Does Zionism Affect Us in Aotearoa?

As student protests across the Western world continue to take place in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for dignity, statehood, and ceasefire—this week coming close to home with Melbourne University threatening to call the police on student encampments—a common sentiment pops up online in comments or in real life: “Why should we care about a conflict that has nothing to do with us?” 

Ignoring this callous dismissal of Palestinian life amidst an ongoing genocide perpetrated by the State of Israel, you might think to yourself: “Well, I do care. But what does this actually have to do with us here in Aotearoa? Can we really affect events occurring in a place like Palestine?”

New Zealand, however, has a long and significant entanglement with Zionism—the belief that a Jewish homeland should be established on the already existing homeland of Palestinians—one which often outsized our status as a small nation on the global scale. Peter Fraser, for example, considered by many to be one of our finest Labour Prime Ministers and who led the country through the Second World War, was a staunch Zionist who supported the establishment of the State of Israel and contributed greatly to its international legitimacy. 

Yet the links between our history and the history of Palestine go deeper than even this. 

This is a picture of a soldier in the British army standing in an unnamed mosque in Gaza. The year is 1917, and the mosque has been bombed by British forces after Ottoman ammunition was found stored nearby. This comes as part of the Sinai-Palestine campaign fought in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I, of which New Zealand’s forces played a vital role. 

Having first participated in the much more well-known Gallipoli campaign, for example, the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade were sent to Egypt in which, over the course of two years, pressed further into Sinai and then Palestine. As part of these efforts, ANZAC forces would eventually gain control over all of the territory which, after the partition of the Ottoman Empire, would come under British rule. This was no accident of history: immediately upon the declaration of war in 1914, Britain began to discuss the future fate of Palestine. An influential Zionist lobby within the British government pressed for a memorandum to propose the establishment of a Jewish homeland within the territory, an effort that eventually led to the infamous Balfour Declaration in 1917.

Campaign maps from the invasion of Sinai and Palestine.

An ANZAC map of Gaza City, March 1917.

The web of empire stretches far and wide, and connects both our struggles for justice and our complicity in injustice. The New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade who participated in these campaigns was developed from three smaller brigades—from Auckland, Canterbury, and Wellington—which were themselves raised from existing militia such as Waikato Mounted Rifles. The Waikato MR were first raised, however, in 1869 out of the Cambridge Mounted Rangers Volunteers who supported the Crown’s invasion of Waikato. A terrible whakapapa of conquest, theft, and dispossession of indigenous land and rights connects all these forces to the Sinai-Palestine campaign, shaping the future of the “100 Years’ War on Palestine.”

Auckland Mounted Rifles marching on Upper Symonds Street, Auckland, September 1914. From here, they would travel to Wellington to join other forces, stop over in Hobart, and then sail north, eventually landing in Alexandra, Egypt.

That unnamed mosque of the British photo from 1917 was in fact the Great Omari Mosque located in Gaza City, the oldest mosque in Gaza. At the end of 2023, this mosque was destroyed by Israeli forces. While the world wept in 2019 as the Notre-Dame of Paris caught fire and was partially damaged, the Great Mosque of Gaza—at least 300 years older than the French cathedral—was simply another crumpled building among many as Israel flattened the city.

Here in Aotearoa, we must hold these two pictures of the Great Mosque together—one from 2023, one from 1917—to understand our responsibilities to Palestinian liberation, to disentangle ourselves from Zionism, and commit to the end of Israeli occupation and settler violence in Palestine.

The Great Omari Mosque of Gaza, 2023 and 1917. The first bombed by Israeli forces, the second British forces.

Next week Metanoia is gathering for the first time to discuss Christian Zionism—what is it, where did it come from, and how is it related to the ongoing conflict and genocide in Gaza? Our first task is locating ourselves in this wider story and injustice.

If you’re able to attend or would like to reflect further on this topic, here are some questions you might ponder: 

• What are my implicit assumptions about “Israel” and “Palestine”? What comes to mind by default when I hear those words?

• How was I taught to read the Bible through the lens of Zionism, tying the modern nature of Israel to the fulfilment of biblical prophecy? 

• How is my own whakapapa connected to these histories and these lands? Where did my tīpuna serve during the First World War? Where were they stationed and what were their activities there?

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Join us at Cityside Baptist, 8 Mt Eden Rd, next Wednesday on the 29 May for a public discussion about Christian Zionism. You can find out more about our event and RSVP here.  

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Andrew Clark-Howard is editor at Metanoia.