themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz
"Sold Truth for a Plane Ticket: I Watched Two Māori Men Wear a Genocide Like a Business Suit" - 23 September 2026
## What I'm Putting In Front of You Today
Kia ora whānau, it's Ivor.
In the next few thousand words I'm going to walk you through three Māori men who went looking at the same war and came back with three completely different truths
> — because two of them let someone else choose what they were allowed to see, and one of them refused.
I'm going to show you the receipts on who funded the trip, who got excluded and why, what the United Nations has already ruled about what's happening in Gaza, and what this coalition government's own record on Māori has in common with the men who came home defending it.
**Then I'm going to tell you plainly why I think you should not hand this government another three years, and why I think the Green Party has earned your vote instead.**
I love that you clicked on this essay, because it's built to be useful to you, not just to me — this is the kind of wealth of information I want sitting in your kete for the next kōrero at the marae, the next argument at your dinner table, the next time someone tells you it's "just business."
I've made an audio podcast that walks through this kaupapa in full.
I've made a short video that breaks it down fast for whoever doesn't have time to read.
And for you, the long-form reader, there's this cited 3,000-word essay waiting, receipts and all. This is a repository for our mokopuna. One day they'll ask what we knew and when we knew it — and I want the answer to be that the Māori Green Lantern, amongst a few, was already standing here with the taiaha raised, telling the truth while it was still inconvenient.
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## Pono: The Truth They Tried To Bury
Pono is not "my truth" and "your truth." Pono is what actually happened, checked against the record, whether it flatters anyone or not.
Here is what actually happened.
Renata Hakiwai — a director, investor and chair across iwi commercial arms — flew to Israel, confirmed on camera that Israel's government "paid for some of it," and told Te Ao with Moana it "wasn't a concern" to him.
Neil Waka — a 22-year broadcaster turned corporate PR consultant with nine years running corporate affairs for General Motors Holden and Coca-Cola Amatil (Essential Talent — Neil Waka) — took the same funded seat, and when asked directly why he didn't just pay his own way to remove any question of being compromised, reframed the question as an insult to his intelligence rather than answering it.
Maui Solomon — Moriori chief negotiator, 35 years in indigenous rights law, architect of the Wai 262 claim (Moriori Imi Settlement Trust) — was invited onto an earlier version of the same delegation, asked who was funding it and why, was told on a conference call it was Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, kept asking questions, and was excluded before the plane left (Te Ao with Moana).
That exclusion isn't my opinion — it's Solomon's own on-record account, and it matches, almost word for word, a statement he gave to the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa nearly two weeks before he ever spoke to a television camera. Two independent, dated sources. Pono confirmed.
The wider architecture matters too.
Yifat Goddard, an Israeli citizen living in New Zealand, is documented by the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem as having led a Māori delegation to Israel in November 2025. Former delegate Riki Manarangi confirmed on record to Te Ao Māori News that Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs organised and funded the trips, and that MFAT — our own government — only found out after the delegation was already in-country.
**The** New Zealand Israel Innovation Hub**markets its own version of this trip to Māori business networks under the banner "Startup Nation," with no mention anywhere of occupation, Gaza, or the West Bank. This is not a school trip. It is state-branded soft power, aimed with precision at the Māori business and media class, at the exact moment that class is being told neoliberal "growth" is the only path to rangatiratanga.**
And what is actually happening in the place they visited? The UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry — chaired by former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay — found in September 2025 that Israel had committed four of the five acts defined as genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention (BBC).
Gaza's Ministry of Health recorded 73,783 confirmed dead on 12 September 2026 and 73,919 by 22 September 2026 (Peninsula Qatar; WAFA) — 136 more human beings dead in the ten days either side of these men defending their trip on national television.
That is Pono. Everything Hakiwai and Waka say after this point has to be measured against it, not the other way around.
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## Tika: What Right Action Actually Looks Like
Tika is not "doing what feels right to me." Tika is right action measured against the wellbeing of the collective, informed by whakapapa — tracing where knowledge comes from and who profits from the version you're being handed.
Here is where these three men diverge completely.
Hakiwai reached the boundary of a kibbutz attacked on 7 October 2023 and stopped there.
Waka never entered Gaza and says he "never wanted to."
Solomon directly asked the facilitator, "Is there an opportunity for this delegation to go into Gaza?" and was told, "No, this is nothing to do with politics" — a flat contradiction of a trip built entirely around a political conflict.
When Solomon posted footage to the delegation group of Hāhona Ormsby, a Māori man who says he was "captured, bound, beaten, tortured, and singled out because he was Māori with a full moko" during a Gaza aid flotilla interception — independently reported by TRT World — he was accused by organisers of "fear-mongering" and "buying into algorithms," and told he "probably wasn't the right fit."
Meanwhile Hakiwai dismisses UN reporting because he "didn't read too much into the UN stuff," and Waka insists he doesn't "follow trends."
