What kind of Holocaust Centre cannot stand with others to stop all the slaughter? Why can its director not join us in condemning all the hatred that licenses ethnic violence?
The NZ Holocaust Centre has chosen to dedicate itself to the particular – to one community’s losses – rather than joining others to stop all genocidal crimes. Such an institution forfeits its relevance. It becomes (in the sterile, dustiest sense of the word) merely a museum. The present-tense mandate to stop genocidal crimes in progress, to rescue those still alive and judge those accused of the genocide, falls to civil society. And we accept.
The Holocaust Centre director is unable or unwilling to distinguish ‘Jewish’ from Israel, or protest from antisemitism. These are dusty museum pieces of rhetoric; evidence of (to borrow the director’s word) lazy thinking.
It is not antisemitic to object to crimes that happen to be committed by Jews. If I get a parking ticket, that is an offense committed by a Jew. It does not make the traffic warden antisemitic.
There is racism, and then there is protest speech which upholds the full and unequivocal rights of Palestinians among all people. The organisations which lead protest in Aotearoa have stated and restated that antisemitism is not welcome. In addition to being harmful in itself, anti-Jewish racism misdirects action and leaves the actual underpinnings of Israel’s illegal occupation and plausible genocide intact.
Per the standard Zionist formulation, the only reason to protest Israel’s genocidal violence is an anti-Jewish pathology. Nonsense: there is plenty of reason to be angry and the Holocaust Centre should be standing with us in our outrage; standing up against both racism and genocide.
To the Holocaust Centre,
We who protest do not hold you responsible for Israel’s actions. We distinguish Jewish from Israel. We hold you responsible for your silence in the face of the heinous crimes your institution exists to memorialise. You forfeit the high ground of memory when you are indifferent to the wasting of other lives.
We demand that our government must live up to Aotearoa’s international commitments, and act to protect the people who are being slaughtered by the government and armed forces of Israel—crimes against humanity. Why don’t you join us in that call?
We worry about racism. We see it here, and we see its naked, deadly consequence daily in Palestine. Can you not see the need for education regarding that racism?
Antisemitism, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate; can you not join us in condemning all of the racism? That is how we will roll it back—together. We are each others’ best protection, but no single group will be safe in isolation from the others.
Fred Albert and Marilyn Garson (co-founders, Alternative Jewish Voices)
Written for the Ha’aretz (paywalled) December magazine. We agreed that I would also post it here, with minor revisions. The sound of Aotearoa’s Palestine solidarity carries far – Marilyn Garson
Image: Teirangi Klever
“We can hate some of their actions and see them as very wrong, but we recognise that most of them thought they were coming to a land without a people when they came—and they found that people were already living here. They were fed a colonising narrative.“
Palestine? No. Dr. Catherine Love (descended from Te Atiawa, Taranaki and Ngāti Ruanui) is instead discussing the colonial experience of Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa / New Zealand.
Love is grandmotherly in the way of elders who have stood on many front lines. Around 2014, UNICEF hired her to assess the wellbeing of Palestinian children. “Every time, every Palestinian individual we spoke with; it connected at a really visceral level. As I learned more about Palestine, I could see the colonisation process. I could see the parallels with what had happened to our ancestors, and is still happening to us in a different way. It was total identification from the soul… [T]he media are biased and present the Israeli-American narratives as if they’re true. But we are also familiar with that as Māori: dehumanising representations of ourselves.”
Te Otāne Huata (Ngāti Kahungunu) is animated and certain at 34. He studied history in a curriculum that was “very much an Israel-leaning or -supporting perspective.” It failed to explain why Palestinians should pay “for the sins of the Nazis.” When he saw Israel’s 2014 bombardment of Gaza, Te Otāne probed that narrative more deeply. He concluded, “I’m actually being taught that my superheroes are the villains.”
Te Otāne lives in the town of Hastings (population 52,000), which is scarcely larger than his Instagram following of 45,500. Yet he finds it essential to stand and wave the Palestinian flag at 1:30 every Sunday afternoon, in front of the Hastings town clock. “Regardless of whether we get 1000 people or whether we get twenty people, we will continue to stand in solidarity. When you throw those intentions into the universe, you are literally changing the fabric of the universe itself… Tino rangatiratanga means ultimate authority, sovereignty over your land and your waters. Those concepts are definitely applicable to other Indigenous communities. It’s about collective liberation… People like to say, ‘Worry about your own back yard.’ When we’re standing in solidarity with Palestine, we are worried about our own back yard.”
