Unparliamentary beliefs

The funny thing about the House of Representatives is that they get very picky about what you are allowed to say, and what you aren’t. You can get kicked out for the rest of the sitting week for calling other MPs spineless just once, in one sentence. But years (decades) of deafening silence while Israel murders Palestinians is totally fine.

Members of the House also seem to have some pretty interesting ideas about different groups too. There’s a lot of concern about Hamas. We’re told that they are a terrorist organisation, that they have values incompatible with our own, that they are murderers. None of those things is untrue.

But they are also the closest thing to a democratically elected government that Palestinians have. When free and fair elections were last held for the Palestinian National Authority in January 2006, Hamas won 44.45% of the vote and 74 of 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. That’s far more support for a single party than we ever really see in New Zealand, with the exception of the 2020 Labour landslide.

Of course, Hamas didn’t win the presidential contest in 2006, and what followed was some gerrymandering so brazen it would make Trump blush. As a result, free and fair elections have not been held since.

So what is it about Hamas that people are so concerned about? It can’t be the fact that they are seeking the establishment of a sovereign state and are prepared to use violence to achieve that. After all, we take no such issue with the leaders of Zimbabwe or Ireland, whose predecessors also engaged in armed resistance against colonial oppressors.

It can’t be that their values are so different to our own. After all, we glorify historical figures like the American Founding Fathers, a great many of whom owned slaves.

It can’t be that they are murderers. After all, the Israeli Defence Force is deliberately killing journalists reporting on their war crimes, and yet we do nothing to stop them.

I’m relieved that we are not seeing in Wellington and Auckland the same insanity that is on show in British cities, where peaceful protesters are arrested as terrorists. Small mercies.

But unless someone (anyone) can give me a compelling reason why Hamas is a reason not to support Palestinian statehood, it’s time our MPs got over their discomfort and recognise that peace in Palestine won’t happen without Hamas at the negotiating table. You can’t say that you want democracy and self-determination, and then tell voters that they made the wrong choice when they elect someone you don’t like.

And you especially can’t do that when the reason you don’t like them isn’t their actions or their values or their history, but merely that they are too Muslim and too brown.