Category: Uncategorized

Are we doing enough?

by Diego Lewin

It is a new anniversary for the October 7th attacks and the question that we should ask ourselves to truly honour the memory of the people that were killed that day,  is how to avoid this to happen again, and to answer that, we should be honest and confront the question of Why did it happen in the first place.

We could say that the core issue is that Palestinians don’t want peace and they have refused every opportunity that they had.

But are we doing enough?

– In 1948, when the state of Israel was created 700.000 people (palestinians) were displaced (1) known by Paelstinians as the Nakba (catastrofe).

– Israel granted only to the Jewish people the right to citizenship (Law of return) ,  meanwhile Israel denied the right to return for the people displaced.

– In 1967, Israel occupied East Jerusalem and West Bank, known as Naksa by Palestinians, and with a new displacement of 300.000 (2) people (Palestinians), since then,  the remaining  non Jewish population lives under military occupation. This is 58 years of military occupation.

– Since then (1967) until today, the amount of Jewish settlers in the occupied land increased steadily to around 700.000 settlers (3).

Today is the second anniversary of the October 7th  attacks, and the one writing this article deeply believes in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and at the same time I can not avoid linking both stories, the history of Palestinian displacement that continues until today and the attack of October 7th.

Israel response to the attack is the ongoing killing of 70.000 people in Gaza majority civilians, destroying most school,  mosques, universities, infrastructure, housing  making Gaza unlivable, displacing the population internally many times, and starving the remaining people in Gaza

I keep thinking, how a deliverate starvation and on going genocide (4) with the clear intention of ethic claeansing of Gaza can honour the memories of the October 7th victims and how we can talk of the 7 th of October victims without talking about the ongoing suffering and geocide that the Palestinian people are suffering.

How these actions described since the creation of the state of Israel (and even before) are contributing to peace, but instead creating the conditions for a new 7th of October, we have seen this play again and again, so many times, too many times, too many lives.

Also, what this means for the children of Israel, to be part part of a country that from its inception displaced an opress other people and that now is actively commiting genocide.

We need now more than ever a different path, and not for some, but for all people living in the land.

Justice and  Peace goes hand by hand, one cannot exist with the other. We need equal rights for all, no more occupation, no more genocide, we need justice and respect the right of the Palestinians displaced to return to their homes,  we need basic human rights for all, and we need it now.

This is not only the right thing to do as a human being, but also the way to honor life, all life.

Each day, each week that passes, Israel goes to a new low, more extreme, more brutal,  from the diaspora, all people with conscience, we have the obligation to stop this madness against the Palestinian people as Israel by itself is clearly unable and unwilling to stop.

(1) UN marks 75 years since displacement of 700,000 Palestinians | UN News

(2) Naksa – Wikipedia

(3) Israeli settlement timeline – Wikipedia

(4) Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, UN Commission finds | OHCHR

by Diego Lewin

It has been two years, 730 days of annihilation and the sheer heartlessness of starvation. This day and every day, we send our deepest aroha to our Palestinian whānau who live this nightmare.

With contempt we have watched this government’s degrading courtship of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu—a convicted felon and a wanted war criminal—at the expense of law, rights, morality and human dignity.

Israel’s genocide has broken our hearts, but not our spirit.

Two years of witness and marching have changed us. Look at this movement: in two years, we have laid foundations that will last.

We mark this day with deep gratitude for the generous vision of our Palestinian leaders; for the wisdom of Māori tikanga and the invitation of Te Tiriti to co-exist in mutual respect.

We march within a broad-based movement that is forward-looking, anti-racist, built with aroha and resolve. We stand among professional groups who have adopted their Gazan counterparts, unions, faith groups, university and community organisations who have embraced Palestine.

All around us, we notice the number of people who have used social media to form sustained relations with Palestinian families in Gaza. In these two years, Gaza has become personal.

We hear the language of solidarity as people make connections between issues. We see people turn up across the issues, because they recognise that liberation can only be collective.

In our own community, we welcome each person who throws off the tribal and the nationalist, and falls in love with humanity. Join us.

