New Zealand government silent on deals with Israel
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa is accusing the New Zealand government of developing a back-door policy entanglement with the State of Israel.
PSNA says it only discovered that New Zealand had actually signed a Technical, Innovation, Research and Development Agreement with Israel through a Facebook post by the Israeli Embassy.
National Chair, John Minto, says New Zealand Minister, Megan Woods signed the Agreement on 5 March, but kept it totally quiet at the time.
“Normally a major bilateral deal would involve photo opportunities at Parliament and press releases. On this occasion, with the Israelis, nothing.”
John Minto says he concludes that the government is embarrassed about an increasing set of agreements with Israel.
“They know that they shouldn’t be doing deals when Israel is poised to illegally annex major parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
“They know they should be breaking off agreements with Israel at this time – not signing new ones.”
John Minto says the previous government delayed signing the New Zealand-Israel Film Coproduction Agreement until 2015, because it thought that signing the Agreement while Israel was attacking Gaza the previous year was ‘not a good look.’
“The current government has never criticised Israeli actions. Not even in 2018 when Israeli snipers were gunning down unarmed Palestinian protesters through the Israeli blockade fence around Gaza. And now not when the Israeli government is ready to steal more Palestinian land.”
Respect for international law and the most basic human rights demands New Zealand suspend all bi-lateral agreements with Israel until the threat of annexation is lifted.
I think you mean innovative’
And, would you like to be specific about these Israeli products? They still do not excuse what the fascist Israeli state is doing to the Palestinians. Or our own government turning a blind eye.
Very disturbing news John. Thanks for exposing it.
Oh how I wish it weren’t true!
But what can we do?
Paid advertising in newspapers might be the only outlet.
As for IM RIGHT ‘s remarks , Israel leads the world in its development of techniques & weapons for oppression , including drones, battle-tested on Gazans and other Palestinians.
Israeli police even training America police..already over ‘militarized’ ! (exposed by Jewish Voice for Peace)
New Zealand should be openly opposing, not quietly supporting, such a cruel inhumane regime.
The Palestinians don’t call for an ‘Islamic’ state..some Palestinians are religious..some are Christian or Muslim..some are secular. Palestinians want to live..want a world of justice , of freedom for all of humanity.
Shocking.
Although it is hardly a surprise that NZ’s human rights opinions are now surpassed by bovine, trade deals that tend to help other nations right wing/totalitarian/big business politics while subjugating the locals human rights (in both countries).
Wake up wokies!
While you are trying to get more of the world’s exploiters into NZ to take over Israeli style, take a minute to consider what the end result for yourself is going to be, once there are more exploiters in a nation to vote policy that suits them, they find the locals an inconvenience?
I’m buggered if I can understand why people feed the hasbara trolls. They always lie & never engage with whatever issue is under discussion. They only serve to poison minds with their racist zionist ideology by avoiding issues at hand whilst spread truckloads of BS about irrelevancies, trying to appear reasonable in the face of Palestinian people of all faiths being subjected to murder rape, pillage and theft as a continuous zionist driven policy since 1947.
They call other who oppose their inhumane actions “terrorists” while never acknowledging the bombing of the King David hotel which caused the death of UK servicemen and civilians – insult to injury, the leader of that attack was later made Prime Minister of Israel.
Nor the deliberate attack on an amerikan communications vessel USS Liberty resulting in the death of many US Servicemen. Insult there was the attempt to blackmail then President Johnson with the usual zionist smear, smear that he was an anti-semite simply because he pointed out the egregious nature of this attack on an unarmed US Navy vessel to Newsweek magazine. No truth no honour, that is apartheid israel, aka occupied Palestine.
Lying propagandists should never be fed.
100% Deb
If anyone wants to learn more about the USS Liberty attack and continuing coverup of that attack they can go to https://usslibertyveterans.org, https://usslibertyveterans.blog and https://usslibertydocuments.info.
John’s headline could have been “New Zealand government and New Zealand media silent on deals with Israel”
Israel controls 5 Eyes, Netanyahu has publicly bragged that Israel is No 2 of 5 Eyes.