Is Don Carson's Attack on Kosher Slaughter Politically Motivated?

Don Carson

Prominent New Zealand activist/journalist, Don Carson is an implacable enemy of Israel.

His latest line of attack on both Israel and Judaism comes through his acting CEO position in New Zealand Islamic Meat Management, a Halal (Muslim) certifier for the New Zealand meat export industry.

New Zealand's new animal welfare code, which took effect Friday 28th May, mandates that all animals for commercial consumption be stunned prior to slaughter This means that Kosher Slaughtering (Shechita) can not be legally performed in New Zealand.

This has understandably upset many in New Zealand's small Jewish community and has sparked a campaign to overturn the law. Many Jews feel that this ban will discourage Jewish immigration to New Zealand and may even lead some of our existing population to leave.

Strangely, Don Carson felt compelled to weigh into the debate

In an op-ed in The Dominion post of December 9 2010; entitled Religious obligation should not extend to painful animal slaughter, Carson wrote;

It is nonsense to threaten that a ban on Shechita slaughter, as currently practised, imperils the future of the Jewish community here. An insistence on causing severe distress to animals is an extraordinarily narrow foundation of ethnic identity.

Why did Don Carson believe he needed to attack Shechita practices? Why did he enter a debate that is on the face of it, none of his concern?

Is Carson's attack on Shechita, really motivated by animal welfare considerations, or is there something more sinister at play here? Is he, in actual fact attacking New Zealand's Jewish community for political reasons?

Don Carson's background may give some clues to his current position.

All through the 1970s and 1980s Don Carson was very close to the Maoists of the Wellington Marxist-Leninist Organization and its successor, the Workers Communist League. The Maoists were militantly anti-Israel and very pro-Palestinian and effectively ruled student politics in the capital for many years.

In 1976 Carson, representing the NZ university Students association, put a motion at the Thailand meeting of the Maoist dominated Asian Students Association that Israel be expelled from the organization.

On August 12 1982, Don Carson from the Wellington Palestine Committee, addressed a meeting of the Maoist-dominated "aid agency" CORSO in Wellington, where he condemned the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. By 1985 Carson was active in the still existing Wellington Palestine Group, an organization dominated by Maoists, some pro-Soviet communists and radical Muslims. Carson, representing the W.P.G.  spoke at the communist-instigated South Pacific Conference for Peace & Justice in Central America 18-19 July 1987 in "Wellington on South Africa and Israel as props for dictatorships".

Wellington Palestine Group demonstration

In the early 1990s Carson regularly appeared on New Zealand TV promoting  the anti-American line during  the first Gulf War. On August  13, 1990 he was Interviewed in the pro-Soviet Socialist Unity Party's Tribune newspaper on the Gulf crisis. "Don Carson, who has an active and long term interest in the Middle East, discussed the history of Iraq with Tribune."

In 1996 Don Carson addressed  the far left Victoria University Human Rights Group on his recent visit to Palestine.

By the 2000s Carson was very close to the Anti Capitalist Alliance/NZ Workers Party, another militantly pro-Palestine Marxist-Leninist organization.

In 2002, over  Labour Weekend, Carson spoke to the Anti Capitalist Alliance national educational and organizational weekend on US policy in Middle East, as  "leading member of the Wellington Palestine Group". Carson also spoke on "Palestine human rights" at the Workers Party's Marxism 2007 conference in Auckland.

On September 12, 2009 Don Carson and Mike Walker of the Workers Party addressed a Victoria University screening of a documentary on the life of infamous Palestinian terrorist Laila Khaled.

In my opinion, Don Carson views Israel as a major impediment to Palestinian/communist domination of the Middle East. Part of isolating and eventually destroying Israel is to turn Israel's allies against her.

New Zealand has long been a good friend of Israel, but we also have an huge halal meat trade with the Muslim world. Communist strategy is clearly to use our meat trade to orient us more towards the Arab world and away from Israel.

If New Zealand's Jewish community can be demoralized, or even partially driven out of the country, it will be much easier to orient New Zealand's foreign policy away from Israel and towards the Muslim world.

Carson does have some experience in these tactics. In the early 1970s he was active in the successful Maoist campaign to make New Zealand abandon Taiwan and recognize the Chinese communists as the legitimate government of China.

In March 1976, as International Vice-president of the New Zealand University Students Association, Carson was telegraphed by the acting head of the Asian division of the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who stated that Taiwan would be henceforth regarded as a province of Mainland China.

Don Carson is motivated by animal welfare?

Yeah right.