Christian priests and pastors are holding protests at the ministers’ offices, calling on the Government to impose sanctions on Israel. Video / Supplied by protesters
THREE KEY FACTS
Six Anglican and Catholic priests chained themselves together outside the Wellington office of Finance Minister Nicola Willis.
Their protest aimed to put pressure on the Government to introduce sanctions on Israel over its actions in Gaza.
The group ended the protest last night. A similar protest took place at National MP Simeon Brown’s electorate office in Auckland.
Reverend Scottie Reeve is an Anglican priest and social entrepreneur from Brooklyn, Wellington.
Like many of us at 9pm on Saturday night, I sat with my head in my hands as the Boks decimated the All Blacks in historic fashion.
In the lead-up pundits had dubbed thismatch “the greatest rivalry”. Partly, that’s about the game, but it’s also about the mythic narrative that has surrounded so many of these fixtures.
Remember Sam Cane’s red card at the 2023 World Cup, the 1995 food poisoning debacle, or most notably, the 1981 Springbok Tour? Great rivalries are built on big histories, and there’s few narratives stronger than that tour for how it wove together our love of the game and our political passions.
Today, New Zealanders love to tell the story of how we stood up to apartheid in South Africa. But that’s a revisionist telling – at the time, opinions were deeply divided.
Back in 1981, the NZRFU said to “keep politics out of sport”. In Hamilton, the crowd attacked protesters and chanted “we want rugby!” protesters were seen by many as a “militant, disruptive minority of ‘stirrers, bleaters and do-gooders’ with left-wing or even communist sentiments”. And then there were those who just thought South Africa wasn’t really our problem.
Clergy were at the forefront of protests against the apartheid-era Springbok Tour of 1981. Photo / Herald file
Now, New Zealand’s opposition to that tour is a badge of honour, a proud moment in our national history – and part of the mythology that creates “the greatest rivalry”. We’ve forgotten how abhorrent, frustrating, and outlandish the ideas of these protesters felt to many at the time.
We Pākeha New Zealanders tend to be fiercely moderate. We don’t like extremes. Our British ancestry has formed in us a reservedness that values civil conversation and sees civil disobedience as unnecessary drama.
We are proud of our dispassionate and immovable staunchness that doesn’t allow anything to get under our skin. As we say: “she’ll be right.”
Protest, then, has a tendency to get under our skin.
But let’s be clear. The protesters didn’t like being there either.All but one had kids waiting at home for them. Some of them went without food for 24 hours. They were cold, sleepless, and exhausted. They weren’t there because they wanted to be, but because they have a moral conviction that they had to be – and because for two years many have tried civil conversations in the halls of Parliament and electoral offices and got nowhere.
They’ve looked at photos from Gaza of children who look a little like their own kids, and they remembered the words of the Apostle James who said that “true religion is to look after widows and orphans in their distress.”
In the first ten weeks of the conflict in Gaza, over 1000 children lost at least one of their limbs. Two years on, more than 50,000 children have been killed or injured. They are being wiped out through violence, starvation, and the destruction of the infrastructure needed to support life.
These protesters are wondering why we have been so strong in our sanctions on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but so toothless when it comes to Israel.
The protesters’ actions weren’t partisan. They respectfully disagree with the extreme elements of both the left and the right. They were outside Willis’ office not because she is a National MP, but because she represents the current Government, who have the mandate to make change. That’s why they were out there. Cold, hungry, and chained-up for 32 hours.
You might even say that these protesters appeal to the values many of us admire as a nation. People of great conviction doing extraordinary things. Evidence of the “she’ll be right” mentality that reflects our grit, determination and ingenuity.
But sometimes, ‘she’ simply won’t be right.
Sometimes, we have to rise above our doggedly unfazed nature and dare to be dramatic, because the stakes are too high for a gentle conversation over a beer.
You may hate the chained-up clergy. You may find their methods sanctimonious, pious, or overly dramatic. But that’s exactly how many felt about the priests who led pitch invasions throughout Aotearoa in 1981.
Consider today that these same people who frustrate and offend you, may be the same people who one day make you proud to be a New Zealander. And then find within yourself the courage to say that Israel must be sanctioned.
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