An Israeli-owned cargo ship attracted protesters as it docked at the Ports of Auckland this week. Here’s why.

About 50 people waved Palestinian flags and protest placards at the corner of Tamaki Drive and Solent Street near Auckland’s waterfront yesterday afternoon. A handful had arrived by pram or papoose, and many more were tertiary students. Behind them port machinery moved and stacked containers of ships, one of them the MSC TANIA, a vessel owned and operated by ZIM Integrated Shipping Services, a publicly held Israeli company.

Members of the groups behind the protest, Action 4 Palestine and Working Students of Aotearoa, had read about the protests against ZIM ships in Sydney, and it got them thinking. It wasn’t long before they found that ZIM has schedules of all its lines on its website, so they could know when to expect their arrival in New Zealand’s ports.

Images promoting the picket were made public on Wednesday afternoon. “Come when you can,” read the invitation, encouraging people to come after work. But between 5 and 6pm, the protesters were forcibly removed by police. Some had shifted from the corner to sitting across Solent Street, blocking the entry and exit to the port. Six were arrested: five for obstruction, and one for disorderly behaviour. Underneath videos of the clash on Instagram, people have commented alleging the police were using unnecessary force. They also used pepper spray.

Their call for sanctions of Israeli goods fits into a global movement called BDS. Those three letters are echoing through rallies across the country, where they are followed by “Boycott! Divest! Sanction!” On social media collages of company logos are being shared alongside the phrase. But what does it all mean? 

What’s BDS?

BDS stands for boycott, divest and sanction. It’s a call for people, companies and governments around the world to stop financially supporting Israel by boycotting their products, removing financial investments and imposing sanctions on trade. In doing so, the movement hopes to put non-violent pressure on Israel until a list of demands is met. 

On the BDS website, there are just three demands: ending the Israeli occupation, recognising the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel as equal, and respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. Events like yesterday’s picket also call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

What is being BDS-ed?

Because a complete list of companies complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation of – and now war against – Palestine would be devastatingly long, the leaders of the BDS movement are narrowing the focus to a smaller number of companies and products for consumers to boycott. 

In Aotearoa, they’re pointing to Israeli-owned brands SodaStream, Axa (insurance), Puma, Siemens (technology), Ahava (beauty products), and HP (printers and stuff), as well as companies supporting Israel like McDonald’s, Domino’s Pizza, and Burger King, for franchises giving free food to the Israeli army, Pizza Hut because it is owned by Yum Brands which supports Israeli startups, Starbucks for suing its union after they expressed solidarity with Palestinians on X, and Disney+ for donating millions of dollars to “humanitarian efforts” in Israel. It’s safe to say many activists will be eating healthy and going without Baby Yoda.

Stickers have been appearing on products like Obela hummus and Dove soap in supermarket aisles, quietly stuck on by activists who know that many people won’t be reading the small print on their groceries.

In addition, people are looking into where their investments, like KiwiSaver, are going. This can be a tricky and convoluted process, so online tools like Mindful Money are being used to check funds and divest accordingly. 

The final letter, S for sanctions, requires government action. Actions like yesterday’s picket aim to put pressure on the government to act, as well as to inform the average person who can B and D.

Where did the BDS movement come from?

According to the website, BDS was launched in 2005 by 170 Palestinian unions, refugee networks, women’s organisations, professional associations, popular resistance committees and other Palestinian civil society bodies.

It was inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement which grew out of the boycott movement, and was enacted by localised groups across the world. Consumer boycotting was a constant element in the fight against apartheid from outside of South Africa, as were campaigns against the investments of international banks and companies in South Africa. The movement aimed to isolate South Africa by lobbying for exclusion from sporting and cultural events, and ending military and diplomatic links. People sometimes partly attribute the end of apartheid in South Africa to the external pressure this caused.

In New Zealand, that movement came to a head during the 1981 Springbok tour. Though it divided the country at the time, most of us now look back on the pitch invasions, flour bombs, patu and shields with pride. The protests have become part of our national identity as people who stand up for human rights.

Arguments against BDS

Some worry that BDS will impact all Israelis, regardless of whether they themselves agree with the state’s actions. This is why excluding Israeli cultural and academic figures has mostly been avoided. There have also been allegations of antisemitism. 

Others say that the current focus should urgently be on calling for a ceasefire rather than trying to impact Israel’s economy.

Does BDS work?

There have been some high-profile companies like Ben & Jerry’s that have stopped selling their products in the occupied territories, and others that have changed their production operations, like SodaStream moving its West Bank factory in 2014. Still, the Israeli economy chugged on and so did the occupation. In 2018 Israelis were deprived of a Lorde performance following a public campaign against the concert.

The impact the BDS movement could have on Israel’s economy and actions is contested. But it is at least something that people who live on small isles on the other side of the world from the conflict can do.

Ronelle Thompson has been creating glitz, glamour and drama on a shoestring budget for 30 years. Gabi Lardies talks to her ahead of the biggest day of her year.

Hanging from a pink ribbon around Ronelle Thompson’s neck is a little soft toy of Count von Count. His belly has been pierced thousands of times by sewing pins; about 20 are currently stabbed in. Above him a collection of safety pins hangs from the ribbon.

These are essential tools for Thompson, who is currently having the busiest week of her year. She’s waking up before the sun rises, mind racing with things to do, accidentally sending friends to-do lists intended for herself. This Sunday, the 26th of November, it’s the Farmers Santa Parade in Auckland; an event for which she’s been making costumes for the last 30 years. 

