Author: Marilyn Garson

Wellington City Council has initiated a friendly city link with Ramallah, Palestine, as a precursor to a sister city relationship. In the course of this initiative, the patterns of Zionist speech in Aotearoa have deteriorated. They are becoming less transparent, more alarming and alarmist.

Although it is not in Wellington, For the Protection of Zion Trust  was vocal. The FPZT is not a trust in the usual sense at all. It is registered as a “trust” business type. Its trustees are Pastor Nigel Woodley of a Hastings Christian Zionist church, and one other person with the same surname. As a company, it is not obliged to disclose much more than its basic information. It does not disclose any financial information, so we don’t know who paid over $10,000 for two full-page advertorials in The Post, opposing the city council motion. Their content is clearly in the form of an opinion but we wonder whether The Post would permit Jewish capacities and rights to be similarly belittled.

In council chambers, Pastor Nigel called Ramallah a “centre . . . a hotbed of terrorism.” His depiction of murder strayed so far into the weeds that Mayor Whanau had to reel him back by reminding him that there were children in the room.

David Zwartz said that he was speaking as an individual. He is a member of the New Zealand Jewish Council Incorporated (NZJC), and the wording on their website overlaps strongly with his. He said that twinning with Ramallah would be “bad, both for the Jewish community and for Wellington,” and that the motion “is seeking to align us with Ramallah’s values.” Among those, Zwartz listed violence, intolerance of LGBTQ+, lack of democracy and hostility toward the people who occupy Palestinian land. Our inclusive Wellington values, he emphasised, do not align with the values of Ramallah.

We, Alternative Jewish Voices, do not celebrate violence in any form. However, neither Ramallah nor Palestine can be reduced to incidents of violence. Wellington has three sister cities in China, whose government is engaged in widescale, systematic human rights violations against Uighurs. Do our sister cities align us with those values? Did we cut our sister city ties to the US when it elected Donald Trump? Is David Zwartz reducible to the fascism of members of Israel’s current government, or the ethno-nationalist pogroms of its settlers?

No, only in Palestine do such incidents render a whole people unfit to associate with us.

We reject the PAs opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, as strongly as we reject this Israeli MK’s assertion on June 21 that the “LGBTQ community poses [a] greater threat to Israel than Hezbollah or Hamas.”

We are waiting to hear the Zionist speakers shout for our government to cut its ties with Israel for the preservation of Wellington’s values.

These speakers opposed the motion on exceptional and highly selective grounds. Their arguments were specific to Palestinians and contrary to our treatment of others. Their tone left us feeling sad and indignant. At least their tone didn’t win.

But neither has it receded. Since losing, there is a sour aftertaste in comments like this tweet by Juliet Moses, member and spokesperson of the New Zealand Jewish Council.

Well the Israel haters’ favourite token Jew Marilyn was there to welcome Ramallah to Wellington, so presumably that’s the kind of thing that she’s keen to see.

— Juliet Moses (@JulietMosesNZ) June 29, 2023

Moses’s correspondent has previously shared anti-immigrant stories, covid denial, and so on. The spokesperson of NZ Jewish Council affirms his reduction of Palestinian culture to violence, and stokes the fear that welcoming Palestinians will lead to murder and mayhem. Further, she gratuitously attributes this looming danger to a Jew who disagrees with her–one who has never applauded violence.

How quickly we would all recoil from a tweet warning that Jews shouldn’t be welcome in Wellington—that if we let Jews in, chaos and criminality will follow because they are integral to Jewish culture. It is every bit as racist and reprehensible for the spokesperson of the NZ Jewish Council to write such garbage about others.

We are waiting for the Jewish Council to disavow the message or its speaker.

The Israel Institute’s last filing with the Companies Office indicates that they now have four directors, three of whom are not Jewish while the fourth was a member of the NZJC until November 2022. On the day after the city council made Ramallah a friendly city, the Israel Institute circulated a tweet declaring, “Neo Nazis and Anti Israel activists are all the same.”

Aside from being vile and stupid, we’re unsure how this aligns with the lofty values that the Jewish Council and its members fear to tarnish by association with Ramallah.

It is disgraceful that these are voices of the current / recent NZ Jewish Council. Shame on them for trafficking in racist, menacing tropes and for continually using their platforms to vilify Jews and non-Jews who disagree with them.