It should not take two years to alert the world to a livestreamed genocide!

Perhaps those in power thought that we would get tired and give up. Instead, here we are on the 730th day, a larger and more resolute movement than ever.

We will move this world. Palestine WILL be free, and on that day, our Jewish community will begin to be free as well.

Alternative Jewish Voices with our friend, Sarah Cole

Radio New Zealand has done it again!

RNZ has interviewed the ambassador of a state widely recognised as conducting genocide and a well-known Zionist for a lengthy article which denigrated the Palestinian right to self-determination, with a third Jewish voice added in at the end for ‘balance’. No Palestinian was given an opportunity to respond. Palestinians were portrayed simply as the sum of Zionist-Jewish fears, as if Palestine itself is no more than a discussion between Jews.

RNZ uncritically conveyed three harmful untruths.

1. Both speakers seem to believe that they withhold or grant inalienable rights to other human beings. They are wrong in their arrogance; Palestinians have rights and their right to self-determination in their land has been affirmed by the highest court in our international system. RNZ, which other people would you denigrate by implying that they have less than a full complement of rights?
2. Both speakers conflate Palestine with Hamas, and use that as a pretext to deny Palestinian rights. They are wrong, first because Gaza is not Hamas. To imply otherwise is to discount the civilian protections of two million people against whom Israel has conducted a nightmarish campaign of annihilation for nearly two years. Beyond that, rights are not a reward and they are not conditioned on the niceness of those in government or bearing arms. Israel’s prime minister is wanted for crimes against humanity. His cabinet colleagues are banned from Aotearoa for their filthy politics, and Israel’s military is carrying out genocide. Yet your speakers have not invalidated the rights of Jewish Israelis or rescinded their recognition of Israel.
3. To reduce any people to a single attribute, as these speakers reduce Palestinians to their supposed threat, is the very essence of racism. As our Human Rights Commission published under its former commissioner, to do so with respect to Palestinians builds on our history of regarding Muslims (and those we presume to be Muslim) as threatening.

RNZ, you must stop broadcasting such racialised, dehumanising and factually incorrect views.

Our government has shown that it is intent on erasing Māori history. It acts as if settlers did not disrupt independent, sovereign Māori iwi. So we should not be surprised that yesterday, our government chose to align with Israel’s similar acts of attempted erasure.

But we still need better from our national broadcaster. Why is RNZ failing to broadcast Palestinian voices?

Alternative Jewish Voices

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 27, 2025

Alternative Jewish Voices (AJV) is deeply disappointed by this government’s decision to regard Palestinian rights through the lens of politics yet again. The International Court of Justice has clearly affirmed that Palestinians have a right to self-determination in their land, that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land is illegal, and that third-party states are legally obliged to take every step possible to bring that illegal situation to a rapid end.

The states we generally follow in our foreign policy have now recognised the state of Palestine.

The United Nations and the vast majority of human rights organisations and genocide scholars have recognised a genocide being perpetrated in Gaza by its illegal occupier, Israel.

New Zealanders have turned out in our tens of thousands to demand effective action including the recognition of Palestine as a state and the sanctioning of Israel for its crimes.

Rights, law, diplomacy, fact and conscience all point in the same direction: Palestine must be free and self-determining.

Ignoring all that, our government fails to see genocide and this morning it failed to acknowledge Palestinians’ right to statehood. Our Foreign Minister has chosen instead to court the favour of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu; a convicted felon and a man wanted for war crimes. This is not merely a failure of leadership. It is a failure even of followership. It’s a disgrace.

If we want to live in a world of human dignity and rights, if we want change, we have to change this government.

Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa

Delivered at high volume on the terrace of Radio House Sept 19 2025, regarding the director of the Holocaust Centre’s co-hosting of The Panel. Image from Peace Action Wellington

Radio New Zealand, our public broadcaster, gives airtime each month to a genocide denier. Her professional title carries the moral authority of the Holocaust. And what does she do with it? On the 711th day of someone else’s Holocaust, this guest rattled off the list of things that she expects Palestinians to give up before she would talk about granting them their right to a state.

