{"id":5160,"date":"2020-10-04T22:12:06","date_gmt":"2020-10-04T09:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/?p=5160"},"modified":"2020-10-26T18:22:27","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T05:22:27","slug":"vote-for-the-major-party-that-can-stand-up-to-the-ministry-of-foreign-affairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/2020\/10\/vote-for-the-major-party-that-can-stand-up-to-the-ministry-of-foreign-affairs\/","title":{"rendered":"Vote for the major party that can stand up to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

A guest post from New Zealand Friends of Israel<\/em><\/p>\n

When it comes to Israel, vote for the major party that can stand up to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.<\/p>\n

In many minds, antisemitism has disguised itself as advocacy for Palestinian Arabs and opposition to Israel\u2019s existence.\u00a0 Unsurprisingly therefore, NZFOI is keenly interested in NZ\u2019s policies toward Israel in its fight against antisemitism.\u00a0 Those following the many articles setting out the policies, the statements and the track records of the various NZ political parties in relation to Israel, will have noticed something:<\/p>\n

Over the last few years, no matter what they have said prior to entering government all have become subordinated to the \u201clong-standing\u201d and \u201ceven-handed\u201d foreign policy set out by previous administrations and closely guarded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.<\/p>\n

Each administration has parroted these two catch-phrases, \u201clong standing\u201d and \u201ceven-handed\u201d policy (or their synonyms) over and over whenever the Middle East Conflict has arisen.<\/p>\n

These two phrases or variations of them are being recited by each administration because this is the advice given by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT).\u00a0 We know this because of the good work of the Israel Institute of New Zealand who obtained the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade\u2019s advice on NZ\u2019s UN voting between 2015-2018 through the Official Information Act.\u00a0 In those documents, the Ministry says:<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Zealand has for many years endeavoured to take a balanced and even-handed approach to Middle East issues in the UN, with the primary objective of supporting a sustainable two state solution, best achieved through direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In defending Resolution 2334, Bill English said it \u201cexpressed long-standing international policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based on his 2017 pre-election statements, Winston Peters looked like an opportunity to reset NZ\u2019s relations with Israel in the aftermath of NZ\u2019s unwise sponsorship of Resolution 2334.\u00a0 Yet in 2020, he too repeated that NZ\u2019s policy was a \u201cconsistent\u201d one and it was \u201cbalanced\u201d when questioned as to why his government supported anti-semitic bias at the UN.<\/p>\n

During a casual conversation with Gerard van Bohemen, a previous NZ Representative to the UN and now High Court judge, he too re-affirmed that NZ\u2019s stance on the Middle East was \u201clong standing\u201d and \u201ceven-handed.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s been crafted over many decades and transcends individual administrations.\u00a0 He then said, we shouldn\u2019t have a go at the Ministry as they are just a civil service, there to implement the policies of the current administration.\u00a0 NZFOI needed to get to the academic experts who helped shape the policy in the first place.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost as if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has frightened each incoming administration with disastrous consequences if it dared to touch the \u201clong-standing\u201d and \u201ceven-handed\u201d policy which embodies the collective wisdom of previous governments, that in their eyes, has performed so well in protecting New Zealand\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n

Without focusing on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the \u201cexperts\u201d it uses to form its views on international issues, NZ\u2019s interests, and therefore how it advises each incoming administration, NZ\u2019s stance on the Middle East Conflict will unlikely be diverted from its current course.<\/p>\n

Because of this, vote for the major party that can stand up to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.<\/p>\n

NZFOI, 1 October 2020<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A guest post from New Zealand Friends of Israel When it comes to Israel, vote for the major party that can stand up to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In many minds, antisemitism has disguised itself as advocacy for Palestinian Arabs and opposition to Israel\u2019s existence.\u00a0 Unsurprisingly therefore, NZFOI is keenly interested in NZ\u2019s policies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5165,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,447,451],"tags":[18,19,463,703,112,30],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5160"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5160"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5166,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5160\/revisions\/5166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}