November 12, 2023 7:00am by David Farrar

Nanaia personally over-rode MFAT on tone deaf tweet

Within hours of the slaughter of over 1,000 civilian men, women and babies by Hamas terrorists, our former Foreign Minister tweeted:

Aotearoa New Zealand 🇳🇿is deeply concerned at the outbreak of conflict between Israel and Gaza. We call for the immediate cessation of violence. The protection of all civilians, and upholding of international humanitarian law is essential.
— Nanaia Mahuta MP (@NanaiaMahuta) October 7, 2023

This was widely criticised for its failure to condemn the slaughter by Hamas. Now it turns out that MFAT provided a different message to her, but her office/her rejected their message and instead sent out the one above.

Confirmation that Nanaia Mahuta’s office was directly involved in objecting to the suggested MFAT tweet responding in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 atrocities; substituting it with a hopelessly tone-deaf tweet that required correction by the Prime Minister. Did Mahuta… pic.twitter.com/m1CI1JjXwN
— Thomas Cranmer (@CranmerWrites) November 10, 2023

So MFAT’s draft started with “Aotearoa New Zealand (flag) unequivocally condemns rocket and terror attacks from Gaza into Israel and calls for their immediate cessation.” and Nanaia or her office deleted that and refused to send it.

Let us hope our new Foreign Minister doesn’t need prodding to condemn terrorism.

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