Language lecturer Keri Opai told a Radio New Zealand panel discussion last Sunday (February 5) that Maori were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder following the "holocaust" of colonisation. He added: “I know we might get in trouble for saying those words but it is absolutely true.”
Jewish Council president Stephen Goodman said calling what happened a holocaust was ignorant and improper. "It tries to elevate Maori grievances by associating with the Holocaust, and I find it very hard to draw a comparison between the European colonisation of New Zealand and plain genocide," he said.
The Holocaust was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II in a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany throughout Nazi-occupied territory. Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds perished. In particular, over one million Jewish children were killed in the Holocaust, as were approximately two million Jewish women and three million Jewish men.
By contrast, the death toll in New Zealand during the 1840-1872 sovereignty wars included 2154 anti-government Maori and 745 colonial government fighters, according to New Zealand History Online, which drew on historian James Cowan. Details are as follows:
The Holocaust was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II in a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany throughout Nazi-occupied territory. Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds perished. In particular, over one million Jewish children were killed in the Holocaust, as were approximately two million Jewish women and three million Jewish men.
By contrast, the death toll in New Zealand during the 1840-1872 sovereignty wars included 2154 anti-government Maori and 745 colonial government fighters, according to New Zealand History Online, which drew on historian James Cowan. Details are as follows:
More Maori died during the 1818-1842 guns-and-utu wars. For the total death toll of these battles, historian Matthew Wright in his new book “Guns and Utu" suggests that of perhaps 100,000 Maori alive during the early 19th century, about 20,000 were killed and a further 20,000 enslaved. These equated to annual percentage losses higher than New Zealand experienced during the First World War. Demographer John Robinson, who wrote “The Corruption of New Zealand Democracy”, estimated a death toll in those wars of up to 50,000.
Returning to the language teacher who re-ignited this row, Keri Opai cited the pillaging of Parihaka - where 1600 troops burned houses after being greeted by singing children - as a damning episode, and said many New Zealanders did not realise the extent of the devastation. "I would hope that the average Pakeha New Zealander would perhaps throw their hands up in dismay," Mr Opai said. "I'm still amazed, still a bit perplexed at how this country is in a state of denial."
Parihaka was a settlement in western Taranaki, between the mountain and the sea, where prophets Te Whiti-o-Rongomai gathered over 2000 disillusioned Maori, encouraging passive resistance to settlement of confiscated land by pulling out survey pegs, ploughing pastoral land, and removing fences. Although it was non-violent, settlers feared it was the prelude to violence since Te Whiti had fought with Pai Marire against the government and prominent anti-government fighter Titokowaru belonged to the group.
Native Minister John Bryce led 644 troops and 1000 settler volunteers into Parihaka on November 5, 1881, to be met by singing children offering food. The pa was destroyed and Te Whiti, Tohu, and other leaders were exiled to Otago. No deaths resulted.
Keri Opai seems ignorant of a few fundamental aspects of our history. I would hope, to paraphrase Mr Opai, that the average protesting Maori would perhaps throw his or her hands up in dismay when they realise the extent to which they have been duped by members of the self-interested tribal elite who are riding the grievance gravy train.
10 comments:
Maori “academic” Keri Opai has an thick face indeed to compare the Crown’s 1881 burning of Parihaka (in which not a single life was lost) with the Holocaust (in which the Nazis systematically exterminated an estimated 6 million Jews).
An entire myth-making industry (which started with Pakeha Communist, Dick Scott's race-mongering re-write of history's book "Ask That Mountain") has grown up around the Parihaka commune, which was illegally erected on land confiscated by the Crown to punish the Taranaki tribes for starting the Taranaki War.
The block was gazetted Crown Land, but sat idle for almost 20 years. This emboldened self-styled “prophet” Te Whiti to squat on it with his followers.
When the Crown finally subdivided the land and began selling it off, Te Whiti instructed his adherents to plow up the cultivations of the settlers, rip down their fences, burn their outbuildings, and run off their cattle.
The Crown eventually responded to these deliberate provocations.
The true Holocaust of New Zealand history was between 1820 – 1836, when an estimated 60, 000 Maori died (directly or indirectly) at the hands of other Maori during the Musket Wars.
Armed bands roamed the land, killing, eating, raping, pillaging and enslaving anyone they succeeded in getting the better of. Thousands were brutally done to death.
Maori left their well-ventilated hilltop pas to spend months on end in low-lying, miasmic swampland, cutting flax to trade for guns. Thousands died of disease. Famines afflicted many districts, because Maori neglected food cultivation for fighting, wrongly assuming they'd grab the stores of defeated neighbours, who were themselves operating on the same assumptions. Thousands died of starvation.
As outgoing Governor-General Lord Bledisloe reminded us in his 1922 farewell address: “In the Kingdom of the Blind, the one-eyed man is King. And he that does not know his own history is at the mercy of every lying windbag.”
The term Holocaust has nothing to do with what happened to Maori. That the British committed atrocities, there is no doubt - but to use the term holocaust and mean it in its absolute context is anathema to any right thinking person.
It is appallingly easy for fully recorded history to be dishonestly reinvented - and even easier for the young, the gormless and the perpetually aggrieved to be taken in by those reinventions. Tariana Turia tried the same line a few years back and was rightly chastised for it by Helen Clark. To even attempt comparisons with the Nazi holocaust is offensive nonsense. Records from the early 1800's make it clear that Maori tribes were busily annihilating each other at an alarming rate, helped greatly by their investment in firearms. Maybe that is the true "Maori holocaust" ?
