Saturday 23 March 2019

Goodbye New Zealand





“To live in New Zealand” is the name of a song praising and glorifying life in New Zealand, written and performed by a Yisraeli group called “Ethnix.” It is a dream of many, I am told. I guess I am one of the lucky ones who lived to fulfill that dream. It lasted ten years. It had good moments and not so good ones.

What we see New Zealand transforming into these days is, I guess, what I would categorize as the “not so good ones.” Already then (mid 1990’s to mid-2000), I could see the buds of what New Zealand has turned into nowadays. In a way, I am glad I no longer live there.

The red light for me was turned on following the terror attacks on 9/11. In their aftermath, many members of the Muslim faith were attacked, unjustly, I might add, simply because the attacks were carried out by Muslims.

We, members of the Canterbury Hebrew Congregation, immediately enlisted ourselves to a campaign to support New Zealand Muslims. We issued a statement of support and embraced the Christchurch Muslim Community. So did other groups. Among them, were lecturers of the Canterbury University in Christchurch where I was teaching at the time.

Towards that goal, we set up a group on campus, which was entitled, “The Coalition for Justice and Understanding,” a euphemism for an effort to bash America and Yisrael, if you ask me. Some even dared to admit to me, knowing full well that I am a proud American citizen, that America “deserved” 9/11.

Let me interject here that Canterbury University, as I mentioned before, had already been infected with anti Yisrael sentiments spread by some lecturers (https://wingnsonawildflight.blogspot.com/2017/12/time-to-drain-university-swamps.html). I remember the time when Dr. Josef Olmert, a Yisraeli lecturer, visited the campus and partook in a panel where he brilliantly responded to each of their attacks. Following the panel, he asked me, “How can you work with such a hostile faculty staff?”  The fertile ground was already there for the fruition of what we witness today.

During one of our meetings, the aforementioned Coalition decreed to petition to America not to enter Afghanistan for various reasons which I will spare the readers. I objected. I thought that it would have been wiser to turn first to Afghanistan and ask its leaders to extradite Osama bin Laden rather than let the architect and perpetrator of such a crime against innocent people go on free to carry out more. My suggestion was mocked and brushed off as futile and a waste of time. I accused those present of appeasement. “Yes,” I recall retorting at them, “blame the victim and let the criminal get away with murder.”

What upset me most about some of the expressions then, though, was that one lecturer, a Pakistani woman, a very intelligent one, responded to my mention of Auschwitz as one of the lessons that helped shape my life with the following, “The ovens of Auschwitz are cold.” Imagine saying that to a daughter of two Shoah survivors???? Some “justice and understanding,” Eh?

The greatest shock, however, came several months or about a year later when the Christchurch Mosque opened a new wing. The Chairman of its Board, Ibrahim, with whom I had good relations, invited two members of the Canterbury Hebrew Congregation for its house warming. I was one of them.

After we were greeted by the Imam, whom I also knew and with whom I jointly partook in “Interfaith” events, the two of us walked around the mosque. The amount of anti-semitic publications laid out on the tables was shocking. We left with much disgust and a vow to never set foot there again or communicate with any of its Board members.

I could burden you, dear readers, with more examples, all pointing towards one direction. New Zealand was slowly but surely paving its way to its own destruction, to an oblivion that threatens to drown it, its beauty and anyone’s dream to go live “on a green island in a faraway ocean,” as the lyrics of the song by Ethnix submit.

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