The Māori view on Palestine
The opening week of Parliament saw passionate statements from both sides of the house on the government motion on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Labour MP Willie Jackson not only made clear his position on the question, but went further, claiming ownership of the Māori view on Palestine. Barely concealing his contempt, Jackson dismissed the views of hundreds of Māori who had rallied at Parliament in support of Israel. Many of “the Destiny lot”, as he called them, are in fact men and women who have turned away from abuse and dysfunction, to pursue wholesome and clean lives, living as caring parents and good citizens. They have chosen to stand with Israel for reasons of faith and alignment with values of civilisation and freedom. Thousands of Māori support Israel for the same reasons. Indeed, some Iwi have long histories of such support. In recent years, one Ngapuhi kaumatua organized several hui for Israeli ambassadors, attended by a large number of supporters. The Māori queen Dame Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu had great affection for Israel and hosted Israeli ambassadors. Further, many of the Māori prophetic movements that arose in the 19th century and early 20th centuries, including Ringatū, Iharaia, Pai Marire, the Parihaka movement, and Ratana, were inspired by the biblical Israelites and even emulated many of their religious practices. The bones of some of our tāne lie in Israel, where they fought and died to help free the land from Ottoman oppression.
Yet, according to Jackson, the true Māori response was “not what you see outside”. He insists that “Māori are very much in support of the Palestinian people, always have been, always will be.” In one sense I need not dispute that. Every Israel supporter I know, Māori or otherwise, cares about the plight of the Palestinians. However, most recognise that the greatest problem in their lives is not Israel, but their own corrupt, genocidal leadership.
What Jackson really espouses appears not to be support for Palestinians but rather hatred of Israel. By naming Yassir Arafat and Fidel Castro as “heroes” of Māori, we learn more about Jackson and his ilk than the issue at hand. Arafat was a mass murderer and arch-terrorist, responsible for hundreds of bombings, hijackings, assassinations and other attacks, including the 1972 Munich murder of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes , the 1973 murder of the American ambassador to Sudan, and the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship (resulting in the murder of wheelchair-bound Jew Leon Klinghoffer). Even after he won the Nobel Peace prize (a strange choice indeed), he continued to incite, direct and fund terrorism. He launched the second intifada in which hundreds of Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, were murdered in suicide bombings, ultimately leading to the erection of the infamous security fence.
As for Jackson’s other “hero”, how many of his followers know that Fidel Castro established a one-party state, commonly understood to be a vicious totalitarian regime? Under Castro, hundreds of supporters of the Batista government were executed, political opponents were imprisoned and the independent media suppressed. Thousands of Cubans fled into exile. When Jackson lionizes these “heroes” and then warns of Māori “going to war”, over new government policies, is this what he has in mind?
Jackson's “heroes” fit neatly with the propaganda of the Arab-Soviet alliance of the Cold War era. Indeed, the Soviets were master propagandists and developed a highly successful programme of “politically weaponized anti-Zionism”.
Research Fellow, Izabella Tabarovsky writes,
Many of the core tropes that animate the anti-Zionist left today are carbon copies of ideas that the KGB and the Department of Propaganda’s ideologues developed, weaponized, and popularized with particular intensity in the wake of the Six-Day War. It was most likely this latter stage of Soviet anti-Zionism that forged in popular consciousness on the far left false links between Zionism and Nazism, fascism, racism, genocide, settler-colonialism, imperialism, militarism, and apartheid.
The Soviet propaganda and disinformation campaign was exported globally and found a warm reception in the Middle East and in Aotearoa New Zealand. “It built and weaponized narratives based on made-up or twisted facts. It distorted history. It employed classic propaganda tools such as deception, guilt by association, and repetition to inculcate the key messages. It shamelessly played on people’s sentiments...” (Hazan 2017: 230-93).
This is an apt description of the dominant narrative of the Israel-Hamas conflict. It matters not that Israel completely left Gaza in 2005 - our Labour, Green and Māori Party MPs remain strident in their references to “occupation”. And who speaks of the offer made to Arafat in 2000: around 97 percent of the West Bank, all of Gaza and a capital in East Jerusalem? Arafat responded to the offer with a campaign of bus bombings.
Hamas’s Western apologists, like Jackson, Golriz Grahaman, Marama Davidson and Debbie Ngarewa Packer, seem unwilling to acknowledge that 75 years of Palestinian rejectionism has been the primary obstacle to a peaceful resolution. Palestinian leaders simply won’t agree to living in peace with a Jewish state. Why? They want the whole of the land, from the “river to the sea”. There is no room for living Jews, much less Jewish self-determination in indigenous ancestral lands. Yes Jews are the indigenous people of the land, with more than 3,000 years of continuous presence. It was in the regions of Judea (both Jew and Judea derive from Judah, one of the twelve sons of Israel) and Samaria that the unique indigenous features of the Jewish people arose; culture, language and religious practices.
Māori Party leader Debbie Ngarewa Packer also waxed lyrical in her propagation of Hamas propaganda. The lies, which included all the buzzwords - “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, even the false allegation that Israel is “using white phosphorous”, were breathtaking in their audacity.
It mattered not that Hamas broke a ceasefire, started a war that it knew would provoke a massive response. Hamas could have peace tomorrow if it cared about its people more than it hated Jews, if it laid down its weapons, renounced violence and released all hostages. Rather, it prefers to pursue its genocidal agenda to annihilate all Jews.
As for Willie Jackson, perhaps he should show some respect and empathy for his Jewish tupuna in view of the millennia of persecution that has been the universal experience of the Jewish people.
Jackson, Ngarewa-Packer and Davidson certainly do not own the Māori view on Palestine - there is no monolithic Māori view on any subject, nor should there be. But they demean Māori by standing on the side of barbarism and depravity and by continuing to mislead their constituency.