By David Cumin, PhD
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — In the second century, the Romans renamed Judea as “Palaestina” in an attempt to minimize the Jewish indigenous ties to the land of Israel.
The New Zealand government recently published a similar insult, labeling a map of the State of Israel as “Palestine” in an official Immigration NZ “fact sheet” on “The State of Palestine”.
The geography of the map is so inaccurate that it does not even include the West Bank in what it calls “The State of Palestine” – it simply labels pre-1967 Israel as “Palestine”.
Adding even more insult to the error, none of the maps in any of the referenced documents has the same ‘mistake’. Thus, there is little doubt that Immigration NZ officially chose to wipe Israel off the map just like the Romans tried to do two millennia ago.
While the Romans and subsequent invaders were unable to destroy the Jewish indigenous links to Israel, and the numerous wars against the modern State of Israel have been successfully rebuffed, the new battlefield is in the information space.
There is a concerted effort to delegitimize and demonize Israel through pernicious lies – some of which go so far as to grotesquely compare Israel to the Third Reich while other attempts couch distortions in the language of “human rights”.
Alarmingly, the Immigration NZ document also follows this “lawfare” approach to attacking Israel. The “fact sheet” provides a cursory overview of the Arab-Israeli conflict that ignores facts that would throw a different light on the situation.
For example, the document talks about “the settlement of the Israeli population… [in] Gaza,” but fails to mention that Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, forcibly removing the 8,000 Jews from the area.
And, among other issues, the “fact sheet” claims that the period of the second intifada saw “massive Israeli repression of Palestinians…” but fails to mention that security measures were undertaken in response to the Arab Palestinian suicide bombers and other attacks that murdered more than 1,000 Israelis.
The egregious inaccuracies have caught the attention of opposition National Party MP, Simon O’Connor, who wrote it is “inappropriate to say the least. I have already begun following this up along with other National colleagues.” Additionally, the Israel Institute of New Zealand has written to Immigration NZ seeking answers to serious questions and calling for an apology and investigation.
The offending document has now been removed from the Immigration NZ website and we await a response as to how it was ever permitted to be there in the first place.
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Cumin is a Director of The Israel Institute of New Zealand.
The Fact Sheet, Well If I write what I called it here the editor will delete it, so that might give you an Idea what I an others think of the “Fact sheet”.
The fact sheet is entitled ‘State of Palestine’, Well, New Zealand like the USA, Australia, Canada, The UK and most of western Europe doesn’t recognize any Palestinian state. So they got off to a bad start.
Here I print my letter to the Minister of Immigration with his email address.
email I.lees-galloway@ministers.govt.nz
The Hon Iain Lees-Galloway MP
Minister of Immigration
Parliament
Wellington.
Dear Sir,
I must protest strongly that your department had such a fact sheet up for everyone to see and that it was Official.
It is clearly written by someone who does not believe Israel has the right to be an independent Jewish State. It is factually incorrect and obviously was not moderated by senior officials before being put up on the Website. If it was moderated before going up then you need to clean out your department of Anti Semitic people.
Another way to put it, you need to clean out the people who support the Boycott, Divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) which use the slogan ‘From the river to the sea Palestine will be free.’
This fact sheet is written I believe by a supporter of the BDS movement. They are all Anti Semitic.
As we don’t recognize the state of Palestine even the Title page is incorrect.
I ask you to clean up your department and apologize to the Ambassador of Israel for this Blunder.
Yours Faithfully
John B McCormick
Chairman Hawkes Bay (Province) Friends of Israel
Po Box 353
Waipukurau 4242
Tel +64 21 1298429
New Zealand
This story is not being covered by the New Zealand media at all The exception is Blogger Cameron Slater in his Whaleoil Blog.
So invite readers to write to any NZ media.
Also if you care to Write to our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
Here is her email address.
j.ardern@ministers.govt.nz
You can write to any MP by post to the persons name and the this address will get to them eg Simon Bridges MP Leader of Opposition he is well aware of the situation and does not like it.
Parliament. Wellington NZ note that we don’t use gov in emails Just to be different we use govt.
My cell phone number is printed in the letter and my email address is as follows if you need it. j.rk52@hotmail.com
Parliament sits Tuesday to Thursday this week so I am hopeful that the issue will come up there. Its on Line if you want to listen to Question time each day from 2 to 3pm our time.
Please copy to me any correspondence you may take as a result of reading about this.
John McCormick
John McCormick has notified us that Iain Lees-Galloway, New Zealand’s Minister of Immigration, wrote the following note to Dr. Itzhak Gerberg, Israel’s Ambassador to New Zealand, following publication of the above article in San Diego Jewish World and other media around the world.
Dear Dr. Gerberg
Thank you for writing to me in relation to your concerns abut Immigration New Zealand’s fact sheet on Palestinian refugees.
I can assure you that the fact sheet did not reflect New Zealand Government policy and has been removed from the Immigration New Zealand website.
Further, I have spoken with the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and she has assured me that Immigration New Zealand will be fully reviewing the content of the fact sheet to correct the errors including, and in particular, the map.
The map was clearly inaccurate and did not label the State of Israel as it should.
I have been assured that the fact sheet will not go back onto the Immigration New Zealand website until a full review has been completed and the information is accurate and clear.
Thank you for raising your concerns with me. I apologise for the offense this has causes and assure you immediate action has been taken to correct the situation.