RNZ responded to complaints by saying that this person expressed her opinions and the show was balanced. D’ya think?

Dear RNZ, the International Court of Justice has affirmed that Palestinians have a right to self-determination in their state. Israel’s occupation is illegal in its entirety and again in its actions. Israel is grossly violating Palestinians’ inalienable rights. In fact and in law, Palestinians don’t need to satisfy your guest because she does not bestow their rights. No one made these factual corrections on air. RNZ did not have – again – even one Palestinian voice to assert the rights that the courts keep affirming.

Why is any person who denies the humanity and the fact of Palestinian rights a legitimate commentator on RNZ – in the very week that the UN Human Rights Commission confirmed all the other findings of genocide?

Balance, says RNZ, is found in a diversity of opinions – but human rights are not an opinion. Genocide is not an opinion. It is a fact, living, ongoing nightmare and a crime against humanity. 86% of the world’s genocide scholars recognise genocide in Gaza. Somehow, RNZ hasn’t heard about it.

If the RNZ editor-in-chief came across a lynching, would he broadcast the pros and cons in a balanced way? Would he give a torturer, a murderer the microphone to read out their manifesto? I’m sure that he would reply to me, it would be morally reprehensible and harmful. Those are crimes.

Well, here are the names of 65,000 murdered. Here are the graves of 20,000 children. Here lie 400 human beings, murdered by starvation. And here is the international warrant to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu for these crimes against humanity.

RNZ, why would you broadcast a defense of it? There are not two sides to genocide. You are betraying your mandate to bring us unbiased journalism. Unbiased journalism pursues truth, and truth does not lie at the midpoint between genocidaire and the survivor of genocide. Principled journalistic reporting on genocide takes place within the frameworks of human rights, civilian protections, and the International Court’s findings of law and justice.

RNZ, if your head of news doesn’t get that, then why is he your head of news?

I hear your audience is declining. A consultant has told you that I’m your demographic. So allow me to offer a little guidance. I want to hear from Palestinians and the Tangata Whenua who recognise and stand beside them. I want to hear their ground truth. I want them to tell us the meaning of this genocide that our government is failing to stop. I’ll be tuning in wherever I can hear them.

Friends, how do we change this? It’s not mysterious. When my book came out and RNZ cancelled its coverage, my OIA required them to disclose their reason. A producer had written to the presenter, saying ‘given the number of formal complaints’ they get from Zionists, the presenter was not allowed to do a Gaza story without promoting something – anything – about Israel. Given the number of formal complaints they anticipate, they preventatively deny Palestinians and Palestine stories access to our airwaves. They make policy by volume.

We don’t complain because we tend to have given up on such spineless media – but that leaves the airwaves to Israel’s advocates. To change this, we need to engage. Your complaint won’t change it but our thousand complaints will. Change is cumulative, so let’s accumulate some. Start writing it down.

Finally, to the journalists inside this building: the time for your silence is long past. You know that Israel has killed hundreds of your Palestinian fellow journalists. You see; you’re news junkies and you are letting yourselves be held back from covering the news. If you keep your head down now, you’ll be hanging your head forever. Speak up inside this building. Do the job that I’m sure you want to do.

With thanks to Rick Sahar for remembering to be angry enough to act.

Marilyn Garson, September 19 2025

September 17, 2025

To whom do you answer, Prime Minister?

The UN Human Rights Commission has found that Israel is committing genocide:

“The acts of Israeli political and military leaders are attributable to the State of Israel. The Commission therefore concluded that the State of Israel bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish the perpetrators of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

Israeli leaders, already wanted for crimes against humanity, openly boast that ‘Gaza is burning’ while they pound a captive, defenceless community and destroy what remains of Gaza City. They are pulling a city down upon the hundreds of thousands of civilians who remain in it.

Former chief of Israel’s military acknowledges they have killed and wounded ‘over 200,000’ Palestinians, largely civilians. He boasts that legal concerns have not restrained Israel’s actions at all.

Israel and its contracted killers have slaughtered 3000 people who were seeking food in the midst of Israel’s manufactured famine, in areas under the humanitarian banner.

