Last week the United Nations General Assembly held its annual series of votes on Palestine/Israel. Eight resolutions were considered and all were adopted – most by overwhelming margins.
New Zealand voted for seven of the resolutions and abstained on one.
These resolutions get little media attention aside from ripples caused by Canada this year, which after 10 years of voting against establishing a Palestinian state, changed its vote to yes because it is lobbying for a seat on the UN Security Council. They want to be seen with the majority of humanity for the next couple of years at least.
Besides the predictable opposition to these resolutions from the US and Israel the surprise for many was Micronesia, Nauru and the Marshall Islands voting against most resolutions while Vanuatu abstained on them all. These countries are more easily “leaned-on” by the big powers than most others but they are now subject to an Israeli campaign – Pacific Israeli Rim – which is offering development money in return for Pacific countries voting with them at the United Nations.
Pacific Island Rim (PIR) was announced in August 2018 by the Israeli Ambassador to Pacific Island Countries, H.E. Tibor S. Schlosser. A PIR Facebook page for Pacific Israel Rim describes it as “an alliance that the Israeli Government wants to form with the Governments in the Pacific Island Nations….” and one of the aims is quite specific:
“This alliance could one day unite the Pacific to vote as one with Israel inside the UN”
The alliance claims to have supporters in the Cook Islands; Papua New Guinea; Samoa; Federated States of Micronesia; Fiji Islands; Kingdom of Tonga; Solomon Islands; Kiribati; Republic of the Marshall Islands; Nauru; Niue; Palau and Tuvalu.
There is a good crop of potential United Nations votes there.
They are calling for Pacific peoples to “identify the political party and politician who supports Israel in your nation” and “vote them into power”.
Regarding investment, Pacific Israel Rim says –
“Israeli investors will surely be attracted to the Pacific as well as the Jewish investors in the diaspora (Jews living outside Israel). Israeli companies will take interest in the Pacific & we all know Jews can create a lot of wealth where there seems to be no wealth as they’ve proven in farming the deserts of the Holy Land & exporting their agricultural produce to greener countries in Europe”
This is a much-debunked Israeli propaganda narrative which also feeds negative, racist stereotypes of Jews common in anti-Semitic views. But then PIR goes on…
“Israel is a land with no natural resources when it was founded but the Jews have turned it into an economic powerhouse with Israel’s GDP per-Capita surpassing Japan in 2018 and surpassing many Arab & anti-Israel countries around the globe”
Another Israeli propaganda narrative is at work there but most concerning is the deliberate play on the strong Christian values of many Pacific peoples.
Pacific Israel Rim talks about an alliance “between the Holy Land of Israel and the Beautiful People of the Pacific” as being “prophetic”.
“It will be an Alliance of Biblical & Prophetic proportions between the People of Moses & the Children of the Pacific living at the ends of the Earth (from Jerusalem).”
The Greatest Reward will come from the God of Israel, Maker of Heaven and Earth who said, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on Earth will be blessed through you.” Genesis 12: 3
This appeal using Old Testament Christian writings is cynical, political expediency.
Having themselves been the victims of colonisation, the indigenous people of the Pacific are being invited to support the colonisers of Palestine.
One of the many ironies is that most Israelis are not religious. As Jewish academic Ilan Pappe says “most Zionists don’t believe that God exists, but they do believe he promised them Palestine”.
Pacific people have enough problems navigating the big powers in their region without having to deal with this cynical Israeli push in the Pacific.
Meanwhile the annual United Nations votes on Palestine/Israel are important signals of international feeling but they are ineffective when the US consistently vetoes Security Council resolutions and the rest of the world turns a blind eye to the dispossession and brutal oppression of Palestinians.
The challenge for the people of the world is to turn these UN resolutions into meaningful action in the face of cowardly government inaction.
Many ‘God fearing’ and church going people live in the Pacific Rim countries, i.e. the islands of the Pacific. For them Israel means the ‘good’ caretaker of the biblical lands, so they will tend to blindly support Israel, as Arab Muslim people are a bit too suspicious and alien to them.
Hence a ‘smart’ move by the Zionist Israeli government.
How does this marry with Christianity traditionally, and often evilly, persecuting Jews for the crucifixion of
Christ ?
The Catholic Church has apologised for it’s historic and pro-active role in all this, but these are long-held prejudices – fundamentalists of all ilk tend to be difficult to engage with – and easily used by God-bothering leaders.
Compare this with what China is dong to Pacific islands with its creation of debt crises – “Given the vulnerabilities of their economies, given the very few sources of revenues they have, they tend to be in many cases at high risk of debt distress,” World Bank director for the Pacific, Michel Kerf, told Reuters.
Israel’s strategy seems positively benign, and as the world’s only country under direct and active threat of annihilation, deserves any support it can get.
Your comparison perspective is flawed, both by invoking it in the first place, and making assertions about the “benign” strategy of the Israeli government.
You don’t have to look very far to determine the effects on Palestinians is far from benign.
It’s the Palestinians who are ‘under direct and active threat of annihilation’ by a vicious heavily armed regime. What is being done to Gaza, has been described as ‘genocide in slow motion’..not so slow now, the UN uses the word ‘unlivable’
In Israel itself whole Bedouin villages that existed before there was an Israel are being destroyed. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Palestinian houses, land, water sources ..are being destroyed or stolen..schools and even mosques invaded. Palestinians are being not just physically and but psychologically assaulted .
The writer Thomas Suarez explains what occupation really means.
“The occupation is, most insidiously, the occupation of a people—the systematic destruction or theft of their history, culture, arts, and self-worth.”
Palestinians ask, “WHERE IS HUMANITY?”
Investment? Is that loans from Israel to pay the interest on the loans from China.
I think you mean Palestine
Thanks John this has pist me off. NZ better not.
This,… push into the Pacific by Israel,… would it be fair to say that this is an extension of the USA’s policies? I think so.
Is it not that Israel has generous backing by the U.S financially and militarily?
Seems all a little too convenient to me…
I suspect a few backroom meetings have taken place and this is a new angle of the stoush between China and the U.S,.. with little brother Israel coming to Big brother U.S’, side…
Also the Israeli push with some Maori tribes, namely Ngati Kahungunu Iwi…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503462&objectid=11305252
The Censor rules, yeah.
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