Leslie Bravery

The universally-ratified Fourth Geneva Convention is recognised by the United Nations as constituting the foundation of international humanitarian law and its essential rules. Articles 146 and 147 include the possibility of criminal liability for gross violations by individual perpetrators. Israel has chosen not to incorporate the Convention into domestic law, even though this does not relieve it of its international obligations. Instead, the Convention’s applicability to the military Occupation of the West Bank has been, and continues to be, denied by successive Israeli governments.

On 24 July this email was sent by Marian and I to our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: “The crimes committed…

The New Zealand Green Party MP, Golriz Ghahraman, has upset the Jewish Council here because she described Joseph and Mary,…

According to the online Oxford English Dictionary, the term anti-Semitism means “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews”. It defines Semite as: “A member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs. From modern Latin Semita, via late Latin from Greek Sēm ‘Shem’, son of Noah in the Bible, from whom these peoples were traditionally supposed to be descended.”

The summary of a report prepared by the Secretariat of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development on the economic costs of the Israeli occupation for the Palestinian people noted: “Throughout history, colonisation and occupations have always had economic dimensions. This is also the case in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, where the occupation imposes heavy economic costs on the Palestinian people and their economy.”

In New Zealand, the Israel Institute’s co-director, Dr David Cumin, on behalf of Israel and its US ally, is calling for “a moratorium on any further Kiwi taxpayer funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)”. In trying to divert attention from Israel, Cumin makes unfounded allegations of “corruption, antisemitism and extremism” against the UN agency’s hard-working officials and frontline workers.