Kiwi musician Neil Finn has performed for crowds at a pro-Palestine march in Auckland this afternoon.
The Crowded House frontman sang an a capella rendition of Don’t Dream It’s Over to the 300-500 gathered Palestine supporters.
“I’m going to sing a song for the innocent people of Gaza and all of you who have braved this weather. Well done,” Finn said.
The protest on Saturday, one of many being held around New Zealand in about 20 cities and towns, comes days after Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was suspended from Parliament for saying MPs should grow a spine and sanction Israel.
“If we find six of 68 Government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history,” Swarbrick said in the House.
Speaker of the House Gerry Brownlee said the “spine” comment was “completely unacceptable” and ordered Swarbrick to withdraw the comment and apologise, but she refused.
Swarbrick today addressed the protesters in Auckland, saying Palestinian people who were being “starved and slaughtered by Israel” were having their “breaths stolen from them”.
“It is our duty, all human beings with breath left in our lungs, with the freedom to chant and to move and to demand action from our politicians, to do all that we can to fight for liberation for all peoples,” she said.
“We know that all of our liberation is connected. The same system that is asking you to turn away from a genocide that is happening on the other side of the world, is exactly the same system that asks you to step over your fellow New Zealanders sleeping rough down the bottom of Queen St. It is the same system that disgraces and destabilises democracies because they are not serving capitalist interests.”
She repeated her comment about finding six MPs “with a spine” to “sanction Israel for its war crimes”.
“E te whānau we need to get our hands dirty,” she said.
“We get to choose to practise love, to practise justice, to put substance behind our words. Because when we struggle to find leadership in our Beehive, we know we will find it on our streets.”
Protesters want the Government to sanction Israel. The Government is also considering whether to recognise Palestine as a state at a United Nations leaders’ meeting in September.
Auckland protesters have been chanting, playing drums and marching as shoppers pass by, calling “while you’re shopping, bombs are dropping”.
Chants have also included the controversial slogan “long live the Intifida”, a phrase linked to incidents of violent resistance against Israel.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon also made headlines this week for his comments that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “lost the plot”.
It is among the strongest language he has used against Netanyahu and came after reports of intense aerial attacks on Gaza after Israel’s decision to launch a fresh military operation.
“I think Netanyahu has gone way too far. I think he has lost the plot. What we are seeing overnight, the attack on Gaza City, is utterly, utterly unacceptable,” he told the Herald.
When he was pressed on the gravity of saying another leader had lost the plot, Luxon said: “I am telling you what my personal view is”.
Israel’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Sharren Haskel issued a missive on social media on Thursday morning saying Luxon wouldn’t comprehend the “challenges that come with facing Hamas”.
“I guess when you don’t really need an army because your most deadly enemy is a possum or a cat you wouldn’t comprehend the challenges that come with facing Hamas – a jihadist death cult – only a few kms away from your country, that rape, execute, burn alive, and starve your people,” Haskel wrote.
Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.