ZFNZ Media Statement to comments made by Gorliz Ghahraman MP at recent anti-Israel rally in Auckland

11 April 2018

Media Statement

It is with dismay that at an anti-Israel rally on Saturday 7 April, that Greens MP Gorliz Ghahraman falsely accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinian Arabs. Ms Ghahraman came to New Zealand as a refugee from Iran and is well aware of that regime’s funding of terrorists groups like Hamas. Ms Ghahraman should also be aware that these so called ‘peace rallies’ are well instigated and planned by Hamas to cause as much violence behind the guise of a ‘peaceful protest’. Each Palestinian death is celebrated by Hamas and used in their ongoing media campaign against the world’s only Jewish State.

Ms Ghahraman in her speech at the Israel hate rally commented that as someone who was involved in legal cases in atrocity crimes” that Israel has committed “grossest of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and I would say genocide”. Perhaps one should remind Ms Ghahraman that she was on the defence team at the UN Tribunal on the Rwandan genocide, and lost. Perhaps one should remind Ms Ghahraman that genocide, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, means “the murder of a whole group of people, especially a whole nation, race or religious group”. If Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinian Arabs how is it that over the last decade alone the Palestinian population in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem has grown by 27% to 4.8 million, their infant mortality had decreased, and their current life expectancy is 75.01 years?

If Israel was attempting genocide against the Palestinians Arabs, they are clearly doing a very poor job at it, or maybe the reason that they are doing such a poor job is that the accusation is false and a blatant lie, one similar to the blood libels against Jews in years gone by. Perhaps Ms Ghahraman needs reminding that the grossest if atrocities in recent times have been the Holocaust against the Jews, the killing fields in Cambodia, the ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian Muslims and most recently what is happening today in Syria. To even compare Israel implicitly with these crimes against humanity shows a total lack of understanding as to what genocide and atrocities are, and are insulting to those whose families have been murdered in cold blood in these events.

It is disappointing that an elected MP would use her status to propagate such falsehoods. Maybe Ms Ghahraman feels she needs to now align herself more closely to Marama Davidson, the newly elected co-Leader of the Green Party, who herself has been very selective with her comments on Israel, often giving tacit support to the Hamas terrorist regime who are against everything the Greens’ stand for.

Ends.

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