New Zealand Official Apologizes For Publishing Map Excluding Israel
Image by Wikimedia Commons
SYDNEY (JTA) — New Zealand’s Minister for Immigration has written to the Israeli ambassador in Wellington apologizing personally for a map on a government website that showed a “Palestine,” but not Israel.
“I can assure you that the fact sheet did not reflect New Zealand Government policy,” Minister Iain Lees-Galloway said in the letter to Amb. Dr. Itzhak Gerberg. “The map was clearly inaccurate and did not label the State of Israel as it should.”
Lees-Galloway also wrote: “I apologize for the offense that has been caused and assure you immediate action has been taken to correct the situation.”
The fact sheet on the Immigration New Zealand, an official government website, which offered information about Palestinian immigrants to New Zealand, also identified East Jerusalem as “the designated capital of the State of Palestine.” There also was no mention of Palestinian terrorism, but information on the page said that Israel caused “massive repression of Palestinians” during the second intifada.
Following a barrage of complaints on social media, the web page was removed, though screenshots remain.
“This official paper of New Zealand incites hatred of the State of Israel as well as anti-Semitism,” Gerberg wrote earlier this week Lees-Galloway.
An INZ spokeswoman told the New Zealand Herald that the document was meant to give additional information about the humanitarian situation in Palestine and New Zealand’s refugee program.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
