tirelessly telling people the stories behind the numbers ever since.

But as we enter to seventh month of what leading Holocaust scholar, Hebrew University professor, Amos Goldberg, last week, declared to be a genocide, the numbers tell other important and horrific stories.

The media has been updating the death count daily  – currently it’s over 34,000 the vast majority women, children and civilian men – but there are other numbers that are less well known.

Around 100 journalists – 10% of Gaza’s journalists have been killed to date. It’s by far the most deadly war for journalist in the 21^st Century.

The reason I’ve fudged the numbers is twofold: firstly whatever figure I use is likely to be out of date by the time this story goes to print; and, secondly there’s a discrepancy between the figures given by the Committee to Protect Journalists which reports that 92 Palestinian, three Lebanese and two Israeli journalists have died since the  Hamas’ October 7 attack and the Gaza media office which claims more than 140 journalists have been killed

The Palestinian Journalist Syndicate reports that 84 media offices have been bombed – including the We Are Not Numbers offices.

Prof. Goldberg includes the targeting of journalists in his carefully argued case for declaring the assault of Gaza to be genocidal.

“What is happening in Gaza is genocide because the level and pace of indiscriminate killing, destruction, mass expulsions, displacement, famine, executions, the wiping out of cultural and religious institutions, the crushing of elites (including the killing of journalists), and the sweeping dehumanisation of the Palestinians — create an overall picture of genocide, of a deliberate conscious crushing of Palestinian existence in Gaza.”

Reporters Without Borders filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court on October 31 last year, asking for an investigation into the targeting of journalists by Israel which it believes constitutes war crimes.

And in February a group of UN experts, including four special rapporteurs,  issued a statement calling on the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court  to look into the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza.

“We have received disturbing reports that, despite being clearly identifiable in jackets and helmets marked “press” or travelling in well-marked press vehicles, journalists have come under attack, which would seem to indicate that the killings, injury, and detention are a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to obstruct the media and silence critical reporting,” a spokesperson wrote.

Ahmed Alnaouq is far from alone among Gaza’s journalists in having multiple family members murdered. Last week he tweeted: “Israel killed my sister and all her children while sheltering in my home in October. Today they have bombed her husband’s home. This home sheltered over 70 people. 7 flats.”

Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief Wael Al Dahdour – probably Gaza’s best known journalist – lost his wife, son, daughter and grandchild, when an Israeli airstrike hit their home in the Nuseirat refugee camp on 25 October last year.

On 7 January his son, Hamza Al Dahdouh, a journalist, was killed by an Israeli airstrike while travelling in a car, marked press,  along with a colleague. 

It’s an open question whether Israel is targeting not just journalists but their families.

What is certain is that Israel has a terrifyingly high threshold for the number of civilian deaths resulting from its targeted killing.

Yuval Abraham – who worked with Ahmed on the We Beyond the Fence project – published an investigation on the progressive  +972 website which revealed an AI programme called Lavender that identified 37,000 suspected militants in the first weeks of the war.

The article, based on interviews with six IDF intelligence officers, claimed Israel systematically targeted those on the kill list while they were home usually at night.

Another automated system called Where’s Daddy? was developed to identify when suspected militants arrived home.

Two of those interviewed claimed that in the early weeks of the war it was permissible for 15 to 20 civilians to be killed for every militant targeted.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement in December saying it was alarmed by journalists in Gaza reporting death threats and subsequently their family members being killed.

“The killing of the family members of journalists in Gaza is making it almost impossible for the journalists to continue reporting, as the risk now extends beyond them also to include their beloved ones,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour.

Last Sunday Israel closed Al Jazeera’s office in occupied East Jerusalem, confiscating broadcast equipment and taking the channel off air.

The move comes almost exactly two years after an IDF soldier shot and killed the American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh while covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank for Al Jazeera.

At first, Israel claimed Abu Akleh, who was wearing a blue vest identifying her as media, has been shot by a Palestinian militant. When that story became untenable, due to video evidence, the IDF launched its own investigation which declared there was a high probability that the Al Jazeera journalist had been accidentally hit by an IDF bullet and there would no further criminal investigation.

Israel’s targeting of journalists and their families, the closure of Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem office, the imprisonment and alleged torture of journalists, and the refusal to let foreign journalists enter Gaza amounts to a war on journalism.

Ahmed Alnaouq remains committed to the craft of journalism but he’s critical of much of the mainstream coverage of Israel’s assault of Gaza.

“The Western media played a pivotal role in the murder of 21 members of my family, including my parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews,” he tweeted on X.

