NZFOI deeply troubled by Ngarewa-Parker’s use of the Holocaust

Maori Party co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Parker

Maori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Parker’s claim to be a holocaust survivor diminishes the Nazi Holocaust and causes further pain to those who have lost loved ones in that attempted genocide.

In Parliament, newly elected Maori Party MP, Debbie Ngarewa-Parker said:

“I stand here as a descendant of a people who survived a holocaust, a genocide sponsored by this House and members of Parliament whose portraits still hang from the walls—members of this Parliament who sought our extermination and created legislation to achieve it. They confiscated all our whenua, imprisoned us without trial, murdered and raped our women and children, and deliberately engineered our displacement for generations to come. What William Fox, George Grey, John Bryce, and many others did to my people was unforgiveable. Fortunately, their one-generational plan was outlived by our forever-generational resolve: such is the strength of my whakapapa. But the trauma of what they did lives with us.”Hansard

NZ Friends of Israel finds her comparison to the Nazi Holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s deeply troubling.

For her accusation to hold true, then the NZ governments of the day must have intentionally set out to and organised to build and operate an infrastructure to systematically incarcerate and eliminate all Maori from New Zealand. There is no historical evidence of such a plan or endeavour.

By using the Holocaust in such a way to dramatize her community’s historical pain and suffering, she diminishes the original Holocaust, causes more pain to those who have lost loved ones in the Nazi Holocaust, undermines her own credibility, promotes division in NZ society, distracts from her cause and potentially curses her followers to perpetual victimhood.

NZFOI

Speak Your Mind

*