Te Otāne Huata (Image: Putaanga Waitoa)
At weekly flag waving gatherings in villages and towns up and down the country, the symbols of Māori sovereignty mingle with those of Palestine. The campaign for Palestinian rights is widely understood as an anticolonial movement. By bringing Māori experience to bear on Palestine, Aotearoa’s campaign has acquired a distinct voice.
It took shape on October 23, 2023, as around 800 people leaned into gale-force winds and dodged flying placards on the Pōneke / Wellington waterfront. They had assembled to hear Māori, Jewish and Muslim speakers make spiritual commitments to work together under the banner: Justice the Seed, Peace the Flower.
Nadia Abu-Shanab, a veteran organiser with the human rights group Justice for Palestine, recalls their intentions. “It’s worth understanding the way that people have already organised here for generations. Māori have deployed… strategic political strategies and insights on how you move through things and how you change things.”
Knowing that a new era had begun, Justice for Palestine chose “to have mana whenua open this space: the Māori who have the authority because this is their ancestral local area… We were able to open the space on the land in a way that respected the history of the land with integrity… [Our vigil] demonstrated how we wanted to move forward: together in solidarity between the Indigenous people of this land, Jews, Palestinians and all peoples. That came through. I feel like it distinguished my experience of the year from the experience that many other people have narrated to me from different places.”
As the Jewish speaker that day and on other days since, I have also felt our gatherings channel outrage into something more aspirational. Pōneke / Wellington is a capital city of 215,000 in a remote country of 5 million. Our vision has greater impact than our volume.
Māori bring more than just the long-sightedness of Indigenous resistance to Palestine. Te Tiriti o Waitangi / the Treaty of Waitangi, Aotearoa’s constitutive document, offers an actionable vision of co-existence.
For Abu-Shanab, Te Tiriti extends “an invitation… to consider how two peoples might live together on a land where one people is Indigenous, and other people arrive. We can belong here together. Equality isn’t in the smashing of those differences. It isn’t in a domination of one people over another, but nor is it that we don’t have the right to live here. That is a bit of an invitation for the world… The idea of Indigenous rights doesn’t preclude other people being able to live on that land. It requires a responsibility from people who arrive, to honour the self-determination of the people who already live there.”
Abu-Shanab navigates freely from here to there and back again. Indigenous to Palestine, she dismisses Israel’s “supremacist justifications; [its] claim of the Jewish need for safety while Palestinians do not need safety or self-determination.” In Aotearoa, she advocates from privilege. “All it requires is that we honour Māori self-determination, and then we have a really honourable and dignified way to live here.”
Dr Cath Love (Image: Teirangi Klever)
Tau iwi / non-Māori New Zealanders who know that our society and our rights derive from this invitation, are known as Tangata Te Tiriti / people of the treaty. Our status reminds us that collective liberation is not safely remote. It involves us. The framework of tikanga Māori / values approximating a system of law, then shapes a method of acting.
Dr Love enumerates the elements on her fingers to give each one full play. “Our tikanga—the root word, tika, refers to what is right, correct, true and just—are the way that we organise all of our behaviour… That sets the tikanga for us to be peaceful and inclusive.” Each time Love opens Palestine rallies in Pōneke-Wellington, she grounds the gathering in these expectations.
The current New Zealand government jeopardises the vision of Te Tiriti. On November 14, the coalition’s small neoliberal partner tabled a bill which aims to unilaterally alter Te Tiriti’s meaning in law. The youngest parliamentarian, Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, tore up the bill and replied with a haka / challenge.
The haka and the thunder of feet in the parliamentary gallery were galvanising. Indigenous Aotearoa laid down a boundary that has been witnessed more than half a billion times.
The Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti / March for the Treaty was already underway to reassert Māori rights. For nine days, Māori and Tangata Te Tiriti walked from the far north and south of the country toward parliament. The Auckland Harbour Bridge shook as they passed over it. No one knows how many people took part locally, walking or volunteering to house and feed the walkers en route.
