Yesterday the regime announced that it wouldn't consider recognising Palestine as a state until next month - so basically, waiting until Israel has murdered or deported every last Palestinian and stolen all their land. Parliament had an urgent debate on this today, with a banger of a speech by Chloe Swarbrick:
At the end of it, she challenged government MPs to support the Greens' Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill, saying that "[i]f we find six of 68 government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history".
The Speaker threw her out.
I guess he didn't want a politician with actual principles making the rest of the cowards look bad.
Meanwhile, there's an obvious comparison here with John Key's famous "get some guts" over backing America's re-invasion of Iraq. On any normal analysis, its a similar allegation of cowardice. So why was it OK, when Swarbrick gets ejected?
I think the answer is obvious: It's OK When You're A Man.
"Our" Parliament is an archaic, deeply racist, deeply misogynist institution, whose "rules" are applied arbitrarily and nakedly for the political advantage of the regime and to lynch its opponents. Its no wonder MPs don't respect it. And its no wonder the people don't either. If it wants to retain its social licence to legislate, to rule by anything other than naked force, it needs to be better, to reflect modern Aotearoa, to drag itself into the present, to not do shit like this.
But good luck getting the fossils in there to understand that.
