Israel Institute of New Zealand co-director, Dr David Cumin, is calling on anti-Israel protestors to reject the use of violence during a series of protest marches scheduled to take place around the country on 4 July.

Dr Cumin was referring to planned marches in Auckland, Hamilton, Napier, Palmerston North, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch and Dunedin in response to suggestions that Israel might apply sovereignty to land in Judea and Samaria.

“We respect the right of Kiwis to protest but we hope that the planned New Zealand events will not be antisemitic or violent as we've seen overseas where genocidal chants against Jews have been heard and Synagogues vandalised”.

Dr Cumin said that the protests were based on misinformation and misunderstandings about what Israel was actually going to do.

“It is concerning that there is so much misinformation being spread and many of the demands of the protest organisers are built on falsehoods”.

“Israel has a strong legal claim to the land ‘from the river to the sea’ but has made compromises to allow for a future Arab Palestinian state to be established”.

Dr Cumin said that Israel has made multiple offers to ‘swap’ land but that all of these offers have been rejected and Arab Palestinian leaders have refused to negotiate for more than a decade.

“Arab Palestinian leaders have rejected every proposal made, from the Arab leaders refusal to send a representative to the Paris Peace Accord in 1919 to the latest plan put forward by the United States”.

“Almost every respected set of peace plans has involved land swaps, in which Israel would keep the larger communities of Jews in Judea and Samaria and a future Arab Palestinian state would take parts of what is the land West of the 1949 armistice line”.

Dr Cumin said that there have been no concrete plans regarding what form any annexation would take – however, the very suggestion that there would be a unilateral move has apparently brought the Arab Palestinian leaders closer to the negotiating table.

“Israel made a unilateral move by forcibly removing Jews from Gaza in 2005 – if the threat of another move gets the Arab Palestinian leaders to the negotiating table that is something to be celebrated”.

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