Daphne Anson: Kia Ora Gaza

Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East. (From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Showing posts with label Kia Ora Gaza. Show all posts

Monday, 25 March 2019

The Christchurch Atrocity: Indirectly Blaming Bibi

To quoted from its website, Kia Ora Gaza

"is a New Zealand network dedicated to support international efforts to break the inhuman and illegal Israeli siege and naval blockade of Gaza by delivering humanitarian aid, fostering fraternal relations, enhancing understanding of Palestine and the Middle East, and cooperating with others who have similar aims.

Kia Ora Gaza promotes justice, human rights, peace and freedom for the people of Palestine....

All forms of racism and discrimination are the antithesis of justice, peace and freedom. Kia Ora Gaza social media will not tolerate any act or discourse which adopts or promotes, among others: racism, anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, sexism, xenophobia, or homophobia."

As I showed here last week, "zionism" was explicitly included in the latter list until mysteriously expunged last week in the immediate wake of the Christchurch atrocity.

Kia Ora Gaza has since promoted an article from the Palestine Chronicle by Iqbal Jassat of Johannesburg, which reproduces and endorses the following tweet by US-based Ali Abuminah, a founder of the Electronic Intifada,

'.... There is no doubt in my mind that Ali Abunimah’s tweet correctly singles out Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu as a leading architect of antiMuslim hate campaigns as well as an ally of white supremacists and Nazis.

His active pursuit of Islamophobia, incitement of wars and execution of Palestinians is not an irregular occurrence. Netanyahu, as head of the Middle East’s sole colonial entity, has been in the forefront of global war efforts to target what he unashamedly defines as “Muslim extremism” and “Islamist terrorism”....'

So, indirectly, Bibi is being blamed for the Christchurch massacre, as he is in another Palestine Chronicle article reproduced by Kia Ora Gaza the day before this one.

Yet it is a glaring fact that the perpetrator of that atrocity has nothing whatsoever to do with Israel.

The Kia Ora Gaza website contains a disclaimer:

"Our website and facebook pages underscore and promote these goals, however posts do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Kia Ora Gaza or our partners"

It would be interesting to test whether they would post the occasional pro-"Zionist" article, in that case!

Or articles critical of Islamic sexism.

Update: Worse and worse, prominent New Zealand Muslim leader suggests Mossad is behind the massacre. Don't miss this.

Monday, 18 March 2019

Kia Ora Gaza & The Z Word

Kia Ora Gaza Mission is an anti-Israel group in New Zealand led, for want of a better word, by veteran leftwing activist Roger Fowler, an Auckland resident and 'Freedom Flotilla' alumnus.

Last year, Dr David Cumin, director of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, reportedly criticised Mr Fowler thus:

'In April an article about Roger Fowler sought volunteers to violate international law by joining a "flotilla... to break the siege and blockade of Gaza".

The article failed to mention the United Nations report authored by Sir Geoffrey Palmer that determined the Israeli and Egyptian blockades on Gaza are a "legitimate security measure" due to security threats Israel faces from Gaza and recommended "All humanitarian missions… should do so through established procedures and the designated land crossings".

Aid is easily distributed to Gaza -- there are thousands of truckloads of goods that move from Israel to Gaza each week. Yet a "veteran human rights campaigner" is actively encouraging the exact activity Palmer recommended against.

Hamas has ruled Gaza since just after Israel unilaterally withdrew and forcibly removed all Jews in 2005.

Hamas executes homosexuals and political dissidents, doesn't allow a free press, and misuses aid for terror.

Yet in a Māori TV interview, Mr Fowler compared Israel -- where women and minorities have equal rights and political representation, there is a free press , and world-leading innovation -- to Islamic State. He has not condemned Hamas.

The recent riots on the border included attempts to destroy the security fence in order to kill Israelis. Combined with the terror tunnels and missiles that are indiscriminately fired into Israel from Gaza, it is clear that there is still a serious security threat.

We all want the blockade to end. It will end when Hamas stops trying to enact its Charter calling for the murder of all Jews and for Israel to become an Islamic state.

