The attack “was believed to be the worst anti-Semitic desecration at a cemetery in New Zealand” noted the Associated Press on August 6. It was the second such attack within a month. Three weeks earlier 16 historic Jewish graves in the Bolton Street cemetery in Wellington had been targeted. At both sites the vandals gouged swastikas into the ground.

The outrage that greeted the attacks coincided with ongoing controversy over two other issues. One was a rift between the New Zealand and Israeli governments following the jailing here of two alleged agents of the Israeli secret police for attempting to fraudulently obtain New Zealand passports. The other was the government’s announcement that it will ban a planned visit in September by David Irving, an anti-Semitic agitator based in Britain.

No one has claimed responsibility for either act of desecration. One week after the second attack, the New Zealand Herald announced that police had “refused to comment on a report that they have arrested a Wanganui skinhead and National Front member” in connection with both the August 5 desecration and with “race-related attacks alleged by a Wellington group of Somalis in June.” Wanganui is a city about 120 miles from Wellington. The jailed man denied any involvement in the cemetery attack.

A leader of the National Front (NF) described the man as “an NF member, not of very high standing at the moment.”

Front leaders have raised the profile of the group recently with public statements and actions that have included a picket in June outside the Chinese embassy in Wellington opposing plans for a “free trade” agreement between the governments of New Zealand and China. Attempting to dress up their chauvinism in populist demagogy, the ultrarightists held signs calling for “Jobs for New Zealand workers.”

The National Front has a small number of cadre in several cities. Larger rightist groups include the New Zealand First party, which has 13 members of parliament (MPs), Christian Heritage, and Destiny New Zealand.

Most capitalist media and politicians here have portrayed the attacks as the work of a “lunatic fringe,” as the headline of an editorial in the August 10 New Zealand Herald put it. The same day parliament passed a resolution unanimously condemning the attacks and voted to send it to Tel Aviv. Michael Cullen, the finance minister and acting government leader during a trip overseas by Prime Minister Helen Clark, said he hoped that the vandalism was “the work of an isolated crank or cranks.” He described anti-Semitism as “evil and irrational, though sadly deep-seated in European culture.”

Gerald Brownlee, the deputy leader of the opposition conservative National Party, dubbed the attacks “idiotic acts of hate” and complained that they had “badly damaged New Zealand’s reputation overseas.”

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters joined the parliamentary chorus of condemnation, saying that the Jewish people “are entitled to be respected.” One Jewish student from the United States living in Wellington told radio reporters that Peters’s rightist demagogy had contributed to the climate that made such attacks possible.

The Palestine Human Rights Campaign in Wellington issued a statement deploring the “reported desecration of Jewish graves” and condemning “all forms of racism.” The Wellington City Council is footing the bill for rebuilding the prayer chapel and the gravesites at Makara.

On August 15, some 120 opponents of the anti-Semitic attacks attended a public meeting in Wellington to condemn the desecrations and plan an anti-racist protest in response to a National Front march scheduled for October 23. National Front supporters picketed the meeting, carrying “Free Palestine” placards in an attempt to dress up the group’s anti-Semitism in the garb of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. Following the earlier attack at the Bolton Street cemetery, more than 200 people had gathered at the site to express their outrage, reported Wellington’s Dominion Post. Rabbi Anthony Lipman and David Zwartz addressed the crowd.

Referring to the revelations about the activities of Tel Aviv’s alleged agents, Lipman told reporters that “he made no connection between the Israeli men sentenced in Auckland yesterday and the smashing of the headstones,” the Post said.

Zwartz, who is both the president of the New Zealand Jewish Council and the honorary consul of the Israeli government, took a different tack, telling National Radio that he had “no doubt the action was connected to the passport case.”

“I think there is a direct connection” between the government’s “very strong expressions against Israel and people here feeling that they can take it out on Jews,” Zwartz stated. “It seems to me that it’s Israel bashing one day, Jew bashing the next day.”

Prime Minister Helen Clark denied that the diplomatic rift between her government and Tel Aviv was driven by anti-Semitism. According to the July 29 Herald, the inter-government dispute spilled into the public arena after officials initially conducted behind-the-scenes negotiations following the apprehension in March of Eli Cara and Uriel Kelman, who were “caught trying to obtain a passport in the name of a disabled New Zealander.” The Auckland daily claimed that the talks came to an abrupt end “once the two alleged Mossad agents were charged with criminal actions and the scandal was exposed by the Herald.”

Both men were sentenced to six months in jail August 7, after pleading guilty to charges of passport fraud. Subsequently Clark announced the suspension of high-level contacts between the two governments. “The New Zealand government views the act carried out by the Israeli intelligence agents as not only utterly unacceptable but also a breach of New Zealand sovereignty and international law,” she said.

The anti-Semite David Irving, who styles himself an historian of World War II, depicted the New Zealand government’s action as a blow for his cause. “Prime Minister Helen Clark seems to have balls,” he said approvingly. After first suggesting that “disordered” members of the Jewish community could be responsible for the attacks on the graves, Irving claimed “it could have been driven by the Israeli spy agency, Mossad,” the Herald said August 11.

Irving has been invited to speak in September at a meeting organized by the National Press Club, a private association. “I received a very nice invitation from New Zealanders to come and speak and I will honor that invitation,” he said. Officials of the Immigration Service said that Irving would be excluded from entering the country because he had previously been deported from Canada.

Zwartz congratulated the government for its action in banning the rightist speaker.

National Press Club president Peter Isaac, however, said, “We want to hear this man directly, find out about him and how he holds those views.” Green Party member of parliament Keith Locke also protested the banning, saying that it “sets a bad precedent for free speech in this country.”

Felicity Coggan, the Communist League candidate in the September elections for mayor of Auckland, said in a statement August 16 that “the government’s ban on Irving's visit fosters illusions that capitalist regimes can be relied on to block the development of rightist figures and movements. In reality, capitalism is the source of scapegoating of Jews and of the reactionary movements that promote Jew hatred.”

Irving “has nothing to say of interest to working people,” Coggan said. “Instead of looking to the government to ban him, we should protest every time he and his like speak in public and expose their lies—just as the labor movement should mobilize to condemn the desecration of the Jewish graves in Wellington, and demand that those responsible be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We should do the same with each and every act of Jew hatred, which is deadly poison for the working class.”  
 
 
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