Trusting the wisdom of our strategies

“Our grandparents planted so that we could eat today, and we plant today so that our grandchildren will eat tomorrow.”

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There’s an Arabic saying that translates to “Our grandparents planted so that we could eat today, and we plant today so that our grandchildren will eat tomorrow.” As an agricultural society who lived off the land, our grandparents lived in tune with the produce and its seasons. My Baba tells me that the variety of olive trees particular to our area required more patience than most. They grew to be colossal and abundant, but their scale made them extremely slow-growing.

It feels wrong to speak of patience in a moment where in the time it takes you to read this, people will die in Gaza, and now in Lebanon; in the absence of a just peace. It is. Our task is always to have a sense of urgency in the face of atrocity. Yet, our people have always known we face a grave challenge. It will take a movement of epic proportions to affirm the Palestinian right to dignity and life in our homeland. We will not give up this close to being there. 

I haven’t grown up on our land and don't have a sense for the ripening of olives. My family made a bright green olive oil. Poured out of a yellow plastic carton. Its yummy bitterness a sign of life. I am a child of Palestine activists, a trade unionist and a person humbled to learn from successful Māori organising strategies. These movements can all train us to know how to observe and grow something else. Power.

In two of my darkest moments this year, two trusted friends - completely independently of each other - spoke to me of indigenous celestial navigation. In May, Kassie, Director of ActionStation, shared stories about her earliest ancestors who set forth in their waka, leaving the islands of home behind them, with Aotearoa impossibly far away. A dark vastness spanning in all directions. The depths beneath unknown. The expanse incomprehensibly huge. Abyss can make us crazy. My husband reminds me of this everytime I slip away under relentless waves of grim footage. Kassie affirmed how psychologically testing that dark can be and the critical nature of vision in times where we cannot see what is ahead.

Then, last week, Ella Young spoke to me about how, in those times of ancestral navigation, the work of leadership on those long journeys was also that of careful observation. Being attuned to the stars and environmental cues. It was also about calling out for an island they could not see. Staying fastened to where they were heading and having massive trust in the wisdom of their ancestors.

These are not my stories. But it does feel appropriate that the stories of indigenous journeys to this land offer anchoring. Especially as we engage in a fight against settler colonisation in Palestine, waged all the way over here in Te Moana nui a Kiwa. A place with its own unique experience with settler colonial violence. I’m struck by how indigenous people lead and how they cast themselves forward with a trust in the wisdom of before. Even when things feel impossible. These aren’t just stories. They are evidence. They are the practice and the strategy behind extraordinary achievements.

In their own way, our Palestinian ancestors were also masters of observation. For nourishment, not navigation. Our family in the West Bank are among a small fragment of Palestinians still clinging to where they’ve always been. Most of our land is now settlements. Within one century, almost 90% of Palestinian land has been stolen. The last contended fragments all remain under the boot of military occupation, genocidal siege or apartheid law.

For the last year, the world has witnessed in Gaza what we Palestinians have known since 1948. As Steve Salaita says, with or without October 7th, Israel was always trying to finish the job. The idea of Israel as a Jewish-only state has always been at our expense. Before October, 2023 was already on track to be the deadliest year for Palestinian children in the West Bank since records began.

Right now, we observe things. Our movement is tired. There is a creeping sense in the wake of this anniversary, that with all our mobilisations, which have coloured every small town and big city red, black, and green for 52 long weeks, are not changing enough. We have a government visibly indifferent to Palestinian mass death and suffering. Meanwhile, New Zealand's “independent foreign policy” is a relic. Not even one kept in Cabinet. It’s in a drawer in the basement. These days we follow our “strategic” partners. Doesn’t feel like good strategy to me.

Yet look again. Aotearoa has not mobilised so nationally, so consistently and so passionately around an international issue since when? Since the 81’ generation played their small but historic role in a global movement bringing down an apartheid regime in South Africa.

South Africa. Twenty years ago a group of the best Palestinian thinkers and activists traveled to Durban to wānanga about what it took to overcome apartheid. At this same moment in history, The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel's apartheid wall was illegal. It couldn’t take any steps to tear it down. Our people knew precisely what they were up against.

Trade unionists learn quick what rogue states and the bosses always know. The law is only ever as good as our power to enforce or disregard it. The boss class rarely asks what’s legal. Only what they can get away with. The term “getting away with murder” will be inscribed on the gravestone of Israeli apartheid.

One year after that 2004 ICJ decision and four years after that mission to South Africa, Palestinian civil society launched the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in a 2005 Call. By now, you’re probably familiar with this non-violent strategy which will be carried out until Palestinians’ basic rights under international law are won. It’s about what Mandela termed “cutting off the oxygen” to a system of occupation.

