John Minto: Mr Speaker On The Wrong Side Of History

Yesterday Parliament's Speaker Lockwood Smith entertained a delegation from Israel led by the Speaker of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) Reuven "Rubi" Rivlin.

In a media release Smith described the visit as an "opportunity to increase links between Kiwi and Israeli parliamentarians as part of a renewed relationship with Israel across many areas, as well as reciprocating the hospitality that Speaker Rivlin extended to me and my delegation in Israel last October".

Lockwood Smith is referring to his annual taxpayer-funded "junket" last year which took in Israel in a typically one-sided approach to Middle-East politics.

The warming of relations between New Zealand and Israel follows their cooling under the Labour government when an Israeli secret service agent was imprisoned for stealing the identity of New Zealanders to create fake passports with which Mossad agents could travel the world in our name generating murder and mayhem.

It also follows the near evangelical mood of Prime Minister John Key who in a recent television interview made it clear that recognition of Israel was the cornerstone of our Middle East policy. This was the reason Key gave for backing Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak against the millions of Egyptians who courageously took to the streets in January to oust their brutal dictator. Key backed the dictator against the peoples wish for democracy - a familiar pattern in New Zealand foreign policy as we follow the blind dictates of US interests.

In the case of Egypt the people had the last word against Mubarak and likewise the Palestinians will eventually also have the last word despite the warm relations between Lockwood Smith and the Israeli speaker who hails from the far-right Likud Party.

Last Sunday evening I attended a small but spirited protest against Rivlin outside the Auckland venue where he was addressing members of the Auckland Jewish Council and the Zionist Federation of New Zealand. The protest was part of the call for a boycott of Israel under the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign which is gathering momentum around the world and bringing pressure on Israel just as international sanctions against South Africa had an important impact in the struggle against apartheid.

Rivlin is an open advocate of the continuing theft of Palestinian land to establish Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land in defiance of international law. Last year Rivlin even acknowledged the fact that Israel itself was established through a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing.

For decades the Israeli government has been frantically attempting to rewrite history on this point. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs says Palestinians "abandoned their homes.at the request of Arab leaders". It is part of a more general claim that Israel provided "a land without people for a people without land" for exclusive Jewish settlement. This claim has been debunked by historians around the world many times, including eminent Jewish historians.

Rivlin in a few frank words did the debunking job better than anyone. He was angry at a group of Israeli artists who refused to perform in the huge settlement colony of Ariel when he said "I say to those who want to boycott - Deer Balkum ['beware' in Arabic] - those who expelled Arabs from En-Karem, from Jaffa, and from Katamon [in 1948..] lost the moral right to boycott Ariel."

Rivlin and his racist ideas are not welcome in New Zealand except by those whose own opinions see themselves often on the wrong side of history.

Lockwood Smith, the smiling quiz master from several decades ago, would seem to have relatively benign political views but the warm grin is misleading. For the record Lockwood Smith was the most recent National Party MP to refer to Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. He was wrong to defend South African apartheid then just as he is wrong to defend Israeli apartheid today.

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