SILENCE IN THE FACE OF GENOCIDE IS NOT AN OPTION

 

The real disgrace is not a protest outside a minister’s home. The disgrace is a government that refuses to act against genocide.

 

THE OUTRAGE from government ministers and their media allies over the protests outside Winston Peters’ home is as predictable as it is hollow. We are told that a small group of people with placards represent a dangerous escalation of political life, a threat to civility, even an attack on democracy itself. Yet these same voices have been silent—worse, complicit—when it comes to the real violence of our age: Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The hypocrisy is staggering.  

For nearly two years, Palestinians have endured relentless bombardment, mass starvation, and the destruction of their homes, schools, and hospitals. Tens of thousands have been killed, the majority women and children. The International Court of Justice has already found that Israel’s actions plausibly amount to genocide. And yet in New Zealand, the political establishment has done little more than issue carefully worded statements of 'concern.' No sanctions. No suspension of military or intelligence ties. No recognition of Palestine as a state. Nothing that would actually challenge Israel’s impunity and upset the Trump administration.

Indeed, Israel is so pleased with New Zealand's failure to act that deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel told genocide denier Sean Plunket last month that she would like to visit New Zealand. 'We want to thank the New Zealand government for its support over the last two years.' she told Plunket on the online radio station The Platform.

Winston Peters, as Foreign Minister, bears direct responsibility for his government's cowardice. At the United Nations, he refused to recognise Palestine, hiding behind the tired excuse that 'the time is not right.' He insists that Palestine does not meet the criteria for statehood, as though the brutal occupation and blockade that deny Palestinians sovereignty are not themselves the very reason recognition is urgent. Peters’ position is not neutrality—it is siding with the oppressor. By withholding recognition, he has placed New Zealand alongside the United States, Japan, and a handful of other governments that continue to shield Israel diplomatically while the bombs fall.  

Against this backdrop, the protests outside Peters’ home must be understood for what they are: an act of moral urgency in the face of political failure. When governments refuse to act, ordinary people step in. The demonstrators were not violent, they were demanding that New Zealand stop enabling genocide. That is a demand rooted in international law and basic human decency.  

But instead of engaging with the substance of the protest, the government has tried to smear the Green Party. Nicola Willis, Christopher Luxon, David Seymour, and Peters himself have all tried to pin responsibility for the demonstrations on the Greens, despite the fact that the protests were organised by the Global Movement to Gaza, not by any political party. That's something that Newstalk ZB's Heather du Plessis-Allan, a National Party stooge, chose to ignore as well. Why let the facts get in the way of an anti-Green Party rant? 

Chloe Swarbrick and her MP's have been clear: they did not organise the protests, they condemn attacks on private property, and they support the right to peaceful protest. Yet the government persists in its narrative, because it serves a political purpose. By framing the Greens as the instigators, they hope to delegitimise both the protests and the wider movement for Palestinian solidarity.  

This is a classic tactic of power: shift the focus from the injustice being protested to the behaviour of the protesters themselves. It is easier to denounce a broken window than to confront the shattered lives of Gaza’s children. It is easier to demand 'civility' from activists than to demand accountability from Israel. And it is easier to demonise the Greens than to admit that Peters and his colleagues have failed to uphold even the most basic principles of justice in foreign policy.  

The critics who rail against protesters outside Peters’ house are the same people who have done nothing—absolutely nothing—to protest Israel’s crimes. They have not marched, they have not spoken out, they have not lifted a finger to stop the slaughter. Their sudden concern for 'decency' rings hollow when they show no such concern for the decency of Palestinian families trying to survive under siege. Their outrage is selective, their morality conditional, their politics drenched in hypocrisy.  

The truth is that the protests outside Peters’ home are not the problem. The problem is a government that refuses to act against genocide, a Foreign Minister who hides behind legalistic excuses while children starve, and a political class more concerned with protecting its own comfort than with defending human life. If Peters and his colleagues want the protests to stop, there is a simple solution: stop enabling Israel’s crimes. Recognise Palestine. Impose sanctions. Stand on the side of justice. Until then, the protests will continue—because silence in the face of genocide is not an option.