Earlier this year Nuk Korako was one of six National MPs who attended a dinner hosted by the Israeli ambassador with the aim of establishing a New Zealand Parliamentary Friends of Israel group. (For the record the other MPs were Alfred Ngaro, Tim McIndoe, Todd Muller, Jian Yang and Paul Goldsmith)
Similar efforts were made by the apartheid regime in South Africa as it sought to fight off an international peoples’ movement to boycott the white minority government.
We wrote to the six MPs and subsequently requested a meeting with Nuk Korako who is in our local area.
Nuk sent us a statement of his views on Palestine/Israel and while he says Palestinians deserve self-government the document as a whole looks like a copy and paste from the most extreme self-serving Zionist propaganda.
Nuk uses the Bible’s Old Testament to justify the formation of Israel and in two short paragraphs he uses the word “terrorist” six times in relation to Palestinian resistance while labelling critics of Israeli brutality as “anti-semitic”.
Nevertheless we wrote to Nuk:
Kia ora Nuk,
Thank you for your thoughts on the Israel/Palestine conflict which were discussed at our local Palestine Solidarity meeting last night.
We thought it would be helpful to have a debate/discussion with yourself about our respective views of the Israel/Palestine conflict with a public audience. We thought it could run as an evening meeting with both yourself and myself speaking in turn for perhaps 15 minutes each and then to open up to questions/comments from the audience. Members of our group would be keen to attend as no doubt would be others who hold similar views to yourself.
We would like to suggest the 26th, 27th or 28th of this month and suggest the WEA at 59 Gloucester Street which has a hall which can accommodate around 80 or so as an audience. Would one of these nights be possible for you? Alternatively we are happy for you to suggest a date and venue and we will do our best to fit in.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Nuk’s response:
Kia ora John,
Nuk would like to thank you for your email of Tuesday 13th November for a debate/discussion on the Israel/Palestine conflict, however he wishes to pass on his apologies and declines your invitation.
My reply:
Kia ora,
Please pass on to Nuk that I’m not surprised at his lack of courage and conviction. He is on the wrong side of history in supporting a racist, apartheid state built on the oppression of the Palestinian people.
Nuk is a reminder that, as in dealing with apartheid in South Africa, rational debate will only go so far in changing opinion.
And like South Africa, it will be the people of New Zealand, joining hands with the people of the world in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, who will prevail.
So in the leadup to Christmas – boycott all Israeli products such as the high-profile Sodastream and watch out for any barcode starting with 729 which indicates it’s been made in Israel.
You could even help sticker some of these products when you are out shopping.
You can order these stickers from bronwensummers@gmail.com
In doing so you will help make Xmas a little brighter for those suffering brutal, racist oppression from the Israeli regime.
Go you! @ JM. I see a lot of courage here on TDB and none of it comes from politicians.
I’ve seen $ix figure$ korako cru$ing about Lyttelton. All plump and shiny. He keeps that smile handy in a little metal case in the glove box. He screws it on when he spots a camera.
Nuk is the heroic chappie who is “passionate”about lost luggage.
Given his prioritising, expecting him to engage in rational debate was unrealistic.
The Old Testament he relies on is loaded with the lost baggage which is his passion, but there was a Galilean whose teachings superseded the OT, and Nuk should read the New Testament – or get someone else to read it for him.
The Israeli Embassy, for whatever reason, did not invite the best or the brightest to dinner. Tim McIndoe at times looked quite scared-looking on television when PM Key shouted his head off in Parliament.
But how dare any of them label people like me anti-Semitic, they don’t know what they are talking about, but no surprises there.
Thank you for the 729 barcode; I shall write it in my Christmas cards, there’s a symmetry there.
Sad that a person of “Colour” supports the murderous state that is Israel.
He is with NACT. What would you expect.
Hunting with the hounds.
Another predator.
Sad that a person of colour supports the national party who cut and slash and who does that hurt the most the poor brown people at the bottom that who.