Wellington’s thirteen other sister cities do not elicit this kind of vitriol. The WCC vote merely granted Palestinians a connection to their whenua that other ethnic communities already enjoy without such outrage–including communities divided by conflict like China and Taiwan.

That a simple connection should provoke such fragile, indeed hysterical opposition highlights the contingent status of Palestinians in New Zealand. The Zionist tone amounts to a heckler’s veto. They are trying to force government to restrict its actions because of the anticipated or actual response of the Zionist segment of the Jewish community.

This is how we objected to the heckler’s veto in council chambers:

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.

We again thank the Wellington City Council for treating Palestinians in Wellington and Ramallah as the normal, whole human beings they are. Let’s break down some barriers by getting to know each other better.

The radicalising of Zionist speech does not bode well for the reasoned conduct of politics. They are racing toward the kind of distortion and hatred that have harmed other communities. We fear they are harming ours.

Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa New Zealand

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

Every Passover we sigh, ‘Next year, may we all be free.’ This is the year, if we dare.

It’s all on. Israeli soldiers have entered the Al Aqsa Mosque and beaten Muslim worshippers, desecrating Passover and Ramadan. The video is shocking and the inter-communal implications are horrible to contemplate. The Christian character of Jerusalem is also under assault. Historic numbers of Israelis have protested Netanyahu’s overthrow of Israel’s court system. Most are protesting the loss of their own rights, rather than the occupation or apartheid structures within which they exercise Jewish advantage. Our NZ leadership apparently couldn’t care less. Meanwhile, the proliferation of gross antisemitism on social media seems to be tracking with the spread and violence of anti-trans intolerance.

There is a way out of this.

As long as Israelis protest with the aim of restoring the previous Jewish supremacy, they are fighting for scraps. They will not achieve more than an impasse or, worse, an intra-Jewish battle for unsustainable ethnic power.

The way to break the impasse is to protest the occupation and apartheid—protest the rot that gave rise to this rotten government. Protest for democracy—yes, with Palestinians in the very front row. Palestinians comprise half of the people living between the river and the sea. If Palestinians could vote, Ben Gvir, Smotrich and Netanyahu would not be scheming to keep each other out of jail or handing out armed militias as party favours.

A Palestinian-Jewish majority protest to overthrow the occupation regime would not merely stop traffic. It would stop apartheid. That democratic protest would bring the world to its feet.

That is our Passover wish. Form a democratic majority: place the rights of Palestinians in the front row. One person needs one vote to bring justice to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Every Passover we say, ‘Next year, may we all be free.’ This is the year, if we dare.

What is asked of us here, in Aotearoa? Here as there, Alternative Jewish Voices believes that when we stand up with others against hate, violence and injustice; we will not be left alone to confront those who hate or seek to harm us. Let us be part of a majority that stands up for justice, love and acceptance. Here and there.

The Jewish community of Aotearoa is not collectively responsible for the actions of the thugs and criminals who govern Israel. We are not responsible—but neither are we helpless or uninvolved. We have a role in this. ‘Next year may we all be free’ will not happen without us. It is a call to action.

Those of us who see, turn away, and do not speak about the escalating wrongs being committed in the name of the Jewish people are accountable for their own silence. That’s worth repeating: we are not collectively responsible for Israel’s crimes, but we are each accountable for our response to the wrongs from which we derive advantage.

What advantage? We can get on a plane and fly to Tel Aviv, which Israeli law prevents indigenous Palestinians from doing. If we choose to immigrate, we can vote for the people who govern us, which Israel prevents millions of Palestinians from doing. We can drive one hour in a straight line, which Israel’s blockade obstructs Gazans from doing. We know all this is done to preserve our privilege. We know.

This Passover is the moment to bring into being a world where everyone is free to live without violence, injustice or fear. Not next year, now.

Ken y’hi ratzoneinu – may it be our will.

Chag Sameach – happy Pesach, Ramadan Kareem, happy Easter and happy long weekend!

Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa

Hundreds of Israeli settlers have rampaged, terrorised, burnt, shot; wounded nearly four hundred and killed one person in Huwara in the West Bank, Palestine. Palestinians are an occupied people whose protection is Israel’s legal responsibility. In law and in any framework of human decency, we are responsible for upholding their protection and punishing violations.