Any true human rights activist wanting to help the people in Gaza must focus on ending the genocidal violence of Hamas, not the Israeli response to terror. Unfortunately, some "human rights" activists are much more focussed on perceived Israeli wrongs.' [Emphasis added]

Following the terrible Christchurch atrocity, the Kia Ora Gaza website drew attention to a vigil in Auckland, addressed by, among others, New Zealand Greens MP Marama Davidson, who as the foregoing link shows is a "Freedom Flotilla' alumna.

Here's a screenshot of the original version. Note that penultimate paragraph, the one that includes "zionism"among the forms of "bigotry and racism" that Kia Ora Gaza deplores.

And here's a revised version, with "zionism" removed and the adjective "white" now qualifying "supremacism".

The omission of the Z word is an intriguing one, and the reason why it was dropped would be interesting to know. Did some persons planning to address, or attend, the vigil protest the slur on Zionism and insist on the removal of the word as their condition for going to the event?

Or did Mr Fowler have, independently, his own (as it were) "Road to Damascus" moment, and realise that the national aspirations of the Jewish People are justified, and that hate speech against the State of Israel is not warranted after all?

Saturday, 7 July 2012

Springtime For Hamas?

In a new article the distinguished Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh warns of the likelihood of a takeover by Hamas in the West Bank, owing to disillusionment on the part of the young there with the PA's leadership.

He writes, in part:

'In the absence of a credible and organized Palestinian opposition in the West Bank, Hamas will most likely hijack the "Palestinian Spring," paving the way for Hamas to seize control over the West Bank.

After the recent wave of protests and clashes with Palestinian Authority policemen in the West Bank, the Palestinians are asking if the "Arab Spring" might be finally knocking on their door....

Many Palestinians feel that under Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority has joined the club of corrupt Arab dictatorships that suppress the opposition and crack down on freedom of speech....

In March last year, thousands of Palestinians, inspired by the "Arab Spring," launched their own protests in the West Bank to demand reforms, democracy and regime change. But the Palestinian revolt was short-lived.

Abbas's security forces, backed by Fatah thugs, attacked the young men and women who were protesting in the center of Ramallah, torching their tents and beating them with clubs and rifle butts.

But now the Palestinian youth groups appear to have reorganized themselves and are preparing for another wave of protests in the West Bank. In recent days, the protesters have even begun chanting the same slogans that Egyptians used against Hosni Mubarak and the Supreme Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces....

The only way this outcome might possibly be avoided is if International community immediately demands reforms from Abbas: the end to corruption, and the end to repression of free speech.'

Read the entire article here

Meanwhile, in Cairo the Kiwi quartet representing Kia Ora Gaza interviewed "siege buster" Zaher Birawi concerning "a new style of convoy," future tactics and the role of western Israel-bashing activists; the videos can be seen here and here

Friday, 22 June 2012

"One Day, Inshallah, There Will Be Free Palestine"

A bunch of usual suspects (the four-person Kia Ora Gaza convoy team 2012) arriving back in Auckland from a trip to Hamastan-on-Sea described the warm welcome they received there. (Well, they would have, wouldn't they?)

They also revealed their "mission" of building a "lifeline" from Cairo to Gaza.

As the video here shows, it seems that "team captain" Roger Fowler brought back a local phrase, in addition to a footie cup.

Kia Ora Gaza links to a video about the influence of "rightwing billionaires" (yeah, we geddit) on Obama ...

For the very nasty taste of anti-Israel propaganda from BBC World (this example from some years ago), see the (jubilant) Kia Ora Gaza post here

Does BBC World share the vow "One Day, Inshallah, There Will Be Free Palestine"?

From the river to the sea?

It certainly sometimes looks like it.

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'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'
Rod Liddle (2018)

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.
If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself.
Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.
[L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying...
Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016)

The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.
95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.
Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.
Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.
There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance.
The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016)

The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian)

Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.
Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us. Eric Hoffer (1968)

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...
The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...
friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves. Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

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