{"id":5038,"date":"2020-07-08T12:35:21","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T00:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/?p=5038"},"modified":"2020-07-18T00:49:29","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T12:49:29","slug":"its-an-election-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/2020\/07\/its-an-election-year\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s an election year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Politicking is well underway in NZ and, just as we did prior to the last election, IINZ has created a\u00a0voter\u2019s guide<\/a>. It is pleasing to see two of the minor parties holding a strong pro-Israel stance. In contrast, the present Labour government\u2019s track record on Israel is poor.<\/p>\n

A perusal of the\u00a0government\u2019s actions towards Israel<\/a>\u00a0suggests a problematic relationship to terrorism, when said terrorism is directed against the Jewish state. The Ardern government has repeatedly failed to condemn terrorism,\u00a0financially supports a group closely associated with terrorism<\/a>, and has refused to designate Hezbollah a terrorist group. Its stance on Israel is all the more ironic and hypocritical in light of its response to the one recent act of terrorism on New Zealand soil.<\/p>\n

In addition, the Government has\u00a0continued the pattern of imbalance and bias in its voting record at the UN<\/a>, in spite of the fact that it claims to have a \u2018balanced approach\u2019 to Israel. Finally, the actions of certain government ministers and officials have raised further doubt over the government mantra about maintaining a \u2018balanced\u2019 and \u2018even handed\u2019 approach to Israel.<\/p>\n

If it were a report card, IINZ would give the Labour goverment a \u201cD-\u201d or,\u00a0 in current parlance, \u201cNA\u201d (not achieved). We will, in coming weeks, also review National\u2019s record and survey the minor parties to see where they stand.<\/p>\n

Given the record, it was not surprising that\u00a0Winston Peters issued a press statement<\/a>\u00a0expressing \u2018serious concern\u2019 over Israel\u2019s plan to apply Israeli civilian law to parts of the disputed territories, even before the details of the plan had been announced. There has been much speculation and concern over what\u00a0might happen on 1 July<\/a>, when the Israeli government was expected to announce plans to extend sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria. That date has since come and gone, and it is still unclear what the government will do.<\/p>\n

Peters expressed concern over the possibility of Israel\u00a0extending sovereignty<\/a>\u00a0to include the nearly half million Jews living in communities in Judea and Samaria, while leaving the majority of the territory and the Palestinians in the PA\u2019s control. Yet, he seems unconcerned that the PA refuses to have Jewish communities in its midst, or that their demand that 500,000 Jews be removed from their homes constitutes ethnic cleansing. Nor is there recognition that extending sovereignty would move the Palestinians toward independence (if that were their goal) and grant Israel the defensible borders it desperately needs, in contrast to the 1949\/1967 borders from which the Jewish state was repeatedly attacked.<\/p>\n

While the world continues to condemn Israel, it ignores Palestinian rejectionism and the reality that there will be\u00a0no peace until Jewish presence<\/a>\u00a0is accepted in the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politicking is well underway in NZ and, just as we did prior to the last election, IINZ has created a\u00a0voter\u2019s guide. It is pleasing to see two of the minor parties holding a strong pro-Israel stance. In contrast, the present Labour government\u2019s track record on Israel is poor. A perusal of the\u00a0government\u2019s actions towards Israel\u00a0suggests […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[689,447],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5038"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5040,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5038\/revisions\/5040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}