It has been October 7 for 123 days now. 123 days that our fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters have been stolen from us and held, battered and brutalised bargaining chips, in a subterranean hundreds of miles long network under Gaza…

And how were 14-year-olds Kiwi kids in rural New Zealand absorbing all these pro-terror and antisemitic talking points? My friends and I certainly weren’t inside any of the details of Cold War skirmishes at their age.

It wasn’t until I was in my early 40s that my father’s parents, Georg and Else Jottkowitz, were transformed in my mind from being his parents with little connection to me to becoming my grandparents, the grandparents whom I did not have the chance to meet.

Once my close companion
My snake hates me now
Smells my fear like rotten eggs
Hears my thoughts like nails on a chalkboard
Sees the tears welling in my eyes

“How are you?”, my Jewish friend asked. My response was much the same as it has been since Oct 07, especially with fellow Jews: “You know. Coping. You?” It’s almost two months on and we’re still just coping.

Juliet Moses reflects on Israel’s 75th year and how this tiny beleaguered state has survived and indeed thrived, despite the unprecedented challenges it has faced since its establishment. It was also a time to think about the challenges that lie ahead.

They add to history’s long list of codewords like Christ-killers, poisoning of wells, usury, and racial purity, that legitimise the dehumanisation and massacre of Jews. Yet, it is they who have lost their humanity.

It is absolutely right and appropriate for people to show concern about the plight of the Palestinians, and hope for peace in the region. But to do so without a parallel empathy for how we, as Jews, are suffering is ignorant at best, and cruel at worst.

Rabbi Maayan Turner tells how the wearing of a t-shirt led to an uncomfortable conversation with a neighbour. However, the message from the Torah to “love your neighbour as yourself” still holds true even in a time of war.

Juliet Moses described the Museum’s actions as a “betrayal”, which had further hurt the Jewish community. NZ’s Holocaust Foundation said the Museum’s apology for expressing solidarity with Israel in the wake of the worst slaughter and atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust was shameful.

All of Israel’s citizens, meanwhile, whether Jews or Arabs or other minorities are equal before the law, irrespective of any racial or ethnic differences.

One concept that I've started to get to terms with is ahi kā, that literally translates to the burning of fires. Ahi kā speaks to the continuous occupation of whenua by iwi, runanga and hapu over a long period of time.

The scare of the day: staff and students at Diocesan School for Girls received an email inviting them to participate in meetings to express their solidarity with Palestine.

Zamir Shatz-Stewart grew up in Horowhenua. But he moved to his father’s homeland of Israel as a young adult. He spoke to Aaron Smale about waking on October 7th to another chapter in the nation’s violent history.

If the press is to avoid having blood on its hands it must be very careful not to inflame a very volatile situation and go down in history as causing a pogrom.

Esther Jilovsky’s 2015 book “Remembering the Holocaust” is highly pertinent to helping us better understand the effects of the Holocaust on our immediate families and on future generations.

Antisemitism globally is displaying an alarming upward trend, a trend that is coincidental with, and likely lubricated and accelerated by, increasing polarization within western style democracies. The latter is a phenomenon from which Israel is not exempt.

‘Gefilte Fish’ was first published in ‘Mixed Blessings: New Zealand Children of Holocaust Survivors Remember’. This is one of a series of fictionalised short stories inspired by the lives of Helen Schamroth’s parents, Martha and Feliks Ash.

CLAIRE BRUELL speaks about the experience of being a child of Holocaust survivors who found refuge in New Zealand. Her memories are linked with the smells which came from her mother’s kitchen. It is a memory which also has led her to delve into the past in search of vestiges of a former way of life, peopled with ghosts, now vanished.

In 1999, with refugees arriving in New Zealand from other European wars, I thought about dad's arrival 60 years before. He always found New Zealand an empty, lonely place, and of course he also had the ghosts of his family members who did not survive the war.