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Real History Focal Point Publications official website Index to the Traditional Enemies of Free Speech Alphabetical index (text) FAQ on your New Zealand visit press reports on your New Zealand visit your dossier on The Mossad [images added by this website] Auckland, New Zealand, [Write to the NZ Herald’s Editor: ] Foreign Minister Phil Goff (below) visited Yassar Arafat last year, a visit which angered many in the NZ Jewish
community. Jews uneasy as changes in attitude creep in By GRAHAM REID ON Wednesday a letter was published in Wellington’s Dominion Post . The writer wanted to know why there was a memorial to former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin — a man he described as leading “a bloodstained life” — on public land in the central city’s Harris St.
It may have been an honest inquiry, and there have been a few such similar letters in the five or so years since the memorial — a piece of Jerusalem stone acknowledging Rabin as a Nobel Peace Prize winner beside an olive tree — was dedicated.
A reply yesterday pointed out the memorial was for Rabin’s efforts to break a deadlock between Israelis and Palestinians and that “soldiers sometimes make the greatest peacemakers, and to urge us to reflect on whether his violent death really means that we must descend again and forever into the abyss”.
The original letter came as no surprise to some. “I thought it was just an anti-Israel letter,” says David Zwartz , Israel’s honorary consul ( right ). “It’s just jumping on the bandwagon, I suppose. It’s something people feel they can vent their feelings on. “Just lately there have been far more letters about Israel in the Dominion Post than usual and some from people who do write quite regularly. I recognise the names.”
Some in the Jewish community have detected a shift from anti-Israel to anti-Jewish opinion. Although overt anti-Semitism has been minor, if not non-existent, that doesn’t mean local Jewih communities feel comfortable. “We are vigilant,” says Wendy Ross , a former president of the Auckland Jewish Council.[ * ] “There is some anti-Jewish feeling but basically not. Large numbers of New Zealanders have been to Israel and are not anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic in any way.
Basically we have good lives here and always felt secure, up to now. “But government attitudes impinge very much on what happens to a community.” Others in the Jewish community also believe there has been a subtle change in the social climate which has been led by the Labour Government’s less sympathetic attitude towards Israel and its more pro-Palestinian stance.
Last year Foreign Minister Phil Goff visited Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat and shook his hand, for many local Jews a symbolic gesture tantamount to government approval for a man who has direct links to Palestinian terrorists and attacks on Israeli citizens. “He went to Israel and insisted on going to see Arafat, who is a murderer of Jews. That’s the way we look at it,” says Ross, speaking in a private capacity. “And Phil Goff went there to shake his hand.”
Ross also notes that as Prime Minister, Helen Clark has been in the Middle East a number of times but has never visited Israel. SOME feel attitudes towards New Zealand Jews have changed discernibly given Goff’s recent comments about the wall Israel is building (which many local Jews considered ill-informed), and the possible arrival of controversial author and Holocaust-denier David Irving in September. Discussion is made murky by the language used.
Historically, it has been politically convenient for Israel that the line be blurred between anti-Israel policies and anti-Semitism. Discussion about the country’s less palatable politics can be closed down by invoking the fear of a