“Yes, Israel executed the attack and the US supplied the weaponry, BUT the Western media provided cover. I hold every propagandist for Israel and every Western journalist who repeated the narrative of “Israel’s right to self-defense” against the civilian population of Gaza, including children and women, accountable. The era of diplomacy is past. It’s time to call these terrorists by their true name: enablers of genocide. I refuse to tolerate Israeli propaganda any longer. I refuse to be intimidated any longer, and neither should anyone else.”

With leading Holocaust scholars like Amos Goldberg declaring Israel guilty of genocide it’s time for media outlets to ask themselves whether Ahmed Alnaouq has a point.

Jeremy Rose is a founding member of Alternative Jewish Voices

A guest blog post by Eliza Jane

Justice, Justice shall you pursue

A few moments stick in my memory from the process of learning about Judaism and deciding to convert. I remember reading, “It is not incumbent on you to complete the task but nor are you free to neglect your part”, and thinking those were some great words to live by. Or reading Koheleth, and wondering why I hadn’t read it earlier. I graduated with a philosophy degree and read Plato and Sartre. Had this seminal existentialist meditation on nihilism and the search for meaning slipped my reading list because it was put in the religious box, not the philosophy box? 

There were difficult conversations with my mother who felt that, if she’d known I was going to find religion she would have had me baptised. I explained that no, I wasn’t finding religion in general. I was finding this one in particular which felt right. But I’d also heard that studies of adopted identical twins show there’s a strong genetic component to religiousness, so I wondered about that.

I read and read and read. I pored over translations of The Guide to the Perplexed by Maimonides and I and Thou by Martin Buber, and everything else in between and beyond. 

I learnt how to make challah, how to say the Shabbat blessings, how to make charoset for Pesach, and which herbs could be used for the maror.

I remember the weekly pattern of walking from our small flat in Grey Lynn to the synagogue in Mount Eden every Saturday to go to Shabbat services, learning how to read Hebrew, how to sing the songs.

On my way to my Beit Din (the rabbinic committee which formalises conversion) straight after work one clear autumn evening, I saw a butterfly flitting between the browning leaves of a plane tree. Though I had no idea what the bracha (blessing) was for seeing a butterfly, I knew there would be one, and that was a beautiful thought. At my Beit Din, I was asked whether I was sure I wanted to join the Jewish people, given the long and entrenched history of Jewish oppression. It felt like that was one of the easier questions. I had come to consider this my community already. This was the history my children would be inheriting so, whether I converted or not, this was a people I was entwining myself with.

I have been proud to be able to draw on Jewish concepts when I’m teaching my kids – tikkun olam (healing the world), tzedakah (charity) – and proud to be able to celebrate holidays their ancestors have been celebrating for millenia.

Here’s the heart of it. Judaism is one of the ways I find grounding and hope for building a better world, and that has always been important to me, and that’s what made me feel like converting to Judaism was a beautiful gift. 

It seemed to me that Jewish thought, teaching, and religious practice was preoccupied with the same dilemma that kept pulling me in over and over when I was studying ethics. This is not the fairly simple question of why do the right thing. It’s the thornier question of how to hold onto hope when the world feels too hard to fix. Because while we can act even if we don’t have hope, our action will be twice as strong if hope is there to counter despair and exhaustion. Rage at injustice burns bright, but to sustain change it needs hope alongside. This can be a personal struggle for many – and it’s also a collective challenge. Judaism is not a proselytising religion; the Jewish writers I absorbed were not saying they’d found the one true answer, or that there could even be one true answer. But the question was central. And there were strands of answers woven through the rituals to sanctify time on Shabbat, to connect with others in our synagogues; in Jewish songs, festivals, and in acting on mitzvot. These are all ways to find beauty in the world, while being reminded that we cannot look away from injustice. 

My favourite passage in the Nevi’im (the second book of Tanakh, the Prophets) instructs us to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Walk humbly. My next great love after reading is tramping, so I just adore that turn of phrase. Walking humbly, to me, is appreciating the world we live in as a wondrous creation far beyond our human selves, and recognising that the story of the world is multifaceted and we are only one part.

So that’s the perspective I’m coming from. Judaism is a beautiful, powerful religion that asks us to heal the world, and I feel blessed to have been able to join this community. 

Our teachings require us to be working for peace, and surely we know this in our hearts. Our teachings say that every single soul in this world is created pure, everyone is created in the image of God, b’tselem Elohim. Our teachings tell us “You shall not harm a stranger or oppress them, for you were strangers in Egypt.” 