Without equating the responsibilities of occupier and occupied people, Alternative Jewish Voices abhors all of the violence and we grieve for each and every death. But shame, no. Shame is a feeling that grows the gap between one’s image and the reality one confronts, so shame is not my response to these settlers.

We already knew that the settlers are the shock troops of a racist religio-nationalism. They inhabit illegal settlements and they hunt in the company of the army that sponsors them. The settlers filmed themselves—that’s how sure they are that the Netanyahu government (whose project they implement) will protect them. Thus far they are right. Their crime disgusts me.

Shame is not my response to the Netanyahu government that incited and protected this atrocity: uniformed soldiers accompanied the mob. We already knew that this government has handed power to racists and fascists. I had no delusions that might sour into shame. The leaders of this government belong in court—a court they have not neutered. Send them to the International Court of Justice, and add the crime of Huwara to their charge sheet. Their actions are contemptible.

I feel what I felt on the morning after the Israeli military obliterated the Shuja’iyya homes of 92,000 Gazan Palestinians in July, 2014: shock. The smells lingered, disbelief hung in the air. No warning prepares one for that much violence. No theory fully captures the willingness to commit such atrocities against trapped civilians. That is how I feel: forewarned and still shocked.

I am the grandchild of four refugees from the pogroms of Eastern Europe. When (quoting Israeli organisations) I say that Israeli settlers have carried out a pogrom, I speak from memory. I choose to use a loaded term to plead for attention: a malevolent rabble is loose and if they are not stopped, they will hunt again and again.

I feel such dread and terror for the Palestinians who must live with Israel’s armed racism every hour of their days and nights. Their exposure is beyond imagining. They will not be safe until they have international protection.

Shame? I am ashamed of our government, which speaks in our names about law and the rights of all human beings but does nothing to bring about safety—nothing. My government inhabits a diplomatic fugue state, unable to recall our obligations yet expecting to wake in a two-state fairyland. Laws are not upheld by empty speech. They are predicated on action.

Nanaia Mahuta, I beg you to treat these war crimes as war crimes. These are the moments for which the laws were written. Professor of international law and former Special Rapporteur Richard Falk wrote yesterday that the rampage in Huwara “qualifies not only as a war crime, but confirms the pervasive genocidal settler aura, now made vivid.”

With such menace afoot, I am ashamed that my community should allow itself to be spoken for by unelected Zionist ideologues. Jews are not collectively responsible for Israel’s actions, but leaders are responsible for their choices. Ours choose to enable Zionist nationalism and punish any opposition to it.

To the individuals who may be squirming in that shameful space between their ideals and the present reality: find some spine, stand yourself up and speak to the reality of Huwara.

I feel heartsick at the settlers’ desecration of my religion. Jewish history has seen false messianism before and damnit, we have not learned a thing.

In prayer services and in study, I have recently discussed Elijah. He sought understanding while a stormy wind split the rocks, then an earthquake and a fire passed before him. In the quiet after the storms, he was enlightened by a still, small voice that asked, “What are you doing here?”

Now is the quiet after the fires in Huwara. What are we doing?

Marilyn Garson

and Alternative Jewish Voices

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 23, 2023

Contact:

globaljewishcollective@gmail.com

Jewish Groups Across the Globe Applaud Barcelona Mayor Colau

The International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine (IJCJP) is comprised of Jewish groups and individuals who live in fifteen countries. From many cities around the world, our members celebrate Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau’s decision to cut ties with Israel until everyone in Israel/Palestine fully enjoys their rights, safety, and self-determination.

Cities are critical actors for social justice, because cities are the sites of our daily lives. People of every ethnicity and identity share the streets, schools, buses, culture and events of our cities. We form bonds, provide mutual aid in times of need, and enrich urban life with our diversity. Not so in Israel, where apartheid allocates rights, space, public services, protection, justice and life prospects ethnically. 

Until Israel’s cities are shared, we must not normalise the structural violence of apartheid. We thank Barcelona’s mayor and citizens for refusing to look away from abuses that they would not tolerate in their own streets. With principled actions like Barcelona’s, we have the power to require change. 

We are sad to see that Mayor Colau has come under attack for affirming universal human and political rights. That all members of society should live by a single law is both a traditional Jewish teaching and a pillar of secular justice. We stand in solidarity with Barcelonians who have acted to uphold it.

