Wellington Palestine Group Objects to Celebration of Violence

The Wellington Palestine Group will conduct a vigil outside Temple Sinai on 7 May to protest the Zionist Federation of New Zealand celebration of the founding of Israel.

The Zionist Federation is marking the creation of Israel in Palestine in May 1948. The Group says this celebration event is to glorify the military conquest of most of Palestine and the expulsion of most of its people. Palestinians know it as ‘Al Nakba’ – the Catastrophe.

Palestine Group spokesperson, Omar Khamoun, said most people are taught that Israel came into being because of a United Nations resolution and that ever since then Israelis have been fighting to exist.

“What the news media doesn’t tell people is that Israel came into being in a territory far greater than the UN had recommended, and that the new Israeli state booted most of the Palestinians out into the desert,” Omar Khamoun said.

“What is going on now, is that Israel is still settling more Palestinian land and its military in 60 years has never stopped killing Palestinians to allow this to happen.”

“It’s a disgrace that New Zealanders will be going to Temple Sinai on May 7. For a group of New Zealanders to celebrate foreign military forces carrying out daily human rights abuses, in defiance of international humanitarian, law is a slap in the face to the New Zealand public’s long standing tradition of supporting peace and human rights around the world.”

Omar Khamoun said that what compounded the outrage was that the celebration was taking place in a temple of worship, which he said is supposed to remain impartial in political conflicts.

“This is especially the case at a time when most of the international community is acutely aware of the medieval siege that the Israeli Army is committing in the Gaza Strip and the desperate situation its 1.5 million Palestinian population are in.”

Omar Khamoun concluded by stating that the Group refused the importation and celebration of the injustice inflicted on the Palestinian people in New Zealand and called on the community of Temple Sinai to desist from being accomplices to what he called the most enduring crime against humanity in the past century.

Vigil Details: Wednesday 7 May - 6:30 pm Mount Sinai Temple, 149 Ghuznee St

ends

© Scoop Media