Tag: Anti-Zionism

New Zealand, like Australia, currently seems to be winning its battle on the public health front at least... Yet while we might be in the midst of a global crisis, that’s not enough to stop some people peddling their brand of anti-Israel propaganda. 

Much of what today purports to be criticism of Israel or the claim of ideological opposition to Zionism is merely disguised antisemitism, perpetrated by singling out the nation-state of the Jewish people for condemnation and demonisation. 

In recent years, the term “apartheid” has become so synonymous with the State of Israel that it has almost lost its original meaning: the policy of the South African regime from 1948 to 1994 that segregated and discriminated black South African citizens from white South African citizens.

A statement at a New York rally opposing the Trump Administration’s Mid-East peace plan seemed to me to epitomise the bizarre, nonsensical view of Israel and Zionism that has entrenched itself in much of the global far-left. 

During the Cold War, Soviet efforts to support the Arab war on Israel and spread extreme propaganda demonising Israel and Zionism were not simply cynical efforts to gain Arab support and damage the interests of US allies.

Despite being exposed several times as a platform publishing extremism and antisemitism, Farah News, the Arabic-language Australian website, shows no signs of changing its ways. On the contrary, the disturbing trend of featuring such content has continued in full force

Last week, Israel’s Supreme Court upheld an Interior Ministry decision not to renew the work visa of HRW’s representative in Israel and the Palestinian territories, Omar Shakir. The Court agreed that Shakir had breached a 2017 law barring entry to foreigners who promote the BDS campaign and gave him 20 days to leave the country.

Anti-Zionism is a flourishing politics today on many university campuses and on parts of the left, and the standard response from many Jewish organisations and from most of the Jews I know is to call it the newest version of antisemitism. But anti-Zionism is a subject in itself...

Government agencies in democratic countries should provide factual, unbiased information to those accessing their services. Yet, just recently, New Zealand’s immigration department failed to meet that standard in spectacular fashion. 

Much of the American and Israeli punditry unleashed a flood of condemnations of the Israeli move in mainstream and social media, entirely devoid of nuance