Unless the unadulterated History that has not been corrupted by the smoke screens that have blown into our faces.
The Maori wars between the British and Maori ended up as a truce.
The British gave up because the Maori warrior was more astute at fighting and had a better defence system than the blundering British Generals and poorly trained soldiers.
People who write such drivel should go and look at some of the old publications that were written around the turn of the century(112 year ago) not the biased rubbish written by 1/4 cast Maori of today who is always on the lookout for a free lunch.
But 6 million Jews didn't die in gas chambers.
It is a prediction in the Torah that we Jews use to claim that 6 million martyrs died in gas chambers in Europe, when there were only 1.2 million Jewry in the whole of Europe in 1938.
Google your history, 6 million martyrs died here, there and everywhere!
The holocaust is an excellent method of manipulating gentiles for our purposes. Just look at what happens to holocaust deniers?
All the best books by those who were in the Camps are recorded as works of fiction, not fact, as the authors clearly state. But not in the book.
Any simple fool can realise that the crematoria at these camps could not process the number of claimed bodies. A little bit more research will establish that ZyklonB is used as a fumigant.
But, you will keep believing what we want you to believe. And there is nothing better than a Maori Holocaust myth to propagate.
Vahid
An Honest Jew
GLGR
I suggest you do further study as you come accross as an 'arm chair general of sorts'.
The maori were fought to an inevitable defeat by a combination of British soldiers, settler volunteer units, volunteers from Australia and Friendly Maori.
To Holocaust-denier Anonymous, details of the European Jewish population:
In 1933, approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe, comprising 1.7% of the total European population. This number represented more than 60 percent of the world's Jewish population at that time, estimated at 15.3 million.
The majority of Jews in prewar Europe resided in eastern Europe. The largest Jewish communities in this area were in Poland, with about 3,000,000 Jews (9.5%); the European part of the Soviet Union, with 2,525,000 (3.4%); and Romania, with 756,000 (4.2%). The Jewish population in the three Baltic states totaled 255,000: 95,600 in Latvia, 155,000 in Lithuania, and 4,560 in Estonia. Here, Jews comprised 4.9%, 7.6%, and 0.4% of each country's population, respectively, and 5% of the region's total population.
In prewar central Europe, the largest Jewish community was inGermany, with about 500,000 members (0.75% of the total German population). This was followed by Hungary with 445,000 (5.1%), Czechoslovakia with 357,000 (2.4%), and Austria with 191,000, most of whom resided in the capital city of Vienna (2.8%). In western Europe the largest Jewish communities were in Great Britain, with 300,000 Jews (0.65%); France, with 250,000 (0.6%); and the Netherlands, with 156,000 (1.8%). Additionally, 60,000 Jews (0.7%) lived in Belgium, 4,000 (0.02%) in Spain, and 1,200 (0.02%) in Portugal. Close to 16,000 Jews lived in Scandinavia, including 6,700 (0.11%) in Sweden, 5,700 (0.15%) in Denmark, 1,800 (0.05%) in Finland, and 1,400 (0.05%) in Norway. In southern Europe, Greece had the largest Jewish population, with about 73,000 Jews (1.2%). There were also significant Jewish communities in Yugoslavia (68,000, or 0.49%), Italy (48,000, or 0.11%), and Bulgaria (48,500, or 0.8%). 200 Jews (0.02%) lived in Albania.
Before the Nazis seized power in 1933, Europe had a richly diverse set of Jewish cultures, many of which were dynamic and highly developed, that drew from hundreds and, in some areas, a thousand or more years of Jewish life on the continent. The diverse nature of individual Jewish communities in occupations, religious practices, involvement and integration in regional and national life, and other areas made for fruitful and multifarious Jewish life across Europe. In many countries, Jews stood as cultural and political luminaries, and had marched alongside non-Jews in World War I.
In little more than a decade, most of Europe would be conquered, occupied, or annexed by Nazi Germany and its Axis partners, and the majority of European Jews--two out of every three--would be dead.
The source is the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which I guess Anonymous would think as biased.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005161
Most of this looks pretty accurate to me. From John Robinson's careful analysis of available demographic data, he concludes that a Maori population of around 100,000 in 1840 had been reduced to about 70,000 by 1840. The principal cause of death was slaughter by other Maoris (followed by cannibalism as a matter of course). Other causes were starvation due to destruction of food sources by other Maoris, infanticide (particularly of females)and disease, some of it introduced by Europeans, though it would be hard to deduce numbers of deaths for each of these reasons.
The figure of 9.5 million Jews in Europe in 1938 looks pretty accurate. Vahid's figure of 1.2 million is obviously wrong. However, the figure of 6 million deaths in the gas chambers is at best an educated guess based on the circular argument that two-thirds died this way; thus 6 million died, hence two-thirds died.
Nevertheless, many millions of Jews did die at the hands of the Nazis. Keri Opai grossly abused the privilege of a Waitangi Day interview with Kim Hill to make his utterly false claims about European treatment of Maoris. It was lying propaganda on a scale ofwhich Dr Josef Goebbels and his Nazi mates would have been proud.
B
Using the term "maori holocaust " is an insult to Jews. The anonymous but "honest Jew" writer has obviously been to the same school that taught maori how to rewrite history.
For factual history on the maori holocaust, see http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-SmiHist-t1-body1-d18-d8.html
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