Two New Zealanders, one from a refugee family with relatives in Gaza, the other a Jewish child of Holocaust survivors, talk to Sharon Brettkelly about the repercussions on their lives of a war far away from us.
People take part in a pro-Israel rally in Christchurch on October 22, 2023. Thousands of people, both Israeli and Palestinians have died since October 7, 2023, after Palestinian Hamas militants based in the Gaza Strip, entered southern Israel in a surprise attack leading Israel to declare war on Hamas in Gaza the following day. (Photo by Sanka Vidanagama / AFP) Photo: SANKA VIDANAGAMA / AFP
Today on The Detail, Sharon Brettkelly talks to Kiwis Tameem Shaltoni and Ben Kepes.
Shaltoni calls himself a Palestinian-New Zealander, born in Jordan, from a refugee family with relatives remaining in Gaza.
Kepes was born in New Zealand of Holocaust survivor parents, and has family in Israel.
Two very different sides of the Israel-Palestine divide; two stories that come from a background of trauma; two stories that have many similarities.
“My grandparents on both sides were dispossessed by Israel in 1948,” says Shaltoni. “They were expelled from their homes in Palestine. Subsequently my dad was born in a tent in a refugee camp in Gaza. My mum, she was born in Damascus in a refugee camp. They met and married in Jordan and that is where I was born. Then we came to New Zealand in 2014.”
Kepes says his parents were refugees from Western Europe, and survived the Holocaust – “so there’s this huge context that has always kind of been there in the background, but after October 7 has become really acute to myself and to other Jews in New Zealand.”
Shaltoni says he wanted New Zealand to be his home, “and I almost believed it till March 15.”
“So when the [Christchurch mosque] terrorist attack happened it was sort of like a wake-up call, and I came to the conclusion that no matter how I really wanted to believe it, there would be always something wrong, something that is not quite right.
“It’s not just a matter of small micro-aggressions, racist remarks, it’s more serious than this and we all saw it, that there is sometimes hate that is willing to kill us. So I came to that conclusion that probably I was a little bit naïve about it.”
Meanwhile keeping in touch with family in Gaza is difficult.
“We don’t know exactly what’s happening with them, we don’t have reliable communication with them,” he says.
Amongst his closed community network in Hamilton there are four families who’ve had people in Gaza killed in the last three weeks. The strain is showing in lack of sleep and weight loss.
Last time he managed to check, his own family there was safe, although they had no food or clean water, and about 50 internally displaced people were living in one flat.
Protestors at an Israel-Gaza ceasefire demonstration in Auckland Domain 4 Nov 2023. Photo: Sigrid Yiakmis / RNZ
Back in New Zealand, Shaltoni says he doesn’t feel as safe here as he used to. There’s been abuse and threatening behaviour happening to friends around him who’ve displayed their Palestinian identities.
“We know it’s a matter of time before someone gets hurt.”
But “we can’t expect a police car [out] the front of the house of every Palestinian”.
Police have heightened protection for some high profile Jewish New Zealanders, says Kepes.
“I know people who are almost house-bound because they are scared to go outside,” he says. “There is this underlying fear that I have never experienced before in my life.
“You can’t get further from the Middle East than New Zealand and it’s so out of context for people here. Generally that’s a conversation that hasn’t been had. What has been incredibly jarring for all Jewish people in New Zealand, and for Israeli people in New Zealand, is seeing the response post-October 7 … we always had this sort of naïve thought that ‘this is New Zealand, no one cares’ … we always thought we were kind of immune to the very worst of antisemitism.
“Post October 7 really the world has changed for us.
“There’s a lack of empathy and understanding there that is deeply distressing.”
Hear Tameem Shaltoni and Ben Kepes' stories by listening to the full episode.
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