Te Pāti Māori has condemned “the killing of innocent people” and “all actions that have led to today’s escalation of war” over Iran launching 180 missiles at Israel, on Wednesday morning [NZT].
This comes after nearly 12 months of Israel retaliating for Hamas’s October 7 attacks that saw 1,200 Israelis and foreigners die according to Israeli tallies, with more than 240 people taken hostage.
Since then Israel strikes have killed more than 41,500 people in Gaza, most of them women and children. The war has seen Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran be brought into the conflict.
Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told Te Ao Māori News Israel couldn’t “play the aggressor and the victim at the same time”.
She said Kiwis should be concerned about the conflict due to the coalition government being in talks to join Aukus II.
“Now that is a kaupapa to support [the United States] war efforts and I think what we need is to remind ourselves as Aotearoa that we never want to be in a war.”
“We need to be about ensuring we don’t support nations that are killing innocent people as we’ve seen in Palestine, as we’ve seen in Israel.
This whole commotion and aggression coming from the Western mentality of war, Aukus threatening our sovereignty, is threatening to drag Aotearoa into World War III.”
The MP said the government should stop talk about joining Aukua and place sanctions on Israel.
“What we have is a dangerous setting where the New Zealand government is in the phase of being complicit in global colonisation.
“We do not get away with having an opinion on how the Middle East has retaliated,” she said.
Foreign Affairs Minister, Winston Peters, earlier this year addressed the UN General Assembly being keen for a two-state solution between Gaza and Israel.
He had also asked Israel to comply “immediately” with its legal obligations ordered by the International Court of Justice in January this year.
The court ordered Israel to do all it could to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza.
For Ngarewa-Packer it wasn’t enough to stop the war.
“This is an absolutely despicable period of humanity’s history and the Aotearoa New Zealand government has done nothing to stop the ruthless killing of innocent people and the escalation we have today,” she said.