These are among two days of headlines; two of the 711 days of genocide that we have all watched. In those same two days, one of your cabinet ministers has trespassed priests who peacefully protested in Auckland, while another cabinet minister has denigrated the priests who peacefully protested in Wellington.

Our Five Eyes allies, who you so slavishly follow, will largely recognise a Palestinian state in the coming days. There. You needn’t even lead in conveying our outrage to the world. You can merely follow.

You say that a decision has been made but we will not be informed.

We ask, to whom are you accountable, Prime Minister – which back room? Which lobbyist? To whom do you answer, if not to the outraged, heart-broken people of this country?

We demand your condemnation of this genocide. We demand that you comply with the directions of the highest court in the United Nations system, to bring this illegal occupation and this genocide to an end. We demand that you recognise the state of Palestine before Israel swallows it as a possibility.

Grow a spine, Prime Minister. Your inaction costs lives and we are ashamed of it.

Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa

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

Our next UK import: The Terrorism Protest Speech Suppression Act

On Sunday August 24, both the Guardian and the New York Times carried articles worrying that the far Right was increasingly bold and secure, and articles detailing starvation and genocide in Gaza. At the same time, both UK and US governments have legislated or decided by edict to treat peaceful democratic protest as a national security threat. Their special target: the protest which draws attention to starvation and genocide in Gaza.

Aotearoa, always taking pride in our independent-minded foreign policy, are rushing to adopt something like the UK’s legislation. If we do, it will be our second such import this season. The divisive Harmony Accord is also a UK product that this government will use to reward its friends and sideline the community.

The government seeks to reform our Terrorism Suppression Act. The revisions would hasten the designation of terror while greatly broadening the idea of public support to terror. That breadth seems to include designating peaceful protest as a security threat. In an article entitled “slippery slope to authoritarianism”, Newsroom’s Sam Sachdeva summarises the  “limited consultation currently taking place behind closed doors with a handpicked selection of groups and experts.”

Guess who’s in and who’s out?

In the UK, it is now legal to arm Israel but it is terrorism to object. We have yet to see a single arrest for inciting or endorsing crimes against humanity. Instead, octogenarian clerics fill the cells for silently holding signs that oppose genocide. People have been arrested for satirising this, so presumably mocking the government’s asinine actions now constitutes a national security threat.

The UK legislation misuses the language of security to shut down peaceful protest. Terrorism arrests bypass normal, open judicial processes where those charged can be heard stating their case. While the legislation’s application has disproportionately targeted protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the issues are wider.

Our government is in a rush to award itself the same tools. If Luxon acts as the UK government has, he will undermine democracy in the guise of security, suppress protest and the right to a fair, open judicial process. He is acting without public consultation, and there is a character issue whenever a government schemes behind closed doors to suppress public challenge. Finally, there is the opportunity to misuse legislation in a way that sidelines real threats in favour of the us-and-them selective use of power.

This government habitually listens to friends and former lobbyists, as it has done with guns, alcohol, smoking and forestry, disregarding the community and placing people at risk. This action is true to habit. Luxon is legislating for friends at the expense of democracy – and immediately for Gaza.

We cannot separate this from genocide in Gaza, the focus of so much protest that this government would like to ignore. Palestine is already an issue on which protest speech has been confused with security threat in Aotearoa. The Community Security Group (CSG) has for years monitored individual New Zealanders’ social media and speech, and declared legal speech to be a threat to the Jewish community. The CSG has shared this information with our security forces and the embassy of Israel. The CSG is funded partly by government, including a recent new CSG staff position. They enjoy special access as a member of Mark Mitchell’s so-called harmony accord.

Already, anyone who speaks to the rights of Palestine and condemns Israel’s genocide knows they will be called a supporter of Hamas and an antisemite in Zionist performative politics. We who demand human rights face various underhanded tactics, but not arrest. For how much longer?

We regard this legislative act as a mechanism to draw the cord evermore tightly around government’s friends and enshrine new ways to target government’s critics. We regard it as a self-inflicted democratic injury, the act of an authoritarian seeking to intimidate and blunt protest.