BDS is grounded in ethical and strategic principles. A staunch commitment to ending all forms of racism, including but not limited to antisemitism and Islamophobia. Any genuine fight against oppression and racism cannot dabble in exclusivism. As Zionism shows, it’s a slippery slope.

Most critically, the movement is about highly targeted campaigns against specific companies which are evidenced to play a critical role in the maintenance of Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. Some of which are US or UK based companies. It has never been about targeting businesses or individual people because of their ethnicity or religion. Our movement must fasten back to these fundamentals because these principles are right.

Israel's arrogant atrocities have done their own work securing opposition to Israeli impunity. People are coming to the same conclusions our people reached decades ago. Action is required. According to independent polling commissioned by Justice for Palestine, 42% of New Zealanders now support sanctions against Israel. For people under 30, it’s half. The direction of travel is clear. We have a stronger mandate for sanctioning Israel than National achieved for governing in last year's election.

Through deliberate organising, we can expect to tip over from mass movement into a majoritarian one. We should push our government to be the first Five Eyes (The Five White Guys - USA, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ) country to cut diplomatic ties with Israel. 

Any organiser knows that numbers are good, but it’s what those numbers do that counts. We need to use our numbers to begin cutting the oxygen, in the form of capital, that flows to the Israeli apparatus of land theft and occupation. Right now, our retirement savings are being gambled away on the success of Palestinian erasure. In companies proven to be complicit in illegal Israeli settlements. In fact, the scale of these investments has only gone up with the Palestinian death toll. Killing is business. Population control is business. Palestine is the lab for technologies of oppression that are exported globally. What they test in Gaza, they fine-tune to use elsewhere.

Observe though. We have the numbers, the skills, the strengths, the diversity, the creativity, the values, the ground game, the heart, the evidence and most importantly, the collective political will to change this trend. And quickly. All we need to do is channel what we collectively possess. That's what a good campaign is about. You identify a target that can say “yes” to your demand and you successfully use actions and numbers to escalate the risk (and cost) of saying “no”. 

That’s why we have launched a campaign against one major bank specifically: ASB. Focus is a resource. It maximises impact. Customers have leverage, ex-customers don't. So the ask is not to switch. Not yet. My husband and I have a saying, a one-person strike is just someone quitting their job. Sometimes quitting your job is the right decision for you, but it won’t change the collective conditions you hated. The individual decisions we’ve taken to switch from complicit banks are valid. But we shouldn’t have to leave, we should be using our numbers to collectively bargain. Not beg. Bargain.

By building toward the threat of a mass walk out from ASB on November 29th we can force a bank to meet our demand. We also impact the investments of thousands more around us. What about the other banks you ask? Their time will come. First we build our capacity. With better capacity and campaign skills we can make each bank fold faster than the last when they see us coming. We start now, with ASB.

Fighting talk aside, we can't lose sight of the fact our motives are always dignity and justice. In upholding the tikanga laid by Te Ātiawa, Te Kahu o te Raukura, which loosely translates as the cloak of peace and aroha laid over parliament and their ancestral grounds, we have learned a lot. Mana whenua have prompted us to recognise and respect the ethical and principled ways of doing things here.

Over and over, mana whenua have made a generous invitation to us. Instilling in us a way of doing that goes back to Parihaka. Gently reinforcing that it’s not just about what we are fighting against, and not even what we are fighting for. It’s also about how we embody that vision and our values in the way we move together. 

We can embody these values in our treatment of others. For me, I think that's encapsulated in how we treat workers employed by companies doing bad things. It must be with respect. People will also come to our issue through different doorways depending on their life experience. We can hold people to account powerfully without closing ranks or hazing latecomers. We must bring a committed and ever-expanding group with us. Any movement that opposes settler colonialism must work within its own sphere of influence to deepen opposition to colonialism where it stands too. Which is why we fight not only to defend and advance Te Tiriti but for constitutional transformation as imagined by Matike Mai.

Do not let the propaganda or language of war disorient us for a minute. The genocidal assault on Gaza isn’t an attempt to militarily defeat Hamas, it is the ethnic cleansing of millions under the convenient guise of retaliation. Palestinians in Gaza are living through a mass expulsion event bigger than 1948. The massacre, the starvation, the torture camps, the bombing of schools and hospitals; they are the method not the mission in themselves. The goal is to expunge us.

Let’s trust ourselves to move through this darkness with a clarity of what is already known and a vision for where we must go. The cues tell us we are closer than ever. One day, we will lay under the dappled light of huge olive trees. We are righteously impatient, but as long as we serve what was planted before us, the trees will bear fruit.

A note of thanks to Nadine Anne Hura for inciting me to write