Jewish Groups Call on the NZ Jewish Council to Withdraw its Misleading Survey of Antisemitism – Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices (NZ)

Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu are calling on the NZ Jewish Council to withdraw its 2021 national survey of antisemitism. It alleges that 63% of New Zealanders hold at least one antisemitic attitude. However, fully one-third of the attitudes it calls antisemitic are simply agreements with the finding of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal.

Alternative Jewish Voices (AJV) co-founder Fred Albert explains, “The survey was always misleading. New Zealanders who knew ethically what the ICJ has ruled legally have been called antisemitic. 21% of respondents understood, as the ICJ has ruled, that Israel’s regime is apartheid. 20% knew that Israel’s occupation is not democratic, and so on. Half a dozen of the questions elicited replies consistent with the findings of the United Nations’ highest court. It is slanderous to call those respondents antisemitic. It grossly distorts our understanding of real antisemitism.”

AJV filed an Official Information Act request to parse the Jewish Council’s funding submission claim that it had “widespread Jewish community support, across multiple organisations.” Documents show a small number of interrelated and majority-Christian Zionist entities (whose directors overlap with the Taxpayers’ and Free Speech Unions) manufactured the appearance of Jewish community consent. The Ministry of Ethnic Communities gave $15,000 for a survey which AJV’s co-founder Marilyn Garson calls “an exercise in misdirection.”

She continues, “It tells the Jewish community, government, and all of New Zealand to look away from the very real threats that emerge mostly from the far right and its networks of disinformation. We’re being told to condemn protest instead—protest that is entirely consistent with the ICJ ruling. This survey divides us. Take it off the table. It’s time for all these false accusations to end. We need to be standing together now: Jews, Muslims, Tangata Whenua and tau iwi, faith and immigrant communities, Palestinians and all their allies. We need to be demanding action on the ICJ ruling and we need to be working together against racism.”

Background information supporting this media release

Alternative Jewish Voices is a collective of anti-Zionist Jews. It stands for Jewish pluralism, antiracism and it supports Palestinians in the pursuit of justice. Dayenu is a group of New Zealand Jews opposed to racism and the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. AJV and Dayenu are in the process of merging. More information can be found at https://ajv.org.nz/ and https://www.instagram.com/dayenunz/

The NZ Jewish Council calls itself the representative body of Aotearoa’s Jewish community. It is neither elected by, nor accountable to, the community and it chooses not to represent the community’s breadth.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) released a decision on 19 July 2024, after the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2022 asking the ICJ for an advisory opinion about the legal consequences from Israel’s ongoing violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination from Israel’s prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian Occupied Territories  since 1967, the legal status of Israel’s occupation, and the legal consequences for other States and the UN. This case is separate from South Africa’s case to the ICJ alleging that Israel is committing genocide against the people of Gaza. More information can be found here: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186