New Zealand’s attempt to silence criticism of UNRWA funding

The Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ) has been raising serious concerns with New Zealand’s unconditional funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) since at least 2019. The evidence against UNRWA is damning, widely available, and has only gotten worse since October 7, 2023.

Yet, instead of engaging with the issues, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has denied or downplayed concerns, taken the petulant step of refusing to respond to our Official Information Act (OIA) requests, and has recently made complaints to the New Zealand Police and Netsafe – a national online safety agency mandated to hear complaints before they reach court – about our public criticism of how they have continued to fund an agency with proven ties to the October 7 massacre, Hamas, and terrorism.

The Ministry alleges senior officials have suffered “harm” - legally defined as “serious emotional distress” - because IINZ has criticized their decisions with publicly available evidence that includes the Ministry’s own documents released under OIA.

Netsafe was established to handle cases of serious online bullying or scams against vulnerable people. They have suggested that a senior Ministry official has suffered “ongoing harm” from a single mention of their name in an article published in 2020, even though not a single complaint was filed in the 48 months the Ministry official claims to have been in distress.

Moreover, Netsafe could not specify what was allegedly “false or misleading” in the article. They suggested there was “other harm” because of a link that goes “to somewhere” also naming the Ministry staffer. The link in the article leads to documents released by the Ministry under OIA. No one can explain why a senior official seeing such material publicized would be so egregiously “harmed.”

Four senior Ministry staff have also claimed to have suffered “stress,” “reputational harm,” and “concern for their safety” because they had been named alongside legitimate criticism of their decisions on more than one occasion. They are all named on the Ministry website, in government press releases, and in documents released under the OIA. A Netsafe representative said, “It’s a bit different having your name posted on Twitter and not knowing when it’s going to happen and how it’s going to be said.”

When it was suggested that, while it might be nice for senior civil servants to only be praised in public, it wasn’t so great for democracy, the Netsafe representative responded, “Yeah, that’s fair.” So maybe there is hope that reason will prevail after all.

Nevertheless, it appears – more than a little ironically – that Netsafe is willfully participating in vexatious litigation by senior government officials who do not want to be held accountable for their decisions and actions.

If they could justify funding UNRWA, they wouldn’t need to employ these oppressive tactics. They could simply present evidence to refute our claims. Instead, they’ve avoided constructive engagement and resorted to intimidation.

The Ministry’s actions are particularly hypocritical given New Zealand’s proud commitment to human rights and our high rating in indices of democracy. Our country champions opposition to extremism, yet officials recommend funding UNRWA schools that glorify terrorism and promote violent antisemitism. We doubt our civil servants would have continued funding the UNRWA schools if they glorified the 2019 Christchurch mosque terror attacks rather than the massacre of Israelis. And we doubt our fellow citizens would be proud to know that their taxes are supporting an agency with connections to antisemitic and terrorist actions and beliefs.

The attempts of Ministry officials to censure criticism of their decisions to fund UNRWA have now become a larger issue about transparency and accountability in government. New Zealanders deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent and whether those funds are supporting the basic democratic values we claim to hold dear.

Dr David Cumin is a co-director of the Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ).