Response – FIANZ Advisory: Unfolding genocide in Palestine

Juliet Moses – 18 January 2024

The New Zealand Jewish Council is aware of a press release that The Federation of Islamic Associations in New Zealand (FIANZ) has published in relation to its advisory document recently published.

While that advisory is rife with misinformation, conspiracy theories and inflammatory rhetoric, and misrepresents both the nature of the relationship and recent dealings between FIANZ and ourselves, we do not believe it is constructive to respond to it in detail.

However, we note that FIANZ purports in its press release to both define what is and isn’t antisemitism, and to comment on what the vast majority of Jews in Aotearoa New Zealand and overseas believe. We do not believe that FIANZ in any way has the right to determine what is and isn’t antisemitism, and we utterly reject their assertions about what the majority of Jews believe.

The Jewish Council is the national umbrella Jewish organisation. Its membership comprises of every Jewish religious congregation in the country, as well as the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand, various youth and student groups, and other charities.

Council spokesperson Juliet Moses notes that: “In the same way that FIANZ would not expect the Jewish Council to issue proclamations on what is and isn’t Islamophobia, what authority it has and what the vast majority of Muslims believe, we reject in the strongest possible terms its attempts to do so for our community. The vast majority of the Jewish community here and abroad support the right of Israel to continue to exist as the Jewish people’s homeland, as guaranteed by international law.”