The Shabbat morning service includes prayers for peace, and lists the ancient obligations without measure from the Talmud – to pray with sincerity, to build peace where there is strife. There is no room in those words for disingenuous, empty sentiments. The failure to build peace, the failure to speak out against war, is a denial of ourselves. It’s a failure to teach our children the values we want to teach them. How can they look up to their community leaders if those leaders are saying it’s naive and impossible to create a better world, that perpetual war and oppression of others is justified, that the most essential, enduring and true parts of Judaism are the ones we can set aside most easily? 

There are some who might say that as a convert, I don’t have the deep knowledge of Jewish trauma and oppression, that I’m still a visitor. I get that. But my children bear that history, and I bore those children. My husband was born in Israel. His grandmother survived a concentration camp. His grandfather fought in the 1948 war, and again in 1967, and we named our first son after that grandfather. 

Not long before we were engaged, I studied in Berlin for a few months. I was already interested in Judaism, and spent an immersive afternoon wandering around the Neue Synagogue. That synagogue was built to be able to fit 3000 people. It can be said to be the birthplace of Reform Judaism. Albert Einstein attended services there, and it’s the first recorded place that a woman spoke from the bema (pulpit). I also went to the oldest synagogue in Europe, in Prague. Reminders of the Jews who aren’t there anymore can be found in city after city after city throughout Europe. A street market I went to in Berlin sold battered, antique menorahs – I was taken aback, what were the stories they held? I shuddered to think of people buying them as bric a brac. They should have been heirlooms. Family lines, snuffed out like the candles that once would have burned in the window. The scale of loss of Jewish life from the Shoah (Holocaust) is so unimaginably huge; and with it the loss of Jewish scholarship, community, history, political debates. It is still very recent, the generations overlap through to today, the trauma is still being played out. And in Israel, it has compounded, and spiralled outward, and become normalised as a permanent, essentialist feature of existence. 

Solidarity with Jewish people, care for Israelis, hope for a safe future for all – these are all reasons to build peace. There are no reasons, none at all, to continue down the current path of pain and destruction, violence and trauma, of dehumanising Palestinians, of launching bombs that kill entire families – children, parents, grandparents. Everything in our texts and our history is crying out to us that this is not the way. This is not the way. Exhortations to peace are repeated over and over throughout Jewish writings. This isn’t cherry picking or subtext, it’s central: “That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbour. This is the whole of the Torah; the rest is commentary.” How can anyone in the entire world look at the children of Gaza and not weep and rage and cry out for them to be allowed to live? How can we – Jews living in safe, peaceful countries, where our children don’t know what bombs sound like – stay silent? 

There is a map laid out for a different path from the disastrous one Netanyahu is leading Israel down. It has been written over thousands of years. It has been a trusty guide. Through millennia of Jewish experience, Jewish communities have cherished it, and held it sacred in the most impossible circumstances. Right now is a hard time in Jewish history, but it’s far from  the hardest time we’ve faced. It’s a time to turn towards the truest parts of our teachings, to hold onto them, to use them to spark hope and give us courage and strength. There is nothing, nothing, no shred of a possible defence for saying peace is too hard, for becoming apologists for endless war and denial of basic rights. It’s time for t’shuva (returning), for returning to our values, returning to a better path. How dare we do anything else.

Eliza Jane lives in Wellington with her husband and two sons. She converted to Judaism over a decade ago, and has a particular interest in Jewish philosophy and literature. She also makes legendary challah and babka.

Jews from Across the Globe Welcome Amnesty Report on Israeli Apartheid

The International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine, which represents Jewish organizations in thirteen countries including Aotearoa-New Zealand, views the recent report by Amnesty International on Israel’s system of apartheid as a a serious wake-up call to the world.  The full text of the IJCJP statement appears below.

After four years of investigation, Amnesty International has joined Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem and others in concluding that Israel operates a “system which amounts to apartheid under international law.” Full text of the report is here, with a short video tutorial here.

Why is this report different? Amnesty is the world’s largest human rights organisation. When Amnesty International calls on nations to respond to apartheid with the force of law and diplomacy, it speaks with unrivaled moral authority. Amnesty has called for UN Security Council sanctions against Israeli officials, investigations by the International Criminal Court and an arms embargo of Israel.

Amnesty International is also a membership organisation. This landmark report will mobilise many Amnesty members and followers to actively support Palestinians’ full individual and collective rights.

The Amnesty International report thus brings the apartheid discourse firmly into the mainstream and the highest diplomatic circles.