Thousands of costumes have been made in that time, and they’re stored year-round in a warehouse in New Lynn. There are hats in the shape of rat heads, with white sequin fabric, big blue plastic eyes and silver pipe-cleaner whiskers; brightly-coloured lycra dresses with circle skirts; and a soft pink sculpture elephant on a wheeled frame, bigger than the both of us combined.

Thompson, whose father is from New Zealand and mother is from Tahiti, grew up mostly in Australia, but always visited her grandmother here, and got to love the bush and Auckland’s west coast. When her mother died, she craved the smell of ponga and the big blundering ocean with its massive kelp, so she returned here to heal. With her two daughters in tow, she expected to stay for a year or so. Then she saw a job being advertised to sew costumes for the parade. “It was just half time, $12 an hour and 20 hours a week. And so I thought, ‘I’ll go for it’.” The rest is history, hanging on the racks or carefully folded into storage tubs at the warehouse.

Unlike some of the other staff there, Thompson never trained as a machinist or pattern maker. “I just started sewing because I wanted to have a new bikini every weekend,” she says. That led to making her daughters’ clothes, and then helping with the costumes for their theatre groups, making “mermaids and all sorts of things”. 

Preparing for the parade is a year-round job. At the beginning of each year, Thompson will work with her small team and the float builder to decide what they will make or reuse. This year, she says, “I got carried away thinking that I wanted to do a ‘Taste of New Zealand’ set. So I’ve made my son-in-law a kiwifruit that he’s going to wear that’s like a drum, and then we’ve got some pacific elves and then we’ve done about 35 sheep. We’ve got some Fred Daggs in there and a couple of stilt walkers coming as Pūriri moths.”

“I always want to try and push the parade to be Christmas but to be authentically Kiwi, and not a copy of America or other countries,” she continues. “I want us to look like we’ve got a New Zealand Christmas parade. If it had it my way I’d have Santa in a Hawaiian shirt.”

Last year Thompson thinks they used every bolt of red tulle in Auckland to make a series of umbrellas into Pōhutukawa flowers. “The poor girls – they were so heavy to hold.”

When she started 30 years ago, Thompson remembers being proudly shown the costumes. “There were some good ones but the majority of them were clowns. There were pink spot clowns, blue spot clowns, green spot clowns, black spot clowns, red spot clowns, fancy clowns, butterfly clowns, lamé clowns, black and white clowns. And I was like, ‘Is there anything else but clowns?’”

Last Sunday, everyone in this week’s parade rehearsed the choreography. It wasn’t a dress rehearsal, but Thompson was there watching, making sure everyone was in the right place at the right time. “I was looking at some of the girls, some I’ve known since they were bubbies, and they were dancing so beautifully. I could feel myself tearing up. Just suddenly it dawns on me: oh my gosh, you’ve turned into this beautiful woman. I had to call my daughter, otherwise I’d be sobbing – how embarrassing!”

On parade day, Thompson sometimes feels like the last parade was only yesterday. Some of the team around her have been there just as long or even longer than she has, and are “fantastic”. Performers return year after year, too. On pin boards in the tea room, there are collaged photos from parades past. Thompson points to a young boy riding a unicycle in a polka-dot costume. “We’ve got some great people – I just can’t believe how kind they are, and they love it. This family, we met them when they were really little, and they cycle, fantastic. I can’t rave enough about our people.” She says some who have moved away come back to Auckland every year, just to take part in the parade.

Though a diehard community remains, it’s getting smaller. “We don’t have as much, I think,” Thompson says. “Lives have got so busy. People are worn out. They’re just working like anything and then running kids here and there. To come and give time to the parade is difficult, they can’t commit.” Over the years she has noticed more people flaking out, or unable to volunteer time like they once did. 

Though the warehouse is filled with glitz, tulle, and everything a crafter could ever want, it’s all done on a shoestring budget, which has tightened since the pandemic. “We’re constantly trawling emporiums,” says Thompson. They don’t make costumes in enough numbers to buy in bulk commercial quantities, and they “don’t want to be lumbered with 50 metres of one thing,” she says, unless it’s tulle. A wall of sequinned trims in the sewing room came from the closure of a dance fabric shop, which was owned by a friend. 

Each costume is packed into a clear plastic bag which hangs from a coat hanger. They’ll be taken on racks to the Aotea Centre, which will be “chaotic” come Sunday morning. This year, parade performers will be getting dressed in boys’ and girls’ changing rooms, but Thompson and her team are rethinking this arrangement. “We’re at that stage now where I think we’re gonna stop saying girls and boys. We were talking about it yesterday that maybe next year the changing rooms will have something like Pūriri and Cabbage Tree.”

Inside the bags are also the props and a make-up card, with instructions to be followed on the day. The face painters aren’t always experienced, so “you hope for the best”, says Thompson. Last year, it rained, and “all their makeup just got washed down, they all looked like monsters at the end”. She laughs. This year if the forecast is for rain, there will be no makeup. 

On Sunday, Thompson will be in the VIP grandstands by the Grand Millennium Hotel on Mayoral Drive. “I love seeing that sweep of the parade come down,” she says. “Most of the time they’re fantastic, and we’re screaming with joy because we get so proud of them. But it’s so much and it’s so hard to take it all in.” 

Once she wore a GoPro camera on her head. It was only when she watched back the footage that she realised she was constantly moving her gaze around, and it made for dizzying viewing. This year, she’ll be taking plenty of photos on her phone, saving them for reference and sending them to friends and family – plenty of whom will be in the photos. She’s glad that the three-week job of washing and drying all the costumes afterwards has been assigned to someone else.