Budget cuts being made by Israel’s Foreign Ministry have resulted in some drastic cutbacks at the Israeli Embassy in New Zealand.
As one caller recently learned, Israel’s ambassador to New Zealand, Ruth Kahanoff, now has to answer incoming phone calls herself.
Soon the cuts will go even further, and there will be no Israeli diplomatic mission in New Zealand, for the first time in 53 years.
New Zealand is home to approximately 5,000 Jews.
The embassy in the capital of Wellington is not alone in facing the budget knife.
Other missions slated to be closed include the embassies in Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Panama and Belarus, and consulates in Montreal, Rio de Janeiro, Marseille, France, and Sydney, Australia.
Kahanoff made no secret of her displeasure.
“The New Zealand government has already expressed its disappointment with the closure. There used to be four missions in the South Pacific area,” Kahanoff told JTA. “Now we will be reduced to one.”
She added: “It’s very sad.”
The closings will mean that the embassy in Canberra, Australia’s capital, will serve as Israel’s diplomatic hub for Australia, New Zealand and 14 Pacific island nations.
An Israeli trade office in Sydney is expected to remain open.
Officials in Sydney, the largest city in the southern Pacific region with a population of more than 4 million, likewise were saddened by news of the closings, which are slated to take place at the beginning of September.
The decision “will weaken Israel’s strength internationally and its links with the Jewish people worldwide,” Consul General Efraim Ben-Matityahu said. “I am sure the politicians fail to understand what we do. Israel will pay a huge price, and not a financial one, for these savings.”
In 1949, the consulate in Sydney was Australia’s first link to the fledgling Jewish state. It remained so until 1958, when Israel opened its embassy in Canberra.
Stanley Roth, federal president of the United Israel Appeal in Australia, had high praise for Ben-Matityahu, saying he has “done an outstanding job in handling every media crisis.
“We could never measure by money the value of what he has done in maintaining Israel’s P.R. in Sydney,” Roth said. “The costs saved will be heavily outvalued by the losses we will incur in the future by having no diplomatic representation in one of the most important cities in the area.”
In Canberra, Israeli Embassy spokesman Michael Ronen said, “It doesn’t make sense.”
Noting that the closings will result in savings of about $8.5 million, he said, “It’s very little compared with what will be lost in our relations with local governments, media and the Jewish people. Here in Canberra we will simply have to do more with what we have to ensure we do not weaken the communities.”
David Zwartz, president of the New Zealand Jewish Council, has written to Rabbi Michael Melchior, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, protesting the closing of the embassy there.
“Our loss will be your loss,” he wrote. “Our ability to advocate for Israel with the New Zealand government and people will be severely affected.”
His counterpart in Australia, Jeremy Jones, who is president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, wrote to Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to protest the Sydney closing.
“As Australia’s largest city, Sydney hosts a significant proportion of members of Parliament and many commercial concerns that have contact with Israel,” he wrote.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