Thank you John for your usual enlightening blog. Incredible that people still get whitewashed by Israeli propaganda, even MPs who we hope would be better informed. I’ll get hold of those stickers, a small way to support Palestinians, cruelly treated, devastated by the Israeli state.
One thing the zionists are struggling to do is provide evidence that they whakapapa to the Jewish race that were about pre Egypt. DNA, archaeological and even the scriptures do not relate to todays jewish population ….. a fake iwi is a strong possibility to lay claim to other peoples whenua. Maybe the NZ government could intervene in the dispute and use OTS’s “little Red Book” as a set of rules for them to follow.
Gutless wonder – Minto would eat him that is why he won’t front.
Interesting that our very own Chinese Communist Party spy, Jian Yang, was one of the attendees. I’d have thought his United Front Work Department handlers at the Chinese Embassy would be encouraging him to lay low for now after the highly embarrassing Yikun Zhang bribery fiasco.
It’s also interesting that all those who attended were National MPs. That makes it a party political issue. Obviously the Israeli Embassy doesn’t think its apartheid policies have support on both sides of the house.
How about establishing a New Zealand Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group too? Marama Davidson would an obvious candidate.
Solidarity with the Palestinians is an issue of great importance for many tangata whenua (other than right-wing Christian zealots like Nuk). Perhaps it’s time it had some parliamentary backing as well.
Kia ora John,
Well said. Maybe its time for the dinosaurs to come out of the woodwork.
Re your suggestion on product labelling. Not so easy as it was back in the day with the proliferation of in house cctv in recent times. However these bitches of Israel do need to be called out at every opportunity.
If your name is Paul Goldsmith, naturally you will support Israel and I must obviously be anti-Semitic for saying so.
And if your name is Alfred Ngaro, it looks like he has Maori DNA. It’s long established that people who make such links are racist, so I wont say that Jian Yang looks Chinese to me.
Fortunately the link can be established- isn’t he the same National MP who studied at an elite Chinese spy school before coming to New Zealand?
If you Google either Tim McIndoe or Todd Muller you are more likely to get Keren Hayesod, which is the official National Institution of Israel and the Jewish People. so a good impartial representative of the NZ people.
Thanks for that John.,
It doesn’t surprise me his group support Israel they put the boot into their own people I say cleanup up your own backyard before you try to clean up others.
I’m pretty sure such a group has existed for quite some time, John,
A decade or so back, membership included a number of Maori MPs, as well as my local (Mana) MP Winnie Laban (which is largely why I never cast my Candidate Vote for her), Chris Finlayson and one or two others.
Around that time, both Laban and Finlayson attended a Wellington Hasbara Conference organised by the Israeli Embassy in Canberra.
ACT MPs, of course, were also very sympathetic … Deborah Coddington, for instance, once advised a NZ Zionist lobby group that they needed to get young Pro-Israel people into Journalism.
Last year, the Parliamentary Friends of Israel Group included:
(Nats)
Alfred Ngaro
Brett Hudson
Chris Bishop
Chris Finlayson
Ian McKelvie
Jacqui Dean
Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi
Mark Mitchell
Paul Foster-Bell
(NZF)
Ron Mark
Darroch Ball
(Green)
Julie Anne Genter
(ACT’s David Seymour was considered very sympathetic but not an actual member)
Mr Korako and his colleagues are on the wrong side of history. It’s a shame they haven’t learned anything from those who mistakenly supported the White Regime in South Africa before the apartheid system was finally toppled.
It is revealing that Israel is so desperate for international recognition that it strives to build these kind of sympathetic groups. Other countries don’t seem to need such support mechanisms.
Keep up the excellent work, John.
Agree John these Zionist shills are of all races like the Jewish religion that construe itself a race but when you look at them Physiologically they are different just look at a Chinese Jew is not the same as an Ethiopian Jew or a (Yid) European (Ashkenazi) Jew is not the same as a Mizrahi Middle eastern Jew.
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