Nadine Mortaja: Finding my calling

Last weekend, Nadine Mortaja, a 26-year-old Palestinian New Zealander, led 50,000 people in the historic March for Humanity through the Auckland CBD, to demand that the New Zealand government impose sanctions on Israel for its war crimes in Gaza.

For more than 100 weeks, Nadine and her fellow lead chanter (nine-year-old Ali Gouda) have used their voices to inspire and lead the regular Auckland rallies.

Here’s Arama Rata in conversation with Nadine about what last week’s march meant to her.

 

Kia ora, Nadine. How did you get involved with chanting?

The first time I started chanting, it wasn’t planned. There was no one chanting in my area, so I was like: “You know what? I’m just going to start chanting, because I have a lot of anger and I just want to get it out.”

And I remember the first time I picked up a megaphone, I was like: “Oh, okay. This feels good.” It was a way for me to let out my frustration and to feel like I was doing something, even if it was just a little part. Chanting genuinely gave me a purpose, a way to keep going.

I would see the news every day. I’m a teacher — I teach Year 2 children. And I remember very vividly being on a bus and seeing that Israel had bombed a hospital, and then they’d bombed a school.

And then I started to think about the kids that I teach. I don’t have kids of my own, but when you work with kids so closely, you grow these amazing bonds with them. I can’t imagine anything like that happening to the 22 kids that I teach. And these are not even my kids. How are the mothers in Gaza feeling? How are the fathers in Gaza feeling?

We’ve seen horrifying videos and images of kids carrying their parents in plastic bags. How are we living in a world where that happens to the children in Gaza, while I’m here, a teacher, seeing the kids coming to school every day, playing in the playground, having lunch boxes, having an education?

It was very hard, especially in the first few days. I would go into work, and I was very down. I just didn’t want to be there.

But it’s been good working with children because it distracts you from all the horrifying things that we see.

Talk to us about your upbringing.

I was born here in Tāmaki (Auckland). My parents came here in 1997, because they wanted their children to have a better life.

My dad is a civil engineer, and he was travelling a lot for work. And my mum was a stay-at-home mum. But with four kids, it was very hard for her. At the time, there wasn’t a big Palestinian community in Tāmaki. So, in 2001, they decided to move to Kuwait, where most of my dad’s family lives, just to be closer to home and have a sense of community.

Both my mum and my dad are from areas near Gaza City. My mum’s family is from an area called Rimal, and my dad is from Shuja’iyya. But they didn’t meet in Gaza — they met in Kuwait. And this goes back to us being displaced.

My dad was born in Gaza, but his family moved to Kuwait when he was young. But my mum was born in Kuwait. Her dad was a historian, and he wrote lots of wonderful books about Palestine and the history of Grenada in Spain, so he was quite an educated man. He was very inspiring.

I was two when we left Aotearoa. I have one brother and three sisters. We grew up in Kuwait, and then in 2015, we moved to Qatar because my dad got a job there. I finished my schooling there, and then in 2017, I came back to Tāmaki for uni. I did a bachelor’s in English and media, and then a master’s in teaching and learning, both at AUT.

My brother Bader is living in Qatar, and he’s a civil engineer. Mai is in Oman, and she’s a PR manager. Heba, who was also born here, is in Tāmaki, completing her master’s in psychology. Dima is in Turkey completing a master’s in architecture.

As you can see, we’re everywhere, but this is what it means to be a Palestinian, to be displaced. We never got a chance to live in Palestine.

I’ve been to Gaza once in my life, in 2013. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that experience. It was my first time going to my homeland. It was like a dream to me. It was my first time meeting my cousins and my extended family, which was an incredible experience. I got to see my Tita, my grandma, and my mum’s two brothers.

It was the most memorable month of my life. People were really living there. Yes, they were living under a siege, but they were still living. They had jobs, there were weddings, people would go to restaurants, there were cafes, they were still living a normal life. Or as normal as it can be under a blockade, with everything being controlled by air, land and sea.

What has it been like watching what’s happening in Gaza since the escalation in violence in 2023? It must be harrowing for you.