Barcelona’s example reminds each of us to redouble our local efforts to become the next city that stands up for justice.

Signatories:

International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine

Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa New Zealand; South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP); Jews Say No, US; Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, Germany; Zochrot, Israel; International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) Argentina; International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) Spain; Boycott from Within (Israeli citizens for BDS); UJFP (French Jewish Peace Union); Jewish Network for Palestine (JNP), UK; Jewish Voice for Peace US; Jews 4 Palestine-Ireland, Independent Jewish Voices Canada; Jews Against the Occupation Australia; Jewish Voice for Labour (UK) 

To contact IJCJP:

globaljewishcollective@gmail.com

website: https://internationaljewishcollectiveforjusticeinpalestine.wordpress.com;

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IJCJP/

Now is the time to speak – not later.

In the perpetual present tense of so much reporting, today’s violence began today. But it didn’t.

Today’s violence began 75 years ago, when Israel occupied Palestine and dispossessed its people. The nationalist project of Zionism rests upon rounds of increasing structural and military violence. Palestinians resist, as occupied people are legally entitled to do (although no one, nowhere, has a ‘right’ to unlimited violence). That’s the dynamic: the occupier holds the power and has the choices, while the occupied people resist. A new generation of Palestinian youth is stepping up its resistance just as Israel’s far right, religio-nationalist government is stepping up its aggression.

On 26 January Israel attacked the tiny, dense refugee camp of Jenin, killing ten people. Then a Palestinian opened fire in a settlement (built on land captured in 1967, in occupied East Jerusalem), killing seven people. The Palestinian was quickly killed, while the Israeli military forces walked away from their killings; confident of their impunity.

Today we say –

1. We seek a solution anchored in law and human rights. Neither Palestinians nor Jews will be free or healthy until this illegal occupation is replaced by a decent, dignified society where all people enjoy their rights.

2. Do not ask everyone to take one step back, because occupier and occupied are not two parties with equal responsibilities. We urge our government to actively support the International Court of Justice, whose job it is to assign responsibility for the disastrous violence which is integral to Israel’s occupation.

3. We grieve for those who have been killed. We call on our government to act in support of the laws and treaties it signs in our names. Act as we are obliged to act, to protect the occupied people and preserve the safety of civilians everywhere.

4. A cessation of violence is not the same as a solution. We urge, we plead with our government to speak and act in a principled, unexceptional, rights-based manner in Palestine so that real justice can be brought nearer without any need for more violence. We are not powerless; we are just inexcusably timid.

5. We urge our Jewish community and institutions to roundly disavow Israel’s government, which gives power to Kahanists, outright fascists and racists. They will push the occupation to new lows in all of our names.

Now is the time to speak—not later, when this has gone any further.

Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa

Read the full survey results here

In 2022, New Zealanders were repeatedly called antisemitic for beliefs consistent with universal human rights and democratic norms

This survey speaks about a category of social and religious harm in Aotearoa.

Because it confuses opposition to Zionism with a hatred of Jews, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Antisemitism (IHRA WD) enables Zionist individuals and organisations to make false and unanswerable accusations of antisemitism against their fellow New Zealanders. New Zealanders are being labelled as antisemites for upholding the UN-recognised rights of Palestinians, or simply for making statements about their Palestinian or non-Zionist Jewish identity. In 2022, two national surveys of antisemitism were distorted by classing opposition to Israel’s illegal occupation as a prominent form of antisemitism. The NZ Jewish Council survey explicitly labelled every respondent as an antisemite if they held views consistent with global human rights reporting, and with our basic democratic norms.

Justice for Palestine and Alternative Jewish Voices jointly surveyed New Zealanders who advocate for Palestinian rights. In these pages, we begin to hear their experience of being falsely accused. These voices signal the need for more systematic study of the IHRA WD’s stealthy use to silence Palestinian speech, harm human rights advocates and denigrate non-Zionist Jewish identity in Aotearoa.

