Greg Bouwer
IINZ
Apparently, in New Zealand in 2026, mass murder can be a marketing opportunity. Just add lettuce, tomato and a catchy logo. Oh, and the target must be Jews.
Welcome to “Intifada Burgers”, advertised as a food stall at Palestine Day, scheduled for 15 November at Corban Estate Arts Centre in Henderson, Auckland.
Yes. Intifada. Burgers.
A cartoon hamburger. Bright colours. Playful branding. And a name inseparably associated, in Israeli and Jewish memory, with suicide bombings, massacres and murdered children.
For those who have forgotten, the Second Intifada was not some charming Middle Eastern street festival. Between 2000 and 2005, Palestinian terrorists detonated bombs on Israeli buses, in restaurants, cafés, shopping centres and nightclubs. Families were slaughtered over dinner. Teenagers were blown apart while enjoying a night out. Children were murdered travelling to school.
In March 2002, a Hamas suicide bomber attacked a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya, killing 30 people. In August 2001, another suicide bomber murdered 15 people, including seven children, at Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizzeria.
A pizzeria.
There is something particularly grotesque about turning the language associated with that period into a fast-food brand.
Of course, someone will immediately explain that intifada simply means ‘uprising’. That the First Intifada included civil disobedience. That the word does not literally mean killing Jews.
All true. And spectacularly beside the point.
The Second Intifada is remembered not merely for political resistance but for a sustained campaign of terrorist attacks against civilians. That history does not disappear because somebody puts the word on a hamburger advertisement.
Imagine a cheerful little food stall called “October 7 Kebabs”. Or “Suicide Bomber Shawarma”. Would we be expected to admire the culinary creativity and overlook the historical associations?
Yet here we are, in Auckland, with an advertisement featuring a cartoon hamburger and the word INTIFADA in enormous letters.
And here’s where the story becomes considerably more interesting.
The property belongs to Auckland Council.
Corban Estate Arts Centre is not simply some privately owned venue whose operators can shrug off public scrutiny. The historic estate is leased to the Waitākere Arts and Cultural Development Trust, which operates the arts centre. Auckland Council’s published records list the community lease at a nominal $10 per annum.
In other words, this event is being advertised at a publicly owned cultural facility, made available through a highly concessionary council lease.
That does not mean Auckland Council organised Palestine Day, approved the burger stall or endorsed its branding. Nor does the advertisement establish that the event organisers or stall operators intended to celebrate terrorism.
But it does establish that somebody considered “Intifada Burgers” an appropriate name for a food business at a public cultural event, and that the branding was promoted in connection with that event.
And it raises legitimate questions about the standards applied at a publicly owned cultural facility.
Were Auckland Council, the Henderson-Massey Local Board or the trustees of Corban Estate Arts Centre aware of the branding? Who approved the event and its vendors? Does the venue have standards governing promotional material associated with political violence? Would those standards be applied consistently if another community proposed branding a food stall around a violent campaign associated with the murder of civilians?
These are not unreasonable questions. They are precisely the sort of questions public institutions should be prepared to answer.
After all, New Zealanders are routinely instructed to consider how language affects vulnerable communities. We are told that words can intimidate, exclude, marginalise and retraumatise. Institutions publish elaborate commitments to inclusion, belonging and cultural safety.
But apparently the word intifada, packaged as a cheerful burger brand, raises no comparable concern.
One wonders how the organisers would respond to a food stall trading on the name of a violent campaign associated with the deaths of another minority community.
Would it be dismissed as harmless wordplay? Would critics be lectured about the dictionary definition? Or would somebody finally discover the concept of sensitivity?
There is nothing objectionable about celebrating Palestinian food, culture, music or heritage. Palestinians have every right to do so. That is precisely why this branding deserves scrutiny. Palestinian identity is not synonymous with violent uprising, and Palestinian cuisine does not need the language of political violence to make it marketable.
Yet somebody has decided that intifada is an appealing selling point for hamburgers.
This is how the normalisation of violence can work. Not necessarily through explicit declarations of support for terrorism, but through the gradual transformation of historically charged language into something casual, fashionable and amusing.
Yesterday’s suicide bombings become today’s slogans. Yesterday’s massacres become tomorrow’s merchandise. And now, apparently, an intifada comes with a side of fries.
What has New Zealand come to when the language of a conflict remembered for the mass murder of Jewish civilians becomes a cute fast-food gimmick at a publicly owned Auckland cultural facility?
Auckland Council owns the property. The arts centre operates it. The event organisers are promoting the stall.
Somebody ought to explain why this is considered appropriate.
And perhaps they could answer one final question:
Would they find it quite so funny if it were their dead being used to sell hamburgers?
This article was originally published by the Israel Institute of New Zealand.
