We know that the genocide in occupied Palestine didn’t start on 7 October - it goes back much further.
What some may not know, however, is Aotearoa’s role in establishing the apartheid Israeli state and displacing millions of Palestinians since at least 1917. Through the ANZACs to successive Prime Ministers - Labour and National - New Zealand is just as guilty of aiding genocide as any other Western government.
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. [...] This is part of our strategy - to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank." - Israeli Prime Minister and war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu in 2019.
“Anyone who wants to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas.” - Netanyahu at a Likud Party conference in 2019
Part 1 - The ANZAC Atrocities
While the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps were stationed in SWANA (South-West Asia and Northern Africa), they partook in a number of war crimes and genocidal acts.
The ANZAC soldiers were in the region for so long that they had their own magazine for current affairs involving them, and there are reports of New Zealand and Australian soldiers even trying to settle themselves down there for good, as they believed it was the 'Holy Land' of the British Empire they were representing.
ANZACs wanted to move themselves and their families permanently into Palestine. This became such a larege issue that the ANZAC magazine, the Kia ora Coo-ee, published an article telling them they couldn't just kick people out and move in. Evidently this rule didn’t apply later on.
Although sources from the early 1900s outline how Jewish people made up less than a tenth of the population of Palestine, Britain ripped off the Palestinians with a false promise of independence. The British government declared that Palestine was the Jewish homeland, with their own soldiers believing it was the "Holy Land" to Britain as Lieutenant Henry Mackesy proclaimed.
This photo, labelled “Beauty show,” is of New Zealand soldiers wearing gas masks to protect them from the chemical weapons that they're about to use against defenceless Palestinians.
The photo was taken moments before over 4,000 canisters of asphyxiating gas, four days of naval guns, artillery and planes, were dumped onto what they thought was a helpless Palestinian population.
There was nobody in the Gazan city at the time as they had fled, but this was an attempt to slaughter an entire population: genocide.
Surafend Massacre
The ANZACs murdered all of the males older than 16 in the village of Surafend in 1917. Australian journalist Henry Gullet wrote at the time that the Arabic populations and nomadic Bedouin were, “scarcely higher in civilisation than the Australian blacks – these wretched tribes presented a miserable and starved appearance.”
This is the wide-spread attitude that justified a number of ANZAC-coordinated massacres against the local indigenous groups.
“The troops, a mixed bunch of Australians, New Zealanders and Scots, raided the [Surafend] village in their anger and undoubtedly killed men there. One report states that they threw villagers down a well and rolled a large grindstone down on top of them. Their excuse was that they were sick of the ‘natives’ stealing,” wrote author Patsy Adam-Smith.
The soldiers complained about the 'dirtiness' and 'dishonesty' of Palestinians, with many claiming they had been cheated by Arab and Jewish traders alike.
“No wonder the old inhabitants of Palestine had to be destroyed… many a chap is disgusted by the people," is just a part of the rhetoric of the time. It should be noted that, most ironically, the ANZACs had an enormous reputation for taking whatever they could from Palestinians and Ottoman soldiers.
A number of Australian politicians attempted to cover it up at the time, just as they did in Afghanistan and are doing now.
Part 2 - Norman Kirk: a friend of Israel
Kirk supported and promoted some of Meir’s Israeli social policies, including the Kibbutz movement. The failed Ohu land settlement scheme, aimed at establishing communal groupings and self-sufficiency from the whenua, was directly inspired by Kibbutz in Israel.
Zvi Harmor, an Israeli and close friend of Kirk through the Socialist International, was appointed as the personal secretary of Kirk’s successor Bill Rowling. Under Rowling is where the ‘even-handedness’ approach officially began, though only after access to oil was threatened by other SWANA countries.
From this point on, successive governments would, or at least pretend to, be equally critical to Israel and the ‘Arab nations’, as was said at the time, in order to maintain trade and economic supremacy. Equating the oppressed with the oppressor was the new norm after Norman’s unwavering support for Israel.
Norman Kirk was the last Labour Prime Minister after Walter Nash and Peter Fraser to openly support and admire Israel.
He used them as a source for inspiration, ignoring what they were built on.
Part 3 - I thought this started on 7 October?
It’s well established now that the genocide and oppression against Palestinians and other ethnic groups has been going on for well over a century. This shouldn’t be contentious, but it is because the media serve the interests of profit, which serves the interests of gencocide and domination.
Former Prime Minister John Key, a MAGA Zionist responsible for state housing sales, a GST increase after promising he wouldn’t, and privatisation, supported illegal Israeli settlements as recently as 2015.
In 2015, John Key was running the same “Israel has the right to defend itself,” line as violence broke out between the oppressed and the oppressor. That’s weird, because I thought this all started on 7 October?
Just nine years later, Christopher Luxon says the exact same thing as he sent the Defence Force to protect Israeli ships in the Red Sea.
When Key said it, it was amidst the ‘Israeli-Palestinian violence’. Israelis were illegally expanding into Palestine to establish settlements, to which Key called on only future ones to be prevented. By that point, there were already countless settlements on land the Israel government didn’t officially claim.
At this point, Netanyahu said, “No Palestinian state will be created under my leadership.” This is four years before his call for funding Hamas.
When Luxon said it, it was amidst a ‘war’ between Hamas and the Israeli government, in which Hamas attacked Israelis ‘completely unprovoked’. He then sent the NZDF to the Red Sea and supported bombing a school in Yemen for Israel.
At this point, Netanyahu said, “I will not compromise on full Israeli security control [...] and this is contrary to a Palestinian state.”
The ‘two-state solution is needed’ line is the Western media’s favourite narrative.
It’s their favourite because they know it won’t happen. It’s their favourite because they can label Hamas as senseless ‘terrorists’, ignoring the conditions of Palestinians.
Netanyahu and his goons knew that funding Hamas and ensuring them means to launch a full-scale assault would justify a future escalation of the Palestinian genocide - funded by the West.
Yet still, the ‘two-state solution’ is parroted.
New Zealand has historically had, and continues to play, a part in the oppressive force that is the West.
It has continued to fund Israeli businesses, deployed New Zealand Defence Force personnel in the red sea against the Houthis, and labelled the entirety of Hamas as a 'terrorist organisation', thus making it illegal to support them in New Zealand.
This ongoing genocide in occupied Palestine acts as a staunch reminder of the horrors that come with, and follow, colonisation. Māori in Aotearoa faced significant oppression of their language, culture and rights during the early period of British settlers and thereafter — just as Palestinians have been in Gaza for over a century. They've had food and water cut off, dense poverty bestowed upon them and now a generation have grown up in an over–crowded Gaza full of anger towards Israel and the West.
Comparatively, Māori suffer from entrenched poverty in New Zealand. Gazans have aspirations for peace, but are unable to this because of entities like our government.