As the hīkoi approached the capital, Te Otāne Huata urged organisers to include a Palestinian speaker in the ultimate gathering. “Symbolically it was… the greatest movement that we’ve ever seen in Te Ao Māori [the Māori worldview], offering a place to our Indigenous brothers and sisters of Palestine; a position where they can say the truth.”
Nadia Abu-Shanab recalls the humility of addresssing the 50,000 people who surrounded parliament. Palestine had been invited into a “foundational, generation-changing, historic moment—probably the biggest mass mobilisation our country has ever seen—and a day that was framed by the principle of Kotahitanga, of unity and togetherness and working together… It was a collective moment. People were open-hearted. They were feeling the sense of confidence and strength that you feel when you’re together.”
She recites a Māori chant that dates to the land wars of the 1860s: We are engaged in a struggle without end, forever and ever and ever. She and others re-work the words to say, “We are here to live forever and ever and ever. We’re not just here to fight, we’re here to live. That resonates, because we and Māori are really good at this. We’re not just fighting against something, we are actually fighting for something. We’re fighting for life, for dignity and for better ways of living in relationship with the lands where we live.”
Image: Teirangi Klever
The Jewish community of Aotearoa divides over Palestine like every Jewish community. Alternative Jewish Voices (AJV, an anti-Zionist collective) calls for a liberatory Aotearoa Jewish identity that reckons with our roles in Aotearoa’s colonial story. Notwithstanding historical suffering, we Jews are not victims in Aotearoa. We do not tend to be food-insecure or over-policed. We are not denied employment or the freedom to practice our religion. It is not we who wake each day wondering who of our relatives between the river and the sea have survived the night.
AJV works in partnership with Justice for Palestine and with the Federation of the Islamic Associations of New Zealand. Each time we meet with decision-makers together, we defy the assumption that Jews exist in a zero-sum relationship with Palestinians or Muslims. Over the years, shared experience becomes a glue. Samira Zaitoun, a tireless co-convenor of Justice for Palestine, said at a recent book launch, “When you’ve taken enough steps together, you realise that you just have to go through this thing together.”
The Zionist-Jewish community has rallied and published with Christian Zionists and neoliberal lobby groups for several years. For example, a recent media release condemning ICC warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant was jointly issued by 7 Christian Zionist groups, 1 majority-Christian and neoliberal group, and 2 Jewish Zionist groups.
When Māori rights intersect with Palestine, it complicates those tidy Jewish community divisions in hopeful ways. Part of the wisdom of small communities lies in leaving doors ajar. So it was on the day of the hīkoi. Its breadth brought some Jewish supporters of Māori sovereignty into an unexpected encounter with Palestine.
‘Elaine’ and ‘Dorothy’ are tau iwi / non-Māori, Jewish Wellingtonians who regard Israel as a Jewish homeland. They groan at the Zionist label because, Dorothy explains, “I’m also a person who feels deeply that colonisation is a powerful harm… I feel deeply for the Palestinian people who were resident on that piece of land… Zionism feels like a swear word. It feels like, as soon as I say the word, I’m endorsing” Israel’s actions.
On the day of the hīkoi, Dorothy understood the unity of “groups who’ve had the experience of colonisation and having their rights and land taken away… Being there together as tau iwi and Māori, not being divided was more important to me” than being surrounded by people who share her views about Israel.
Earlier this year, Elaine expressed her contempt for Israel’s actions by attending an event calling for Palestinian rights. “It was really hard for me to stand there, but I’m too aware of the indoctrination that I grew up with to let that make me leave… If I felt unwelcome, it came from me, not from anybody else.
“It didn’t even occur to me that I wouldn’t” join the hīkoi at parliament, Elaine continues. She wanted to add her body to the count of Māori rights proponents, and she defends the Māori embrace of Palestinian rights. “Nothing shocks me about the intersectionality of it… It makes sense to me that the two groups who are being oppressed… identify with each other… I actually said that to someone who was saying [Palestinians] shouldn’t have been there. I said, it’s not for us [to determine]… We were there to support Māori.”
