A coalition of Jewish groups have written an open letter to the Prime Minister condemning his decision to meet with the NZ Jewish Council this coming week. The NZ Jewish Council does not represent the diversity of Jewish voices in Aotearoa. In particular, their spokesperson Juliet Moses’ extremist views on Israel are increasingly out of step with the broader Jewish community’s views. The Jewish Council’s proposals are divisive, contrary to New Zealand’s human rights framework, and ignore the rights of other ethnic minorities in Aotearoa.

“The NZ Jewish Council is not a representative group and is completely unaccountable to the Jewish community. Juliet Moses, their current president, has broadcast her intention to silence Jews who dissent from her increasingly extreme positions. How many members of the Jewish community would choose a representative who defended Elon Musk’s Nazi salute at the US presidential inauguration?” says Marilyn Garson, Alternative Jewish Voices co-founder. 

“There is nothing essentially Jewish about Zionism. Zionism is a project of colonisation, erasure, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and finally, of genocide. In this country, the Jewish Council has been a leading voice in the campaign to confuse the Zionist project with Judaism. The Jewish Council is both enabling the Israeli brutality that we witness every day and making New Zealand Jews less safe,” says Marilyn Garson. 

“We are concerned that the Jewish Council may be proposing special measures to combat antisemitism. From what we have observed in other countries, these anti-Semitism measures are generally weaponised to try to protect Israel from criticism by other governments. They are also used to suppress the free speech of people protesting the Israeli state’s criminal activities. Special protections distract from our shared mahi of antiracism. They are also misused against Muslim and Palestinian communities, who have lost far more to racism in Aotearoa in recent years,” says Philippa Yasbek, spokesperson for Dayenu: NZ Jews Against Occupation.

OPEN LETTER:

An open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon:

Tēnā koe, Prime Minister,

We are Jewish New Zealanders, members of Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu: New Zealand Jews Against Occupation. We understand that your office has scheduled a meeting this week with the NZ Jewish Council (NZJC) and additional ministers. We object in the strongest terms. The NZJC is an unelected coterie, forever and uncritically aligned with Israel. That is not the Jewish community.
 

We have documented in depth that the NZJC is not representative. They are not elected. Their constitution outlines a regional structure for indirect democracy, but much of that structure does not seem to exist. They are not accountable to the community. Their president has broadcast her intention to ‘disempower as much as possible’ Jews like Alternative Jewish Voices (AJV) members who ‘raise their voices’.

Several of us attended the Wellington Regional Jewish Council’s last community meeting, in 2021. The meeting roundly disavowed the Jewish Council’s tone and their relentless focus on Israel. Indeed, the NZJC’s constitution does not even mention Israel or Zionism. The Wellington Regional Jewish Council dissolved itself after that meeting, acknowledging that they have no community mandate. They haven’t been heard from since. So much for regional representation.

Through public and private channels, members of the Jewish community have repeatedly asked the NZJC to embrace some positive, rights-based vision of the future. Instead, through Israel’s 15-month ‘plausible genocide’ in Gaza, the NZJC’s militarism has only become more overt. Juliet Moses was to share a platform with IDF head of infantry doctrine Yaron Simsolo at an Auckland event in March, until objections drove Simsolo’s session offsite.

This is not solely an issue for the Jewish community. For years, we have protested that the Jewish Council’s related Community Security Group shares politically slanted information about New Zealanders with Israel’s embassy. They interpret objections to Israel’s occupation as a security threat to the New Zealand Jewish community, and they share their views of individual Palestinian, Muslim and other New Zealanders with a regime accused of genocide against Palestinians. This creates particular risk for Palestinian New Zealanders, should they ever travel to Israel or the Occupied Territories to visit family and whānau.

Let us say this clearly: there is nothing essentially Jewish about Zionism. Zionism is a project of colonisation, erasure, apartheid, ethnic cleansing—finally, of genocide. Institutions that wrap their nationalism in our Jewishness are shielding the brutality that we witness daily. In this country, the NZJC has been a leading voice in the campaign to confuse Jewish with Zionist, enabling decades of oppression in our names.

The NZJC does not serve, represent, or account to the Jewish community. How many Jewish New Zealanders would choose a representative who, like NZJC president Juliet Moses, retweets defenses of Elon Musk’s Nazi salute?

The NZJC is an extremist voice. Their politics are harmful, and their actions jeopardise the good standing of Jews in Aotearoa. We protest in the strongest terms that Israel’s advocates are being given Prime Ministerial access.

It’s not hard to guess what the NZJC will be asking for: some special “antisemitism regime” that uses our Jewish identity to shield Israel from the directives of the International Court of Justice. They will be asking to divorce the Jewish community from our shared mahi of antiracism and our human rights framework. They will be seeking some exceptional status, suppressing principled protest for Palestinian rights and the criminal accountability of Israeli leaders. That conversation should not take place without representation from the Muslim and Palestinian communities. They are the New Zealanders whose voices are being silenced, and frankly they are the communities who have lost the most to racism in recent years.

Prime Minister, any meeting with the NZJC ought to be recorded in the ministerial diaries as a session with Israel’s ambassadors. And damn it, they will be doing it in our name. We are also the New Zealand Jewish community, and we are so tired of being used this way.

We would like to join your meeting with the NZJC, bringing Jewish diversity into the room. If you will not open this meeting to the real breadth of the Jewish community, then we wish to schedule a second meeting, which includes Muslim and Palestinian representation. We work closely with the Muslim and Palestinian communities in Aotearoa, modelling the change that we would like to see in the Middle East.

Hear us out before you act.

Alternative Jewish Voices, and
Dayenu: New Zealand Jews Against Occupations

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