• 86% of respondents have witnessed accusations addressed to others in public, private or religious (synagogue) venues.
• 67% have been personally accused of antisemitism, including 10 of the 14 respondents who identified themselves as Jewish or Palestinian.
• Only 2 respondents have been accused of antisemitism for comments relating to Jews or Judaism. 93% of respondents were accused for commenting on the actions of the Israeli state, politicians, police or military forces. 66% were accused for commenting on the history or Palestine, and 62% for commenting on Palestinians’ equal entitlements to UN-recognised rights.
• 31% of respondents reported being or feeling threatened.
• Although we tend to speak of these accusations taking place online, 62% of our respondents have been accused in a face-to-face encounter. 55% have been accused on social media, while 28% have received letters or emails accusing them of antisemitism. This problem is experienced more intimately than we had assumed.
• Seriously harmful personal outcomes were most likely to be reported by Jews or people of Arabic descent.

None of us has the right to define our identity so expansively

as to demand the erasure of another.

Human rights and the IHRA WD are not two equally valid, opposing views. Human rights is our global, codified, committed standard and the IHRA WD violates it. Antisemitism is real and integral to the worldviews of White supremacists and the far Right. The IHRA WD does not combat that primary source of real antisemitism. It is a tool to punish support for the equal human and political rights of Palestinians, and it is a mechanism to Zionise and monopolise Jewish identity.

In our Appendix, we excerpt from United Nations and New Zealand Human Rights Commission reporting on the need to address antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism in ways that support and advance our universal human rights. That is the way forward.

We call on our government to publicly oppose

any adoption, use or endorsement of the IHRA WD

in Aotearoa or in the United Nations.

Read the full survey results here

What happens when you speak about Palestinian rights in Aotearoa?

In our conversations with government, media and others we work around the lack of reporting on the lived experience of advocating for Palestinian equality—whether in our own public space or in Palestine.

There have been two recent studies of antisemitism in New Zealand. Both carefully avoided the issue of anti-Zionist ‘antisemitism’—the accusation that Palestinian identity or advocacy is necessarily anti-Jewish. Enabled by the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, these accusations aim to silence political speech by blurring it into contemptible racism and threat.

Today Alternative Jewish Voices and Justice for Palestine jointly launch a survey of the experience of Palestinian speech or advocacy. Have you been accused of anti-Zionist ‘antisemitism’? If you are Jewish or Palestinian, has your identity been denigrated or denied because of your speech? If you are a public figure or a human rights activist, have you been branded an ‘antisemite’? Have you witnessed these accusations targeting others?

This survey is open to any New Zealander who has experienced or witnessed this phenomenon. Please take the time to respond. We will present some of the stories during January. Perhaps this compilation will also lead to more systematic study.

The survey will be open through December. We do require your name and email to validate responses, but we will not identify any respondent by name.

Survey: What happens when you speak about Palestine in Aotearoa?

If you have any questions, please contact us:

Justice for Palestine or Shma.koleinu.nz@gmail.com

Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa

Israel’s election will bring Itamar Ben Gvir’s Kahanist Religious Zionism into coalition. What does that mean?

Shaul Magid’s excellent book,  Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical reminds us that while Kahane’s legacy is most evident in Israel, key elements of Kahanism have also entered the Zionist-Jewish mainstream right here at home.

As a New York rabbi, Meir Kahane (born 1932, assassinated 1990) dug the rabbit hole for a Jewish militia identity. He established the Jewish Defense League (JDL): an armed, rightwing Jewish vigilante force. On May 9, 1969 its members massed at a Reform synagogue, bringing pipes and chains to prevent an invited Black speaker from discussing reparations for slavery. Kahane had no interest in Jewish accountability or the oppression of others.

We Jews in our 60s and 70s recall the early JDL—muscular fellows with fists on their black T-shirts, soliciting Jewish university students. They called themselves the New Jews, and they hawked an in-yer-face identification that broke away from our parents’ post-Holocaust timidity. The JDL pride in Jewish fighting power prefigured today’s militia culture. JDL leaders would be indicted for arms smuggling and possession of explosives.

Beyond the black Tshirts, Kahanism rejected the liberal democracy that permitted our Diaspora Jewish lives. He loved the Jewish collective in theory but disparaged most of us as weak, our Jewish power unactualised. Magid’s book is rich with Kahane’s insults for religious or secular Jews who did not locate our pride or our identities in ethnic violence.

Meir Kahane moved to Israel, adapting his American-style racism to Israel’s demographics. He was withering of anyone who called Israel a Jewish democracy: he called them apologists for Jews’ absolute, Gd-given entitlement to the land. Kahane’s thought travelled from Judaism as a religion through Zionism and into a messianic religio-nationalism. He did not want a Jewish state like other states. He advocated the blunt-force grabbing of a divinely-granted state, unlike any other state and immune to the laws of states.

