Appointing a weasel to protect kiwi eggs
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith’s appointment of Dr Stephen Rainbow as Chief Human Rights Commissioner is akin to appointing a weasel to protect kiwi eggs.
Dr Rainbow is a pro-Israel extremist who has been a guest writer on the viciously anti-Palestinian website – the Israel Institute – where he has repeated and promoted the nastiest of apartheid Israel’s propaganda.
Dr Rainbow believes it is OK to protect the rights of one group by driving another group of indigenous people off their land and subjecting them to 76 years of brutal military occupation.
The rights of Indigenous Palestinians don’t rate a mention from Dr Rainbow – the same attitudes are likely to show through in his dealings with Māori as the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand.
The previous Chief Human Rights Commissioner came under sustained pressure to adopt the blatantly anti-Palestinian IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of anti-Semitism which has been used around the world to attack and demonise Palestinian solidarity organisations and activists.
It is inevitable Dr Rainbow will face the same pressures and, left to his own devices, will be happy to oblige the pro-Israel lobby.
The Palestine solidarity movement will continue to campaign to ensure the IHRA is not adopted by the government or civil society groups here.
John Minto
National Chair
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa
You would not expect weasel Goldsmith to appoint anyone with an ounce of concern for any other person than themself.
I don’t think that we can say that Stephen Rainbow has “repeated and promoted the nastiest of apartheid Israel’s propaganda”. Israeli propaganda gets a lot worse than what Rainbow has written on the Israel Institute website.
In the main Rainbow just completely ignores the point. He suggests that we should support the State of Israel because it was “socialist” (even though it no longer is), because it is “gay-friendly”, because “The world’s Jewish population (is only) sixteen million -seven million of whom live in Israel” and because the states of the west, including the Dominion of New Zealand, had a callous disregard for the plight of Jewish people in the years around the Second World War. However one might feel about these facts or perceptions none of them justify genocide. They are simply not relevant.
The only comment in Rainbow’s article that might come close to qualifying as the “nastiest of apartheid Israel’s propaganda” is that “the treatment of gay people, women, and political opponents wherever Palestinians have control is barbaric”. He is not talking specifically about Hamas or any other group but about Palestinians as a race. So we can reasonably conclude that Dr Rainbow is a racist, but he is presumably no worse a racist than the man who appointed him to the position of Human Rights Commissioner.
No doubt the primacy of jew sensitivities wil be attempted. Using the “shitty middle east” entity as a reference, 90% of jews seem to be extremely suspect people. The New Testament has a few choice phrases concerning them.
Hardly surprising, Goldsmith has a history like Tim Jago and it isn’t good.
No wonder NZ is a leader in human rights abuse .We cant even apoint a decent person as our head of human rights .I expect nothing more from this racist exploitive government .NZ will continue our LOOK OVER THERE whats china doing while at home we will continue to exploit new arrivals and bash minority groups into the ground and trample all over Maori .
We have a shocking history of human rights and as humans we need to take a long hard look at our selves .
The shit that the likes of David Seymour and don Brash are spouting needs to stop right now .
Both of them are rodents.
Rock on…remember its a history, it’s not just or only, the last two clowns you mentioned….
Appointing Dr. Rainbow as Chief Human Rights Commissioner raises serious concerns about impartiality, given his history of supporting one group’s rights at the expense of another.