And what is not different? The NZ Jewish Council issued a statement calling Amnesty International antisemitic. The statement failed entirely to engage with Amnesty’s findings, and instead tried to change the subject. Nothing new there.

Alternative Jewish Voices has this week written about the intersection of Aotearoa’s Jewish and Evangelical Zionism and conservative secular politics. Overlapping directorships bring views to the Jewish Council that are far from the mainstream.  We have documented some of the implications, seeking more transparency among the voices which might be assumed to represent the entire Jewish community.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Global Jews Welcome Amnesty Report on Israeli Apartheid

The International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine, which represents Jewish organizations from fifteen countries around the globe, views the recent report by Amnesty International on Israel’s system of apartheid as a a serious wake-up call to the world. 

The Amnesty report is the result of years of painstaking investigation showing decisively that the Israeli government has privileged Jewish Israelis in every sphere of life over Palestinian citizens and residents in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Joining other human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organization, B’tselem, the report echoes what Palestinians have been saying for decades in every forum they can find: that the outrageous violations of the human rights of Palestinians must stop.

The Amnesty report, as well as other critical reports on Israel’s apartheid system, can best be understood within a context of the broader Palestinian-led movement for justice against settler colonialism that began before and during Israel’s creation in 1948. At that time, the Zionist movement and then Israel expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their land and homes. This is known as the Nakba, the catastrophe. The process of ethnic cleansing continues to this very day.

Yet again, attacks by the Israeli government and some Jewish organizations are calling the report “antisemitic,” but these critics should be pressed to provide evidence supporting their claims. This will not be possible, since the report reflects the truth. Palestinians have lived under Israel’s apartheid system for decades. As Jews, we have seen these Israeli policies in action with our own eyes and know they are in complete defiance of the long-standing Jewish tradition of social justice.

We will continue to stand firm with the Palestinian movement for freedom, justice, equality, and dignity.

The International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine

a coalition of organizations from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, US

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has issued a military order which designates six leading Palestinian legal and human rights groups as “terrorist” organisations. The government of Israel has declined to back its orders with evidence.

The order criminalises lawyers who provide legal aid, and observers who inform the world of human rights abuses: Addameer,  Al-Haq,  Palestine branch of Defence of Children International, Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, Bisan Center for Research & Development. 

On the websites of the targeted organisations, you will learn about incarcerations, documented human rights violations, the imprisonment of children, aid to farmers in the West Bank. To prevent the sharing of such information, the Israeli government will now fight these activities as if they were fighting terrorists. 

Leading global human rights organisations have objected in the strongest terms. They clearly state that they will continue to work with their Palestinian colleagues:  Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch call it “an attack on the human rights movement” while B’Tselem calls it “a draconian measure that criminalizes critical human rights work.”

Alternative Jewish Voices calls this military order the contemptible act of an authoritarian.  This order would jeopardise the funding which creates factual information about Palestinian life under Israel’s occupation.  The order poses a new level of violent threat to the defenders of human and legal rights.  If we do not defuse that threat internationally, it will set a frightening precedent for all of the people who stand up to authoritarians around the world.

Israel’s military order extends its pattern of criminalising any resistance to its regime of occupation, de facto annexation and legislated apartheid.

Members of Israel’s government refer to boycotts – the non-violent exercise of economic choice – as economic terrorism.  Israel’s President called Ben and Jerry’s decision not to sell ice cream on occupied land as “a new kind of terrorism.”  Around the same time, Israel confiscated 23 tons of chocolate bars destined for Gaza with the explanation, “We will continue to hunt down networks that fund terror.” 

There seems to be no form of resistance that Israel won’t categorise as terroristic.  This new military order will criminalise even the use of the law.  In occupied Palestine, it appears that resistance will be treated as terror, period.

We urge the government of Aotearoa-New Zealand to take the recent advice of Ban Ki Moon, former Secretary General of the United Nations, and change our yawning diplomatic stance:

“a powerful state is controlling another people through an open-ended occupation, settling its own people on the land in violation of international law and enforcing a legal regime of institutionalised discrimination… What has become increasingly clear in recent years is Israel’s intent to maintain its structural domination and oppression of the Palestinian people through indefinite occupation… resulting in a situation that arguably constitutes apartheid. It is now time for the international community to recognise and confront the consequences of Israel’s policies and actions in this regard.”

When will we defend the people who defend the law and human rights?

Alternative Jewish Voices  https://ajv.org.nz/

October 26, 2021