Read that back slowly: the man accused of falling for algorithms has spent 35 years working inside the actual UN indigenous rights system. The men praising their own algorithm-resistance read one UN report between them, combined.
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## The Deep Dive Podcast
Mori leaders split over Israel trip
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Listen to a lively conversation between two hosts, unpacking and connecting topics in the sources of this essay. I apologise in advance for the AI's very harsh pronounciation of reo. Please dont shoot me, :).
## Youtube Video
Like video? Here is a short video suppporting the essay. Again, don't shoot the messenger please because of AI's pronounciation. :)
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## Koha Consideration
You might ask who is paying the Māori Green Lantern to spend a week tracing three men's flights, a funding trail, and a government's Treaty record. The answer is you do.
There is no corporate sponsor behind this essay — no bank, no iwi investment fund, no PR firm smoothing the edges. Every koha you give tells me whānau are ready to support the accountability that Crown, iwi-capital boards and corporate structures clearly will not provide themselves. It tells me rangatiratanga includes the power to fund our own truth tellers when the institutions that should be asking these questions are too busy defending the plane ticket.
Kia kaha, whānau. Stay vigilant. Stay connected. And if you are able, consider a koha to ensure this voice continues.
If you are unable to koha, no worries! Subscribe or follow the Māori Green Lantern at themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz, kōrero and share this with your whānau and friends — that is koha in itself.
Four pathways exist:
> For those who wish to support this mahi directly with a koha (voluntary contribution), please visit: Koha — Support The Māori Green Lantern
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> For those who prefer direct bank transfer: Ivor Jones, account number 03-1395-0099387-000.
> For those on Facebook: facebook.com/Themaorigreenlantern
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## The Three Positions, Side By Side
Tika, in this story, is a man who lost his seat on a funded overseas trip because he asked who was paying for it. That should stop every one of us cold.
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## Three Examples For The Western Mind
If you were raised inside a Western frame that treats "business trip" and "war zone" as unrelated categories, here are three concrete places where that frame breaks — with the harm counted, the fix stated, and the tikanga cost named plainly.
### Example One — The Funded Access Problem.
Core claim: accepting money from a party to a conflict, then publicly clearing that party of wrongdoing, is a conflict of interest regardless of intent.
Quantified harm: two Māori public figures, one still sitting on active iwi and Crown governance boards, are now on the public record internationally minimising a UN-confirmed genocide that had killed 73,919 people by 22 September 2026 (WAFA).
Solution: any Māori leader offered a funded overseas trip by a state party to an active conflict should disclose the funding source publicly before travelling, and iwi and Crown boards should adopt a conflicts-of-interest policy covering state-funded travel, the same way they would for a mining company or a casino operator.
Tikanga impact: in a Western frame, accepting a "gift" and staying "neutral" seem compatible. In te ao Māori, a koha always carries obligation — utu, reciprocity — which is precisely why Hakiwai and Waka's claim that the funding "wasn't a concern" is not a personal quirk, it's a rejection of the very tikanga they claim to represent.
I explored this same funded-neutrality trap in my recent essay on the front groups laundering neoliberal messaging through respectable-sounding names, "The Taxpayer Mask: How Hager's Dirty Work Rips The Smile Off Neoliberalism's Favourite Front Group."
### Example Two — The Curated Itinerary Problem.
Core claim: an itinerary that stops exactly at the edge of the evidence that would complicate the story is not a tour, it's a script.
Quantified harm: neither Hakiwai nor Waka entered Gaza or met the Palestinian Authority; the one man who asked to go, Maui Solomon, was refused and told the trip had "nothing to do with politics" despite being built entirely around a live war.
Solution: any future Māori delegation to a conflict zone should be structured with an independent, cross-partisan selection panel — including at least one delegate nominated by the critical side — with itinerary and funding disclosed in advance, modelled on the transparency standards Solomon himself called for and never received.
Tikanga impact: whakapapa demands you trace a story to its source before you accept it as truth. A Western PR-trained mind, like Waka's nine years in corporate communications, is built to manage a message, not interrogate its origin — which is exactly why he could describe himself as "not following trends" while reciting, almost verbatim, the trend his hosts built for him.
See also my Whareroa essay on how a compulsory-order theft ninety-two years old gets repackaged today as a "spreadsheet" decision — the same trick, dressed differently: control the frame, and the outcome takes care of itself.
### **Example Three — The Silencing-of-Dissent Problem.**
Core claim: a group that responds to hard evidence by expelling the person who raised it, rather than examining the evidence, has told you everything you need to know about its actual purpose.
Quantified harm: Maui Solomon — the delegate with the deepest indigenous-rights and international-law credentials of the three — was the only one removed, for sharing documented torture testimony involving a Māori man.
