Kia ora Nanaia,
We have been informed that the Wellington City Council has been advised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs not to light up the Michael Fowler Centre in the colours of the Palestinian flag tomorrow – which has been arranged through councillor Tamatha Paul and approved by council – because Aotearoa New Zealand does not recognise a Palestinian state and this will cause offence to the Israeli Embassy in Wellington.
This is outrageous advice. We want you to intervene and immediately override this advice from your ministry officials so the Fowler Centre can be lit up tomorrow.
Firstly New Zealand’s official policy is to support a “two-state” solution in historic Palestine and this policy in effect recognises a Palestinian state. You cannot have a “two-state solution” with just one state. Secondly it is deeply insulting to Palestinians to have official recognition of their national day – Nakba Day – effectively vetoed by ministry officials and the “sensitivities” of the Israeli embassy. It is Israel which is refusing to allow a Palestinian state to be formed. The current Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has said he refuses to meet with Palestinian leaders, refuses to negotiate a peace deal and will refuse to recognise a Palestinian state while he is Prime Minister. Why should Israel’s veto over a Palestinian state dictate Aotearoa New Zealand’s support for Palestinians?
Why would we take any notice of the “sensitivities” of an embassy which is supporting and promoting what every international human rights organisation has declared to be an apartheid state?
Parliament has flown the Ukrainian flag in recent weeks over Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine so why shouldn’t New Zealand fly the Palestinian flag in recognition of Israel’s ongoing brutal military occupation of the entire area of historic Palestine.
Within the last 10 days an Israeli court has approved the eviction of 1000 more Palestinians from their land and homes in the occupied West Bank of Palestine and the Israeli regime has announced it is ready to approve the building of 4000 more Jewish-only homes – also in the occupied West Bank.
And just this last week we have seen the brutal “cold-blooded murder” of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the shocking sight of pall bearers and mourners at her funeral being brutally attacked by Israeli state forces.
Aotearoa New Zealand is bigger than the venal, self-serving advice of cowardly MFAT officials.
Please direct your ministry officials to approve Wellington City Council lighting up the Fowler Centre tomorrow in the colours of the Palestinian flag.
Our independent foreign policy, yeah right!
Why does Israel seem to hold so much leverage over the rest of the world>?
I think a well educated popular is the tyranny of power.
If we shrink from fundamental assaults on democracy then we can’t move on human rights violators.
The problem is what can be agreed on isn’t obvious. All I’m interested in is seeing if the daily blog can attract all those who get kicked out of kiwi blog or the standard.
I guess being excluded by the extreme right or extreme left has its advantages.
g’wan answer your own question without showing your true colours straight
In my opinion the Israeli embassy in Wellington should be closed and all staff sent back to Israel and from there, let them prove themselves worthy by conducting themselves in a manner consistent with a civilised first world society in order to enjoy the privilege, not the right, of having, and presumably operating here in AO/NZ again.
I’ve had a sinking feeling for sometime now, that all Israeli eyes are on AO/NZ. My ‘feelings’ could be wrong. I hope they are. Lets see?
In the meantime. Israel, what the fuck do you think you’re doing!? Are you criminally insane? You murdered an unarmed female reporter of some international standing THEN, you insult the entire human species by rampaging about at her funeral in combat gear! Can you be that arrogant ? Where’s your most basic instinct for compassion for human kind? Can you be that confident of your foot hold up the U$A?
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was subjected to a protest a few years ago. Murray mc’cully found a nest of starlings in his moustache, was that it? Or rats was it? And a few dodgy txts to someone somewhere for some reason I can’t remember. Oh wait? There it is ! The TPP agreement.
A trade agreement. So, it’s all about the money. That’s why MFAT’s going easy on the Israelis.
We must export to them. That’ll be it, and if it’s agricultural products and not tourists, views or our souls then there’ll be a bus load of crooks with their feet in the trough as the money stream flows through. Aye boys?
You write @ JM.
Aotearoa New Zealand is bigger than the venal, self-serving advice of cowardly MFAT officials.
No it isn’t. We’re corrupt as fuck.
Israel just leans on anyone who doesn’t bow down to their apartheid rule and whispers in their ear “you’re not anti semitic now are you?” Then drops in some never forget the holocaust line and everyone rolls over.
Those that don’t are branded anti semitic and moves are made to punish and then banish them like Jeremy Corbin for example
Now Israel has cleverly conflated any public criticism of the polices/behaviour of the state of Israel as being an act of “anti semitism”. A sneaky move but the msm fell for it:
The more outrageous Israel acts the more people criticise it, this criticism is then always labelled “anti-semitic” by Israel and her allies and they point out that this “anti semitism” is increasing. Then the MSM play along and tell us all that anti semitism is on the rise globally without actually telling people that Israel considers any criticism of it (legit or not) as anti semitism.
WE need someone in the MSM to grow a pair and to speak out about how Israel is twisting the narrative
The state of Israel is a traumatised child that survived the holocaust and grew into (I’m not saying “grew up”) a post traumatised adulthood that has revisited its trauma on the Palestinians. They don’t know any other way. It’s up to other semi-reasonable governments with slightly higher ethical standards (hello , hello, anybody there????….. waits patiently, then hangs up…) to hold them to some kind of higher standard.
I mean, right in 1948, they were already throwing Palestinian children into literal ovens. I don’t think they can be talked into acting like moral human beings.
citation required, the massacres of arab villages by zionist militia in the war of independence is well known but an allegation of ‘ovens’ requires confirmation.