For him, Jewish violence was an act of redemption, not defense—rather like the roving bands of settlers in the West Bank. Or Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli mass murderer of Muslims in a sacred place (Itamar Ben Gvir displayed Goldstein poster until it became politically expedient to take it down). Kahane’s party was so extreme that Israel’s parliament drafted a law to ban him and them from politics. He is the only person to have been convicted for ‘inciting racism and endangering security.’

—

Forty years later, Meir Kahane’s ideological successor, Itamar Ben Gvir, has been elected. The platform of his Jewish Strength party  (within the Religious Zionism grouping) includes illegal acts like annexing the occupied territories and expelling Palestinian ‘infiltrators and land thieves.’ He will shift Israel’s security stance ‘from the defensive to the offensive position, from the policy of “containment of the enemy” to their eradication and destruction.’

Present-day Religious Zionism threatens both Palestinians and the Jewish community. On the first Shabbat after the election, Israel’s Chief Rabbi joined prospective ultra-Orthodox and far-Right coalition members demanding the power to change the legal definition of a Jew. He used his sermon to say,‘“This is an Orthodox state, not a Reform one,” accusing Reform Judaism of “causing assimilation abroad.”’

On purely self-interested grounds, the silence of Aotearoa’s Progressive Jewish community is astonishing.

We need to face the implications of Kahanism here as well as there. Kahanist Religious Zionism has given up on any prospect of shared work for social improvement. It offers a bleak, isolating response to our uncertain time. But uncertainty has always been key to the appeal of the far Right. We will defend our own, they promise—and we will define our own with increasing ideological purity.

We already see Zionism’s assault on Jewish pluralism in Aotearoa. Their only criterion for Jewish identity is Zionism. Half of the members of AJV are religiously observant (regularly attending or leading services, study groups, community organisations) and half identify through Jewish culture or history. Yet NZ Zionist Federation President Rob Berg claims that our ‘sole identity as Jews seems to be the hate for Israel and Zionism.’ Stuff senior business writer Miriam Bell prints and reprints this useful lie unchallenged in NZ and Australia.

Meir Kahane would revel in the closing of the Jewish communal mind right here, and in the radicalising rejection of human rights in favour of Jewish tribal license. The IHRA definition of antisemitism has become an identity weapon; used in practice both to protect Israel, and to narrow Jewishness into good Zionist Jews and invalid others.

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So, Kahanism has entered Israel’s government, and it is accelerating the New Zealand Jewish community’s slide from religion into identity politics. What to do?

Itamar Ben Gvir wants Israel’s police portfolio. Imagine putting our White supremacist fringe in charge of the police, handing them the intelligence and setting them free to hunt down tangata whenua, Muslims and Jews, LGBTQ+. A government that includes Itamar Ben Gvir is not politics as usual, and we ask our government to take Itamar Ben Gvir at his word, judge him on his actions, and respond accordingly.

• Ben Gvir intends to expel and dispossess more Palestinians.  If we are not to aid and abet his lawless vision, Aotearoa must cease any dialogue or sharing of information with Israeli military and security services.
• Israel’s IT industry is inextricable from the military with which it designs and tests products on an occupied people. If we are not to be accomplices, Aotearoa must cease all commerce and investment with the Israeli IT industry.
• We already implement our Israeli visa policy racially, giving Israeli Jews visa-free status which we deny to Palestinians. This has got to end, no matter who governs.
• We ask our government to make a clear, public commitment that Aotearoa will never adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. The IHRA  would protect Itamar Ben Gvir and silence his victims’ advocates. When we cite his actual record or challenge his stated illegal intentions, the IHRA would cry ‘antisemite’! It would also allow Aotearoa’s Jewish Right to assert a monopoly over our religious identity, at the expense of Jewish pluralism. Don’t let that happen. Take the IHRA off the table.

We restate our disgust that any New Zealand Jewish institution would acquiesce, would passively permit the advance of Kahanism.  Our parents’ generation rejected Kahane’s unbridled identity-licensed violence. Shame on anyone who does not reject it today.

Shame on anyone who looks down at the ground and mumbles yeah, well, whatever—our Israel, Jewish and Kahanist.

Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa