Israel-Gaza: Swarbrick used controversial chant despite urging from school
Green co-leadership contender Chlöe Swarbrick continued to use a pro-Palestinian chant, despite being told by a Jewish school in her electorate that it was considered by many to be hateful and offensive.
In an interview with Q+A, the Auckland Central MP defended leading a chant of “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” at a rally in November 2023.
“I continue to hold true to the kaupapa that Palestinian freedom is necessary if we are to have longstanding freedom and justice in the region,” Swarbrick said.
“There’s a deeply problematic and intentional misunderstanding that is being painted across the Palestinian people here, whereby there is some presupposition that freedom for Palestinian people – who have been living under occupation for decades now – and are presently being subjected to a genocide … and we are talking about advocating for their freedom, and that freedom is being painted somehow as violence.”
She continued: “Perhaps that discomfort is something we should lean into because I think nowhere near enough focus has been paid to the genocide, which is literally playing out right now and is decimating the Palestinian people.”
Now I love Jack Tame.
I think he’s one of our best Political TV interviewers, he is always fair and he is one of the best public broadcasters we have (after Barbara Dreaver, Moana Maniapoto and John Campbell of course), but his interview few with Chloe today was such petty bullshit that it surprised me.
Jack is excellent, today’s interview with Chloe however was bullshit.
Framing her as an anti-semite for using a phrase which Zionists find offensive in the shadow of 28 064 dead Palestinians, 67611 wounded Palestinians, almost 2 million displaced and and an entire people traumatised seems petty in the extreme.
I’m talking David-Farrier-using-public-money-to-make-his-Mister-Organ-revenge- -documentary-against-someone-he-felt-he-was-better-than level petty.
The semantics of a phrase zionists fund offensive while a real time ethnic cleansing war crime is being committed is so breathtaking in its triviality it is actually depressing!
You can certainly tell there’s been a change of Government on Q+A can’t you?
These are political tactics we have seen in the UK.
Al Jazeera’s damning documentary into how Corbyn was undermined and framed as an antisemite by the Zionist Apartheid Israeli supporters who falsified and lied about the level of antisemitism inside Labour to destroy Corbyn.
Chloe is being framed here using the same semantics to paint out anyone critical of Israel’s brutality as an anti-Semite.
This was not Q+As best show. By any means.
Focusing on a phrase to insinuate someone is an anti semite while people are dying is extraordinary.
So what if she had been told be a Jewish School the phrase was offensive to them?
She heard them, she disagreed, she used the phrase.
Taking that stance and framing her as an anti-semite is disgraceful.
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Chloe will appeal to Greenies but does she have appeal to a wider public remains to be seen
Does David Seymour have appeal to the wider public Trev? This is an MMP world, she only needs to appeal to her core constituency. And they I posit can easily distinguish between faux accusations of anti Semitism and opposition to Zionist genocide.
The other thing that remains to be seen trevor is if you ever have anything interesting to say, add or might appear to be interesting. I bet you’re a farmer.
Back to it. I’ve never trusted jack tame. He’s where he is because he’s a minion to the system, a corrupt system of leather chair clubbers and political shadow-creatures who move as a flicker in the peripheral vision where they appear as ghosts but with less substance unless, of course, one thinks that secret agendas have substance before they manifest.
Watch out Chloe Swarbrick. Never let your guard down, but if you do? Get it in writing so’s you can sue the bastards later.
Seems Auckland likes Chloe Trev.
Not just Auckland.
If she was here in Christchurch central she would send Duncan Webb to the dust pile.
She has a huge following NZ wide.
Whatever the actuality may be regarding Swarbricks “popularity”, your comment stands as utterly irrelevant, and childishly petty…
I fail to find a rationale behind why you even bothered to make it… It’s really that pointless..
Trevor, I don’t believe Chloe has to appeal to anyone. She is trying to stop the continued murder of Palestinian Civilians. If the Kadimah School members are truly upset by Chloe and her “River to the Sea” slogan, I wonder if they are happy when they see the terror that Israel are committing against innocent children. As a teenager I remember asking my parents “Why did the people of the world allow the holocaust to happen?” Their response was that they didn’t know what was happening. (No TV, No Social Media). WHAT IS OUR EXCUSE? WE KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING – SO DOES JACK TAME. FREEDOM RIVER TO THE SEA.
Free speech is only allowed to Jews it seems going by the extreme reaction by them whenever someone criticises their actions. They seem totally unable to comprehend that there are often 2 sides to every situation even though the book they claim justifies their occupation says “The first one to plead his cause seems right, Until his neighbor comes and examines him.” Pr 18:17.
Tame is average really.
Showed potential a few years back but suffers from tunnel vision when interviewing.
Works for 1ZB Fox now…so basically, sold his soul to pay for his mortgage. Or maybe he’s simply gone down the Hosking motormouth rabbit hole. Who knows, but he always looks conflicted.
Next thing you know he’ll be saying that Judith Collins, AKA ‘ little prayer girl’, will make a great Minister of Defence…Oh…wait!
@ Grant. An excellent comment IMO.
Chloe is the best thing that could happen to ACT and NZ First……Her plan to mobilise a huge amount of civil unrest is perfect for the coalition government….Annoy the silent majority , who are just trying to get through the day , with media backed space cadet distractions ….just what this country needs ….
Actually Chloë could learn to communicate succinctly. Your report shows a word salad which loses its message in the dressing.
There’s a deeply problematic and intentional misunderstanding that is being painted across the Palestinian people here, whereby there is some presupposition that freedom for Palestinian people – who have been living under occupation for decades now – and are presently being subjected to a genocide … and we are talking about advocating for their freedom, and that freedom is being painted somehow as violence.”
Depends on the time frame available to resolve the issues.
Decades? Massive economic boosts to the area with a two state solution with a focus on democratically elected leaders and giving the IDF the responsibility for defending both states to prevent the second state from having any significant military presence outside of its own interior police and courts. Likely significant UN oversight.
Weeks?
Massive ground invasion to enforce a two state solution with an occupying force to stay there ‘until peace is achieved.’
I suspect the two will have similar death counts.
The small details (such as what land ends up where) is best left to diplomats, but in both cases I would return a significant amount of land currently occupied by settlers.
That said neither party wants to make concessions, and no one is in a position to impose a peace on them. The sheer shittiness of both of those solutions should inform to a significant degree that there isn’t a good one, or do I think there is a good way.
I’m more in the camp of, “everyone involved sucks.” No hands are clean. Please keep New Zealand out of it.
Sensible position Sam. A two state solution is only possible when you have 2 states that are willing to bury the hatchet.
The idea of the ‘IDF’, a force created from genocidal terrorist groups that is itself a genocidal terrorist group, ‘defending’ a ‘Palestinian state’ is hilarious. ‘IDF’ ‘protection’ is what caused this problem. It exists solely to commit genocide against the innocent, and to protect auxiliary forces (so called ‘settlers’) attacking the innocent.
Practical isn’t ethical.
Either Jews getting removed from Israel completely, or the other side gets removed.
Any solution that believes the two sides can live together under one democracy delude himself.
The Palesitnians will have overwhelming majority with the right of return granted to the millions of refugees that were never settled and waiting for somewhere better to live.
Look around what happens to Jews in the middle east, what happened to Yemen jews recently.
Or the status of Christians in Egypt or any religious minority in the middle east.
Absolute nonsense. Palestinians were always tolerant of jews. The population of Deir Yassin was neutral to the zionists, until they invaded their village and threw the baker and his two year old son into the oven, massacred many more civilians, raped little girls.
Naturally, the few who survived are less friendly.
If the legitimate population of Palestine is less friendly to the zionist invaders, after decades of them murdering and raping and torturing the innocent, that’s a zionist problem. They can always just go back to their actual home countries. That would obviously be more difficult in places like Iraq and Egypt where the zionist mossad ran terror operations to sabotage the governments and make jews flee.
They can go to the various puppet regimes like the US and UK, which have supported the zionist genocide of the Palestinian people since the initial invasion.
Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. That requires some level of trust that the people who have been talking about “driving you back into the sea” for decades don’t decide to use the franchise to actually try and pull it off.
Not only that, but nobody of consequence honestly gives a shit about the Palestinians. The Arab states were happy to use them as a cheap way to annoy Israel, but they don’t have any real interest in risking anything anything themselves-and the Palestinians really shat in the bed of Jordan, when they managed to get themselves expelled from the country.
Russia doesn’t care about Palestine, China doesn’t care, the US doesn’t care about them, and well, nobody else’s opinion matters.
Look.
The jig is up on the settler colonial project. The Israelis have unveiled its true face, reverting to mean (pun intended). Contemporaneously our last ditch settler colonial government blandly mimics the Middle East version of the project, staggeringly stupid. Face it, 40 years of neo-liberal orthodoxy imposed with an insidious cancel culture any wokester would be in awe of, has rendered the political class incapable of original thought. Four decades of mouthing uncontested platitudes has made them not just dumb but deaf and blind, politically (and not just them but the nation in general; what else could explain Chris Trotter appearing as a leftwing!). Similarly, the politicisation of Judaism’s racism and supremacism through European Zionism has resulted in the same. Jewish schools in NZ should consider that, instead of taking refuge in this settler colonial project.
“From the River to the seabed and the foreshore?”
It is fortunate that in New Zealand Pakeha can feel (if they would want to) that Maori are our compatriots.
Not so in Palestine.
What is Zionism but a transformation of Jewish identity from one of religion – Judaism, towards one of nationality – the land of Israel. As such, Zionism is anti-semantic and all those that defend it are the true anti-Semites here.
Israel is the land of Israelis, it is not the land of the Jews folks. To believe that the land of Israel represents all Jews, is Zionism’s greatest lie.
Anyway the slogan ‘From the River to the Sea’ was first coined by Likud back in the ’60s – 1960s that is, setting its sight on the West Bank. I would say it was a cool move by the Palestinians to take the slogan back. Look what it accomplished, exposure of Zionist fanatics today when the word genocide now comes back to bite them.
Chloe is in the running for co-leader of the Greens.
Of course she’ll be subject to attacks in the media – probably orchestrated (behind the scenes and perhaps unknown to Tame) by shadowy right wing ‘think tanks’ who pull the strings in this country.
Colour me surprised!
‘Shadowy’?
Yes The Atlas network and its cohorts will be working overtime to take her, the Greens and Te Pati Maori down. Chloe is a firebomb to the rights sense of entitlement.
The prevalent colour today is black. Sorry. Or perhaps you could go for brown charcoal or beige.
If Chloe had balls she would not be under attack at all .Its that simple .
Possibly she has Gordon…..It’s hard to tell now days….
Naughty!
Its a powerful chant, no wonder it attracts criticism with the ant-Semite label being used here to cancel/silence its use, not to mention divert attention away from Israeli actions and towards the actions/motives of those singing this chant.
The chant is not anti-Semitic in the slightest. Lets get that through people’s heads, once and for all. The chant is a call for freedom – for all – from the river to the sea.
@A O – perfect and spot on. Excellent comment.
Chole is getting attacked for making what you put so succinctly – a call for freedom for all.
The river to the see comment is not hate speech, but it is very powerful and moving.
Jack Tame’s problem, as many others have also experienced (reference the quick off the mark, boomer comment Chloe made in parliament), is that Chole is very intelligent and is able to give immediate and rapid logical comment to retorts thrown at her. She is also a woman who is able to stand up for herself and others, something which Jack Tame and others don’t like.
+100 Youngsuffrajet
If the administrators of Kadimah School- which I thought was supposed to be integrated into the state system, and not being used as a pawn for foreign interests, given that they’re fully subsidised by our tax dollars- don’t think that Chloe Swarbrick should condemn the genocide of the Palestinian people, that sounds like a Kadimah problem, not a Swarbrick problem.
Surely David Farrar will be going after this as hard as he attacks Christian colleges that don’t promote marriage between two persons of the same sex, no?
“Surely David Farrar will be going after this as hard as he attacks Christian colleges that don’t promote marriage between two persons of the same sex, no?”
And what is your view on same sex marriages Mohammed, live and let live….or throw them off tall buildings?
Well all those thinking Tame was biased when he had the audacity to ask that stupid old prick Peters what his policies actually were…..where art thou?
Perhaps he’s a tame weathercock?
Possibly, but I would argue that the Peters question was not unreasonable. Asking a painter what colour is in the tin is hardly blindside material. I haven’t bothered watching the interview with Swarbrick yet so I have no context
Well the March in Nelson on Saturday in support of the Palestinians was roughly five times bigger than the first a few weeks ago.
I understand that’s what the Jewish Federation of New Zealand (which has been allowed, uniquely amongst all the registered charities in New Zealand, to not submit annual returns for three years) would call a ‘deeply troubling rise in anti-semitic incidents’.
“Green co-leadership contender Chlöe Swarbrick continued to use a pro-Palestinian chant, despite being told by a Jewish school in her electorate that it was considered by many to be hateful and offensive.”
Except when Netanyahu uses it of course.
“In the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.”
Chloe is a shit stirrer. That’s what appeals to her voters.
Chloe’s git real shit to stir. Deal with it.
Who are your supporters Jonzie?
No Chloe speaks Truth to power.
As the old world war two saying goes The Powerful and The entitled ” Dont Like It Up Em “
Incorrect, that would be every right wing politician. There, fixed that for you, shit stirrer.
What utter bullshit. She won Auckland central, with votes that clearly weren’t Green voters.
If you want a shit stirrer go and see David Seymour. The guy has had his electorate donated to him.
She ain’t winning AKL again. Wanna bet a box of beer?
” Chloe is a shit stirrer. That’s what appeals to her voters. ”
If she is guilty of shit stirring then we need a fucken lot more of it !
That’s been the problem for so long in these tax haven islands of the rich.
No one ever challenges the status quo that seems to worsen for ordinary people year by year led by Labour and NACT and their managerial class and wealthy supporters.
Oh, the Zionists want to check people’s language? I have no problem with that.
Once the Zionists stop butchering Palestinians and make full restitution that is.
Which is why Hero worship is never really that good an idea. When it comes down to it, their shit stinks just as badly, and in many cases there’s more of it, and they breathe the same air.
”You can certainly tell there’s been a change of Government on Q+A can’t you?”
That statement says it all Martyn.