Muslim leader opposes cafe's refusal to serve Israelis

In reply to David Hore. Collective punishment is not a fair response to any nations actions.
Water in the region of the Middle East is a very expensive commodity. All Israelis pay dearly for their water. Nothing is free there. If only the terrorist groups would stop molesting the Israeli towns close to the border of Gaza, there would be no need for this type of military response. Gaza has been under self rule now for 8 years, but has never stopped firing rockets into Israel with intent to kill and destroy. Yes, Israel has been targeting known terrorist leaders and been blowing up attempts at tunneling, but apparently rightly so. Everyone in the region deserves to live in peace and not in pieces.

Zionists began buying up Palestinian land in the 1890's, with a policy of Jewish only tenants. Given an unfortunate tendency of other countries to periodically slaughter their people, the Jews understandably wanted some space of their own. The last two thousand years of history also made them very harsh to anyone else within their new borders, namely the Palestinians who were the unfortunate inhabitants at the time, a mixture of predomianantly Arab people since the Ottoman Empire. These same people were not consulted by the adjudicating Western mediators when the Jewish state was inaugurated.
According to some sources, there are many everyday Israeli injustices that aren't reported on in the Western world, one such being that Palestinians pay high prices for their water, for which Israelis pay nothing.
Another is that many Palestinians who need to leave for professional, business or academic reasons are barred from returning regardless of family ties.
The litany of hatred and retribution on both sides of the conflict could fill a website the size of Wikipedia. And while it seems obvious that Gaza is an excellent thorn in Israel's side for Egypt and Saudi Arabia (which could easily grant Palestinians citizenship, yet refuse to do so), what is clear is that no one is blameless.
It may reasonably be said that every nation with Jewish blood on their hands within the last 2,000 years indirectly contributed to this conflict, otherwise there would be no radical Zionist movement to ensure by force the survival of the Jewish people. Having said that, the Israelis have shown themselves just as capable as their aggressors with regards to inhumanity and injustice. It always comes down to land, money or religon.
Certainly the government should halt all trade with Israelis, perhaps even deny any Israeli visas to enter the country until the Palestinian people are allowed to live in their homelands unmolested. After all (to my limited understanding) the Israelis only had sovereignty over Israel for 500 years at the most.
However, are we to discriminate against Jewish people who have made New Zealand their home? And how will we know who they are when they step out for a coffee? Should we have them wear an armband?
And why do we make such a big deal about the Israelis when there are so many conflicts more deserving of our outrage? How many people have the Americans killed, disenfranchised, maimed or made homeless in the last fifty years? Yet they're still more than welcome in our cafes.

Fully agree with this letter. The trouble with this country is that we have taken PC to the extreme. The Government is sitting on the fence because they don"t want to upset the American Govt which is controlled fully by the Jewish vote. So if Govts can't do anything then the man or woman in the street have to do something. So congrats to those people who have made a public stand against jewish expansionism.

In reply to darkdecker29. Israel doesn't let the Palestinians access their old land as since 1948 and the UN agreement it's not theirs. Palestine is divided. There are a lot of cases where Israel is confiscating land over the 67 green line and this is wrong and should be dealt with by International court. Parts of Europe were divided up by the winners between themselves and still today causes displeasure amongst many of the affected parties. The Balkans being the latest. As Gwynne Dyer wrote in an article I saw, only when both sides agree to stop disagreeing will peace come to this area. The wounds on both sides are still very fresh and no one has had time for the healing process.

I agree with this person. Simply because if we New Zealanders can boycott the South African Rugby team, why can't we boycott serving civilians from a Apartheid regime like Israel. People in New Zealand don't actually know what goes on in the middle-east, and they are devoid of the issue because they never have to deal with it. Israel is a bullying entity in the middle-east hellbent on Regional Hegemony and Expansionism. I don't believe this is racism, he is not denying Jews to visit his cafe, he's denying Israelis. And to the first person who commented. The reason that lead the atrocities isn't racism or guilt, it's when a state want's to harvest more land from a indiginous population by destroying there homes and forcing them to live in a cage. That is why terrorism exists, it's because Israel colonizes, and murders Palestinian children

While it is human nature to feel anger over the human price of conflict in Gaza, it is something entirely different to refuse cafe service to anyone based on race - or some entirely personal belief of racial guilt. It's this kind of us and them thinking that leads to atrocities.

Are we still measuring craniums and taking culturally weighted IQ tests? When you keep in mind that all racial variances are encoded in less than 1% of our genetic inheritance, the Gaza strip starts looking as ridiculous as a racist cafe owner.

This response of a turkish muslem cafe owner is so small minded as to be pathetic.Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion ,but acting on them in this manner means that if he is a muslem he then should expect the whole world to refuse service to every muslem for all his muslem brothers of the fundamentalist varietys actions against western culture.Does he give discounts to anyone of armenian descent? Should we refuse service to all the german tourists that drop by?We are a democratic nation,there are legitimate ways of showing ones displeasure with the actions of another country.