Israeli terrorism has been going since before 1948:
The history of terrorism in Israel/Palestine is a history of increasingly interwoven terrorisms. These terrorisms have been employed by both ‘sides’ in the conflict, Israeli and Palestinian, in different manifestations for over one hundred years, responding to internal and external pressures, and also reflecting and informing wider forces of change that have characterised the political histories of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Terrorism is, after all, how the Zionists persuaded England to give them Palestine.
I want to know when the government is bullshiting every time.
On this I agree 100 percent as a country we need to be our own master not a lap dog.
In a suburb of Chch the seat warmers in council tried to stop,a flag pole being erected incase they flew a flag that offended another country .I cannot believe they are not following orders from on high . Fortunately sanitary prevailed and once out in the open the flag pole is now going ahead. No one has been fired though
Yes they were worried someone might fly a Tibetan flag and offend China etc
Lame and embarrassing but then Liane Diazel does like her Chinese mates
I strongly oppose talking of a ‘2 State solution.’ I have no problems with NZ not recognizing a ‘Palestinian State’. There is no Palestinian state. There is one State ‘from the river to the sea’. It is a State run by a very very cruel regime ..apartheid on steroids…a regime that should be roundly condemned.
But NZ should recognize the existence of Palestinian people. Surely they have the right to have a flag as a symbol of their identity, a reminder that they do exist. They have a history and a culture that the Zionists would like to be permanently erased.
Isn’t there a Maori flag shown on special occasions?
‘The brutal “cold-blooded murder” of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the shocking sight of pall bearers and mourners at her funeral being brutally attacked by Israeli state forces’
that John describes, can be seen on an Al Jazeera broadcast. The reporter said he had never, ever, witnessed such brutality..such disrespect for the dead..such disrespect for mourners….
We’re being told that NZ doesn’t want to “cause offence to the Israeli Embassy” !
Oh my God!
Is that NZ’s policy Have we really sunk that low?
I strongly oppose talking of a ‘2 State solution.’ I have no problems with NZ not recognizing a ‘Palestinian State’. There is no Palestinian state. There is one State ‘from the river to the sea’. It is a State run by a very very cruel regime ..apartheid on steroids…a regime that should be roundly condemned.
But NZ should recognize the existence of Palestinian people. Surely they have the right to have a flag as a symbol of their identity, a reminder that they do exist. They have a history and a culture that the Zionists would like to be permanently erased.
Isn’t there a Maori flag shown on special occasions?
‘The brutal “cold-blooded murder” of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the shocking sight of pall bearers and mourners at her funeral being brutally attacked by Israeli state forces’
that John describes, can be seen on an Al Jazeera broadcast. The reporter said he had never, ever, witnessed such brutality..such disrespect for the dead..such disrespect for mourners….
We’re being told that NZ doesn’t want to “cause offence to the Israeli Embassy” !
Oh my God!
Is that NZ’s policy Have we really sunk that low?
Getting boringly repetitive there, Lois. The 2 state solution is dead, thanks to the Palestinians’ violent rejectionism. Israel is going to expel and isolate the Islamic jihadist terrorists. They are powerful enough to do it. The Jews know they are on their own and they will take all necessary measures to protect their people from an evil world.
gaby said – The Jews know they are on their own
oh please do me favour if that were even remotely true this debate would not exist.
So who was there for them during the Holocaust? Look up Evian Conference and feel humble…if you’re capable.
Then eat your words.
I’ve made my position on the historical indifference to the holocaust very very plain gaby…
we’re talking about now today…isreal does not stand alone today and it’s pathetic to suggest she does.
Pretty much the entire world as shown by the death of well over a hundred million people who weren’t Jews.
NZ Govs always kowtow to Israel.
But why? Israel are so morally at odds with everything NZ stands for.
You’re expecting a lot from a party masquerading as Labour… Champagne guzzling, little treats nibbling, hols to Singapore and Japan.. nothing cheap about this lot.
And now you are demanding moral fibre!
At the very least the Israeli Ambassador must be told to provide justification for the obscene thuggery they carried out at Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral.
a pal state was available in 1947 but hatred of jews trips up the arabs year after year
lol cry more zionist. Palestine will be free from the Jordan to the sea.
Just take matters into your own hands John.
Organise hundreds or even thousands to dress in the Palestinian colours and march to the centre.
Alternatively hack into the centre and do it anyway.
Or you can keep trying to ride the beauraucratic logjam and get no results…
Well done MFAT.
…. and even better done by Wellingtonians of conscience. They not only lit up Te Papa, a building of national significance, but projected the image of the latest reporter to be assassinated in cold blood by an IDF sniper.
I agree with LG that the 2 state solution, has been offered as an option for far too long.
The multitude of illegal settler developments put an end to that option decades ago.
The brutality of the Israeli military occupation is a sad consequence of zero accountability for their actions.
Trade agreements, wrongheaded ideology and membership of the “Five Eyes” has left successive NZ Governments impotent.
The assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh and the subsequent shocking assault by Israeli Police on her funeral procession is hideous but behaviour like this occurs every day in the occupied territories and has been normalised by the occupiers.
Zionism is not an inclusive ideology and from its inception, for many Jews excluding the Palestinians was always the objective.
At its worst the Israeli government and its security forces’ actions grow uglier by the day leading to a growing global contempt for their despicable behaviour.
Parliament has flown the Ukrainian flag in recent weeks over Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine so why shouldn’t New Zealand fly the Palestinian flag in recognition of Israel’s ongoing brutal military occupation of the entire area of historic Palestine.
Because its the biggest embarrassment around.
The invasion and subjugation of the Palestine is, after all, an UN mandated action. An action that NZ must have had a direct say in as the UN was, IIRC, barely a year old at the time that said invasion was instituted against the very reasons for its founding.
So many of the UN tell us that Israel has the right to defend itself while denying the Palestinians the right to defend themselves.