While she stands outside the anti-Zionist intersection, Elaine makes a point of challenging the inconsistencies she hears within her networks. “A lot of people who say that they’re leftwing are pretty rightwing when it comes to [Palestine], because it’s literally the first time they’ve had to stand by those beliefs. That’s me as well. Does it make me uncomfortable? Yes. Does that bother me? No.”
The Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti culminated on a Tuesday. On Wednesday the media speculated about the new political landscape. On Sunday at 1:30, Te Otāne Huata waved the Palestinian flag in front of the Hastings town clock.
We are two members of the Jewish community, co-leaders of an independent Jewish worship space and co-founders of Alternative Jewish Voices. Fred met with Adam and others from ASB in November. We write regarding the request that ASB divest KiwiSaver funds from Motorola Solutions Inc, a campaign we fully support.
We expect that you will be receiving messages from NZ Zionist groups. We want to shed some light on the voices and ideas that are assumed to reflect our community. Then, you’ll be relieved to be reminded that divestment is not about the Jewish community at all. It is a way of upholding the laws which protect civilians of every ethnicity.
Two questions will help you to contextualise any messages you’ve been receiving: how Jewish is Zionism? And, is non-violent economic choice antisemitic?
Zionism is Jewish nationalism, embodied in the state of Israel. Zionism is an ideology, a political project rather than a religion; and Jewish anti-Zionism (ie Jewish opposition to that nationalist project) is exactly as old as Zionism. In no way is the modern project of Zionism a synonym or a substitute for millenia of rich, complex, pluralist Jewish life and aspirations. Similarly, NZ’s Zionist-Jewish institutions are not the totality of our community’s secular / cultural / religious / political breadth.
Zionists are fond of claiming to speak for a huge majority of Jews. Actual research shows Zionism’s declining hold, particularly on young Jews. In a recent poll commissioned by three Zionist-Jewish Canadian organisations, only 50.9% of Jews self-declared as Zionist.
Therefore, you must not confuse ‘Zionism’ with ‘the Jewish community of New Zealand’.
Perhaps you have been warned that divesting from Motorola would make you ‘anti-Zionist antisemitic’. We must untie this knot, which deters a great deal of principled action.
Antisemitism is the hatred of Jews, Judaism or Jewishness. To conflate criticism of Zionism or Israel with antisemitism is both wrong and harmful to any open, democratic political participation. Opposition to Zionism is not New Zealand’s definition of antisemitism.
The Human Rights Commission affirms that speech and action which uphold human rights is essential, protected speech. Our request to divest from Motorola is an attempt to uphold the rights of Palestinians, and we urge you not to confuse standing up for the rights of Palestinians with any hatred of Jews.
Is divestment an antisemitic act per se? Our website features statements confirming that divestment (an element of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions or BDS) is not antisemitic, including by Harvard Law School and Oxford philosophy lecturers. As Jews, we would vociferously oppose any campaign that was ethnically based or religiously motivated.
Divestment is not about—and will not harm—our Jewish community. Motorola is not in any sense a Jewish entity. It’s a publicly listed, international company which chooses to engage with an illegal occupation.
With these clarifications, we urge you to reconsider your investment. This is a matter of principle and international law. In July of this year, the International Court of Justice directed states not to aid, invest in or normalise an illegal occupation. We are asking you to respect that.
One more consideration. Principled, non-violent, economic choice can drive change in the real world. To ward off its effectiveness, a stiff counter-campaign seeks to influence the risk assessments ASB relies on. We encourage you to read the following reports, which illustrate the politics that are being brought to bear on risk assessments including those of Sustainalytics, which is used by ASB.
For us, this is not about risk management. It’s about valuing life. Watch the news from Gaza this evening, and ask yourself where ASB’s values-led advertising belongs. Should ASB support civilian protections in this world, or are you content for your customers to associate ASB’s logo with the (profitable) devastation being inflicted upon civilians?
International humanitarian law is a way of taking the side of civilians. We ask you to adhere to it.
Warm regards,
Fred Albert and Marilyn Garson
Co-founders, Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa
Sh'ma Koleinu - Alternative Jewish Voices (NZ) 