We regard it as a misdirection. While this government is busy suppressing protest as terroristic, they are also robbing us of the language to grasp the real threats to our society which emerge from the far Right and disinformation networks.

Finally and foremost, we regard it as an intentional distraction from the desperate work of ending genocide in Gaza. This act would call it terrorism to draw attention to the state terror before our eyes. This act cuts us off from those to whom we have obligations.

Count on this: we will oppose this action in every way possible. Taking our lead from friends in the UK, we will fill the public squares with sign proclaiming our disgust at genocide and our government indifference to it. We are confident that we will be in fine company, in numbers too large to intimidate or arrest or disregard. Sometimes, personal impact brings forth the numbers that governments cannot resist. It happened with Viet Nam, when the draft brought the war home. Watching the policy absurdity unfolding in the UK, we think perhaps this legislation might tip the scales.

Alternative Jewish Voices

Get out!

At each step of its genocidal campaign, Israel’s leaders have accurately assessed the world’s indifference, played on it and nudged it further. Over a period of decades, they eased the world from a settler-colonial theory that implied Palestine’s erasure, to a blockade that ensured Gaza’s strangulation. Now, over a period of months they have been enacting Gaza’s death by genocide in plain sight.

Today Israel’s elected government acknowledges that Israel will, again, still, once and for all, fulfil its fantasy of Greater Israel by stealing Gaza. They already occupy it, as courts have repeatedly affirmed. Now they judge that they can snatch it, displace Gaza’s population and get away with it. They judge that we have given up.

We say no. We say, get out. Get out, stay out, and begin the accounting. Gaza must live, and Gaza is Palestine. Two million human beings must be fed and protected, their bodies restored insofar as is possible after this torture. We concede nothing.

‘Intensifying criticism’? Every diplomatic shuffle distracts from the hourly deterioration of conditions in Gaza. Ever complicit, our governments buy time with their talk while the slaughter continues.

 ‘Widespread condemnation’ – so what? Not one child can eat these words, and neither can starving children digest the wholly inappropriate foods being distributed by the GHF. States are not taking the slightest meaningful action, although they are watching Israel deprive the children of Gaza of the nutrients they need if they are to have any chance to assert their right to life.

Even as they say, ‘We can no longer remain quiet,’ Jewish leaders are refusing to contemplate meaningful change. Spokespeople for the Zionist NZ Jewish Council still dare to outline the conditions that Palestinians must meet, in order to qualify for their fundamental human entitlements. It is not the task of Palestinians to satisfy the genocidaires of anything. Nonsense. The Jewish Council is trying to distance itself from the present crimes while preserving the core condition of October 6: a Jewish supremacist regime.

We study the indifference of states to the rise of Nazism. We’re past that. We talk about international indifference to the Holocaust. We’re beyond that. The only parallel now can be with the liberation of concentration camps. In those starving Jewish bodies, people glimpsed and felt overwhelmed by the scale and the inhumanity of Nazi crimes. That’s where we are. We see Israel’s inhumanity toward defenceless Palestinian children.

There is no avoidance but willful avoidance now. The problem is not Netanyahu. The problem is baked into Zionism and it cannot be redeemed.

Those children living in the most grotesque pain, those canyons of destruction, those deranged elected officials leading genocide; those are real, actual Zionism. Zionism is the system that produced Netanyahu, not the other way around.

We say, get out. Get Israel out of Gaza, get Zionism out of our institutions.

Feed Gaza – right now, this day. Start the engines, drive the trucks in.

Alternative Jewish Voices

We are not in accord with the ‘harmony accord’.

Mark Mitchell’s Ministry of Ethnic Communities has persuaded a small number of Muslim and Jewish organisations to sign a ‘harmony accord’. AJV was invited, took part in a number of discussions, and declined the offer. We have released a joint statement with the Islamic Council of New Zealand of our shared reasons.

The case for being in that room has been stated in detail. We accept that participants assessed risks and benefits and used their best judgement. We write not to undermine them, but to state the Jewish case for applying pressure on this government and its initiative from outside the accord.