It’s very hard. When they talk about Al-Shifa hospital, or a certain restaurant or street, it’s like: “Wow, I remember that street. I walked on that street.”

Both of my uncles lived in Gaza. That was their home. They had houses there. Their kids went to school there. But as the situation got worse and worse, they made the decision to leave for their families. But their kids had already been through so much trauma. My cousin can’t go to the bathroom without an adult there, and she needs to sleep with the lights on because she gets scared. I remember when they first went to Egypt, they were so shocked to see planes up in the sky that weren’t bombing them.

We see these people on our screens and we hear their names, but some of us have connections with these people or know of their families. It felt like a funeral every day. But then the situation just kept getting worse and worse. There are images that I will never forget, images that are etched in my head.

Stories like Hind Rajab being shot 355 times, and no one is being held accountable for that. Or like Anas Al-Sharif, the journalist, who was killed in an Israeli air strike last month. We had watched him from the beginning of the genocide. He was our voice, you know? It’s just story after story — and it never gets easier. There are no words to describe it.

Just this week, the UN confirmed Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. And last month, the UN-backed global hunger monitor confirmed famine in Gaza, with half a million people facing catastrophic hunger because of Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid from the strip. The UN has also reported that more than 1,400 Palestinians had been killed while seeking food from the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation since its inception in May of this year. Since October 2023, more than 200,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded.

In the midst of all this horror, it must be hard to hold on to hope. How did you feel when you saw the March for Humanity across the Sydney Harbour Bridge last month?

Amazing. When we saw that, we knew we needed to do something big.

I remember when I was at uni, people would ask me where I was from, and when I said Palestine, they would think I meant Pakistan. A lot of people didn’t even know what Palestine was.

So, it was incredible to see those images in Sydney — 100,000 people marching for humanity, demanding sanctions and demanding for food to be let into Gaza.

As you know, that was the moment that Aotearoa for Palestine was born. Our goal was to organise a march across the Auckland Harbour Bridge. It’s Palestinians and tangata whenua. We have people who were involved with the Auckland leg of last year’s Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti.

It was such an amazing honour for us Palestinians to even be considered for a march on the harbour bridge with tangata whenua — and it’s been incredible working together. Like, we get each other. We’ve had the same struggles, and we’re fighting for the same rights.

Within two weeks of announcing the bridge crossing, Aotearoa for Palestine had endorsements from more than 150 groups: labour unions, human rights and environmental NGOs, and Māori political leadership, including Toitū Te Tiriti and the Pou Tikanga of the National Iwi Chairs Forum.

But less than 24 hours before the march, updated weather forecasts pointed to severe winds strong enough to lift a person off the ground, making crossing the Auckland Harbour Bridge unsafe for pedestrians.

It didn’t deter the thousands that spilled out in every direction from the rallying point at Aotea Square. Organisers were able to gauge the size of the crowd at 50,000 when the front of the march completed the 2.1 km route to Victoria Park — that’s based on the march filling an area more than twice that of Queen Street, which holds roughly 20,000 people.

Nadine, how did you feel at that stage?

The moment we heard, once we got to Victoria Park, that people were still leaving Aotea Square, I remember having goosebumps all over my body.

It’s the biggest march we’ve ever seen in Aotearoa for Palestine. It was an absolutely incredible march. It doesn’t matter where we march, whether it’s on the Harbour Bridge or Queen Street, the message is still the same. We want the New Zealand government to sanction Israel for its war crimes. Someone needs to hold them accountable, and sanctions are the only answer, because words aren’t enough. It’s time for action.

For more than 100 weeks, your voice has helped sustain the movement. Where do you get the strength to do this?

It really just goes back to my people. Seeing videos of 10-year-old kids saying: “This is our land. We are not leaving our land.”

That’s enough for me to chant my heart out. Seeing the crowd chanting back really hard makes me keep going. And when we do that chant, Ana Raja Raja, we do believe that! We believe that we will return to a free Palestine one day.

 

Dr Arama Rata (Ngāruahine, Taranaki, Ngāti Maniapoto) is an organiser with Aotearoa for Palestine. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

E-Tangata, 2025