Appropriating Struggle: Keffiyahs, Politics, and the Contradictions of the New Zealand Left

Māori Party members

Greg Bouwer

In New Zealand, the political embrace of the Palestinian cause has become increasingly pronounced among parties and parliamentarians on the left. Groups such as the Greens and Te Pāti Māori – often the loudest voices of “social justice” and “decolonisation” rhetoric – have taken to amplifying Palestinian slogans, adopting Palestinian flags, and draping themselves in the keffiyah.

But this phenomenon exposes a deep inconsistency. These same parties frequently condemn cultural appropriation in other contexts – whether it’s fashion designers borrowing Māori motifs, non-Pasifika New Zealanders wearing Polynesian tattoos, or celebrities using indigenous patterns without permission. Their message is usually uncompromising: culture is not a costume, and using another people’s heritage to signal political allegiance is exploitative and harmful.

Yet when it comes to “Palestine,” these standards evaporate. Non-Arab New Zealand politicians wrapping themselves in the keffiyah – a garment with very specific cultural, historical, and even militant connotations – are not challenged within their circles as guilty of appropriation. Instead, they are applauded for their “solidarity.” What would be condemned as performative allyship in any other context is suddenly celebrated.

The contradiction is striking. The keffiyah, once a rural Bedouin garment, was transformed into a nationalist and then terrorist symbol under Yasser Arafat. To wear it today is not a neutral act of cultural appreciation – it is a declaration of political identity, often linked to violent resistance and the rejection of Israel’s legitimacy. When New Zealand MPs drape it over their shoulders, they are not only appropriating Arab culture but also signalling tacit support for a cause that includes, at its heart, the erasure of the Jewish state.

Even more ironic is the fact that many of these same voices lecture New Zealand society about “staying in their cultural lane” when it comes to Māori or Pasifika taonga. A Pākehā politician wearing a pounamu or tā moko motif for fashion would be savaged by the very activists who, without hesitation, adorn themselves with keffiyahs as if they were universal accessories of “justice.”

What makes this fixation even more telling is how much political energy is being expended on Palestine while urgent domestic issues languish. New Zealand faces spiralling youth crime, youth suicide, worsening health inequities, a cost-of-living crisis, and persistent housing shortages. Yet instead of devoting their full attention to the challenges facing their own constituents, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori prefer to posture on the Middle East – a conflict in which New Zealand has little influence and no direct stake. This obsession with foreign activism allows them to burnish their “resistance” credentials without having to deliver real solutions at home. For all their rhetoric about decolonisation in New Zealand, they seem more animated by waving Palestinian flags in Wellington than by fixing the problems in their own backyards.

In truth, this selective cultural relativism shows that the New Zealand left’s embrace of “Palestine” is less about genuine respect for cultural boundaries and more about adopting whatever symbols best serve their ideological narrative. The keffiyah becomes a prop in their theatre of solidarity – a borrowed identity that flatters their self-image as global freedom fighters, even as it betrays their own professed principles.