In our view, this accord offers government access and resources at the cost of validating the narrative of power, placing human rights on the back burner, and excluding Palestinians. That does not accord with our values.

Of what value is selective access – is it not the role of government to listen to the community rather than the converse? We have pleaded with this government to intervene in grotesque crimes for nearly two years. During that time, we have watched the government try to dismantle Te Tiriti, undermine labour rights; and the list goes on. We want to change this government, not be cordial to it.

The harmony accord proceeds from the problem statement that genocide and government indifference can cause social disharmony in Aotearoa. That is true – but the disharmony has never been between the Jewish and Muslim religions. There is disharmony between the street and the backrooms of power; between society and the far Right and disinformation networks that seek to undermine society; between the great majority of New Zealanders and the White Christian nationalist use of religion to intimidate and incite.

An accord between some Jews and Muslims is not the way to address any of those. New Zealand has multiple interfaith initiatives including a faith leaders’ forum. Those are better placed to carry out faith-based advocacy. Those should be resourced and tasked, rather than funding or rewarding one more council to start from scratch. With starvation stalking Gaza, how can it possibly be anyone’s priority to negotiate the operations of a new council?

—

The Jewish community is represented in this accord by the exclusively Zionist NZ Jewish Council, the Holocaust Centre (which denies that another genocide is taking place in Gaza), the Community Security Group and Dayenu.

This accord revives the flagging Jewish Council, an unelected group chosen by Zionist institutions. We have for years protested their hollow claims of representation. These days, the Jewish Council struggles for language to say that they regret Netanyahu’s extremes but wish to perpetuate Jewish supremacy. Such rearguard Zionist apologetics endanger Jewish safety by continuing to blur Jewish identity with Israel. The NZ Jewish Council cannot bring themselves to envision a future grounded the findings of international courts and our inalienable equality.

At no time in our discussions of this accord did we ever hear that the Community Security Group would be a signatory. Had we known, we would have walked out upon hearing.

The Community Security Group politicises the work of protecting Jewish places. AJV has for years objected to their reporting of individual Kiwis’ social media and other speech to the embassy of Israel in the guise of “anti-Zionist antisemitism”. Their inclusion gives Israel a seat at the table, nothing less.

—

AJV took part in initial discussions of the accord, and had a hand in drafting V1 of the accord. Unlike that V1, the final accord documents do not recognise human rights, nor the role of international courts as the basis for finding peace with justice.  The accord’s rationale began with Gaza, but it now contains no vision for advocacy, bringing war criminals to account, and supporting Palestinians’ work for a just co-existence. Participants in the accord are not required to embrace our global agreement of human equality.

As we informed the Ministry of Ethnic Communities and others within the accord, when we realised how the accord had changed, AJV declined to sign.

Should we sit around a table with those who disagree? Sure. However, human rights and international law are not opinions. They are our global norms. They are where discussion begins. No one should have to enter a room, especially a room under government auspices, knowing that they will have to ask for that to which every human being is entitled.

There is no direct Palestinian representation in this accord. By framing discord as a religious matter; by including the Jewish Council who deny Palestinian rights, and the Community Security Group who report on individual New Zealanders to the Israeli embassy; perhaps the council came to feel hostile or unproductive.

—

In these ways, AJV believes that this accord has validated the worst of the status quo. We must do more than ask for the marginal reform of the status quo.

Minister Mark Mitchell says he hopes this signing will be a precedent. Perhaps he hopes for a series of signings to take up the year before the next election.

AJV will work ceaselessly for justice in Palestine, in partnership with Palestinians, Tangata Whenua, and our global movement. We will work with local and international partners who believe that we need new Jewish community – community that will not replicate the harms we are witnessing in Palestine. We will change this government in partnership with all those whose interests and rights have been undermined. None of those are back room functions requiring government funds or recognition.

The real coalition is the one we will build in the street.

Feed Gaza. End Israel’s illegal occupation. Feed Gaza. Implement the decisions of international courts, including the arrest warrants for Israel’s leaders. Feed Gaza. Let justice take root.

Alternative Jewish Voices