Solution: whānau, hapū and iwi entities considering future invitations from Goddard's network or the NZ Israel Innovation Hub should require, as a condition of participation, written confirmation of who is excluded from these delegations and why, and should treat any past exclusion of a critical voice as a disqualifying red flag.
Tikanga impact: whanaungatanga means the collective is strengthened by including dissent, not weakened by it. A Western corporate mind treats a dissenting voice as a reputational risk to be managed off the guest list.
That is precisely the logic Solomon describes being used against him — and it is precisely the logic I've tracked before in my essay on the vitamin-drip government, "The Vitamin Sermon: How A White Supremacist Neoliberal Government Built The Cliff, Then Sold You The View" — manage the optics, exclude the critic, sell the tour.
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## Why This Coalition Government Has Earned Your Refusal
I am not going to pretend this delegation story sits in isolation from what this government does at home, because the same logic runs through both.
This coalition — National, ACT and NZ First, formed November 2023 — used its first 100-day plan to disestablish Te Aka Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority, repealing it under urgency in February 2024 (Legislation.govt.nz).
The Waitangi Tribunal found that process breached Tiriti/Treaty principles of partnership, active protection and good government (Waitangi Tribunal). ACT's Treaty Principles Bill, a coalition-agreement commitment, sought to strip the Treaty of its established legal principles; it was finally voted down 112 to 11 at its second reading in April 2025 (The Guardian) — defeated, yes, but only after the coalition itself had voted it into select committee as a term of government. On Gaza, this government has issued statements of "concern" about settler violence and reaffirmed support for a two-state solution (Anadolu Agency) — while repeatedly declining to recognise Palestinian statehood, a delay the Green Party has called "cowardly" and "a stain on Aotearoa's reputation" (Green Party).
That is a government that manages the optics of concern while withholding the substance of action — on Gaza and on Māori health — and Hakiwai and Waka's own defence of their Israel trip is that same manoeuvre in miniature: express personal discomfort ("potentially" too hard, "of course they do things wrong"), change nothing about your position.
The Green Party's position is on the public record and it is unambiguous: recognise Palestine immediately, sanction Israel, expel the Israeli ambassador, divest Crown financial institutions from entities linked to illegal settlements, and establish humanitarian visa pathways for Palestinians (Green Party — Foreign Affairs; Asia Pacific Report).
Co-leader Marama Davidson joined the Freedom Flotilla toward Gaza herself, years before this delegation ever existed. That is a party that has put its name to a genocide it calls a genocide, not a "brutal war."
I am telling you plainly, as an opinion I own and stand behind: this coalition government has shown you, on Māori health, on the Treaty, and on Gaza, that it manages appearances rather than confronting harm — and in November, I will not be handing it another term.
I am voting Green, and I believe you should consider doing the same.
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## Implications: The Harm, Counted
Every week this continues, the toll climbs. 73,783 dead on 12 September. 73,919 by 22 September — 136 more human beings in ten days, while two Māori men explained on New Zealand television why that isn't genocide, and the one man who tried to name it accurately was removed from the group before he ever got on the plane (WAFA; Peninsula Qatar).
For our own whānau, the harm is trust.
Two men with real institutional power — one still governing iwi capital, one still shaping how Māori stories get told on air — are now on record using the coloniser's own script to describe a genocide, and the mechanism that produced that outcome, exclusion of dissent, is the same mechanism operating inside Crown health policy and Treaty law right now.
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## Kia Mataara
Tino rangatiratanga was never about accepting someone else's itinerary and calling the view from the window "truth." Hakiwai and Waka went looking for the other side of the story. What they found was the side their hosts built, funded and drove them through — stopping short of Gaza, short of the settlements, short of any Palestinian who might have complicated the tour.
They came home and told Aotearoa that a UN-documented genocide is "a brutal war," and that asking the hard questions, as Maui Solomon did, makes you "an algorithm." Solomon asked to see Gaza and was refused. He shared torture testimony from a Māori man and was called a fear-monger. He named the genocide by its legal name and lost his seat on the plane before it left the ground. That is not a coincidence of personality. That is what happens, reliably, when a curated delegation meets someone who insists on tracing whakapapa back to the funder, the itinerary, and the beneficiary.
Kia mataara, whānau.
The tour bus is not the territory, and the men who stayed on it — like the government that keeps managing appearances instead of confronting harm — are not on your side.
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### Disclaimer
This essay distinguishes verified fact, directly fetched and confirmed, from opinion, which is explicitly flagged throughout. Terms such as "neoliberal," "duped," "sycophant" and "white supremacist neoliberal government" reflect my assessed opinion, grounded each time in the specific factual record stated in the same paragraph — not a legal finding. No malice is intended toward any named individual; this is a pattern-of-harm critique of public conduct and public statements on matters of significant public interest, consistent with qualified privilege principles (Lange v Atkinson, 3 NZLR 385) as applied to commentary on public figures, governments and ministers acting in their public capacity.
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