Protests won’t free Palestine

They just make the left feel important

There’s a hard truth that needs to be said out loud, and it won’t go down well with the far let activists. But here it is - it doesn’t matter how many people show up to your local “Free Palestine” march. It doesn’t matter how many Palestinian flags you add to your social media bios, or how many times you scream Hamas war chants in public. It doesn’t matter if you call for the “intifada” outside a Westfield Mall or hang a banner off a motorway bridge.

None of it is helping Palestinians. Not in Gaza. Not in the West Bank. Not anywhere.

The far left in New Zealand and across the Western world has become fixated on performative politics. Everything is a protest. Every global conflict is another excuse to self-righteously hijack public spaces, shout in unison, and post endless selfies beneath Hamas slogans like “From the river to the sea”. It’s a tired script, recycled from protest to protest, cause to cause.

If the goal is to actually “free Palestine” or improve the lives of Palestinians, the outcomes speak for themselves. The marches haven't stopped a single bullet. The chants haven’t shifted borders. The hashtags haven’t softened the blockade. Not one inch of land has changed hands because a handful of students waved red-green-black-white flags on a Saturday afternoon.

What’s worse is that many of these activists don’t even pretend to be peace advocates anymore. The slogan-slinging has escalated into open support for Hamas – a group that not only orchestrates terror but also suppresses its own people. Calls for jihad, celebrations of October 7, glorification of child soldiers – these aren’t acts of solidarity. They’re a grotesque fetishisation of violence, packaged in revolutionary aesthetics.

The left imagines that it’s part of some global resistance movement, bravely standing up to imperial powers from the safety of Western democracies. In reality, it’s just noise. Shouting in the streets of Auckland or Wellington just makes you look unhinged.

The real power players in the Israel-Palestine conflict aren’t listening to university protest groups in New Zealand. They don’t care about a human chain in Dunedin or a sit-in at Parliament. Why should they?

If you actually want to help Palestinians, start by being honest about the complexity of the conflict. Stop pretending this is a black-and-white struggle between oppressed and oppressor, or coloniser and native. It’s more complicated than that.

Aid organisations, diplomacy, and hard compromises have a better chance of helping Palestinians than any number of angry TikToks or protest banners. That’s not as exciting as dressing up for the revolution and yelling into a megaphone, is it?

Activism has become theatre, and in the case of Palestine, it’s a theatre of delusion. No matter how many marches are held, Palestine won’t be “freed” by social media slogans, city protests, or chants lifted straight from the Hamas playbook.