I'm not gonna be graphic, and, and I'm not gonna talk about what it is hap what's happening there in detail. You already know, you can choose to read about it yourself, and I recommend that you do just to the point that you can kind of handle it.
Credit, today, to Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister of Australia.
He has stopped pussyfooting around what's going on here. He's just put out a strongly worded statement this afternoon. He's demanding that Israel stop starving children to death and let in more aid.
He says, we call on Israel to comply immediately with its obligations under international law. Now that is a shed load better than the waffly joint statement we signed up earlier this week.
We need to get a spine on this, don't we?
I mean, our joint statement didn't even mention the word starvation or starving, or any variation on that word. It is watered down to the point of having absolutely no impact, and that is what it had, no impact.
Now I am not naive enough to think that New Zealand telling Israel off is going to change anything, but we've got to do something.
And if all we've got is words, then we're gonna have to use them.
Because maybe I am naive enough to believe that if enough world leaders call out Israel, name what is going on, don't pussyfoot around it, call the deliberate starvation for what it is.
If enough world leaders say, ‘you have got to stop this now’, and if enough leaders then enact sanctions on Israel, then surely Trump cannot ignore it anymore.
And Trump is the key here. He's the one we have to convince.
Now, I know that Israel still has hostages in those tunnels, and as I said earlier this week, Hamas must release them for this war to end.
But let me put this to you in very, very stark numbers.
10 hostages is not worth even one of those children's lives.
You do not starve a child to death to get 10 hostages out.
They are children.
I cannot believe that we are watching this happen and that we are letting this happen.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.
11 comments:
Articles like this is the reason why Hamas walks away from negotiations and won’t agree to release the hostages. If we listen to people like you, then it’s just a matter of time before Hamas will regroup & we’ll have another October 7th.
It’s easy for you to condemn Israel Heather, as you write this from half a world away in New Zealand-a country incapable of its own defence & whose freedom is protected by Australians and Americans.
It’s a shame you’ve fallen for Hamas propaganda.
The Israelis are literally fighting for their survival. Let them finish the job.
New Zealand are cowards to fold to a Hamas perview. I support Israel to complete its mission, bring its people home and wipe out Hamas.
Let’s talk about Israel.
The genocide in Gaza has not stopped because it's lucrative, it's profitable for far too many. It's a business. There are corporate entities, including from Palestine-friendly states, who have for decades made businesses and made profits out of the economy of the occupation. Israel has always exploited Palestinian land, resources and Palestinian life. The profits have continued and even increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide.
The latest report submitted by Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, lists 48 corporations and institutions, including Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc., Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as Blackrock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.
Israel’s “forever-occupation” provides the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech - providing significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability - while investors and private and public institutions profit freely.
War is a business. So is genocide, now a Holocaust, a systematic and state-sponsored persecution and murder of a specific group of people (Palestinians) based on their identity.
Latest report by Special Rapporteur:
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session59/advance-version/a-hrc-59-23-aev.pdf?
Interview with Francesca Albanese:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbakVaOGgOk&t=12s
Wow! Heather, and your part of the media.
Are you so sure that children are starving in Gaza, because I'm not.
Every time I see the hoards of people gathered at aid stations, on my tv screen via Aljazera's pro Hamas bias, maybe I'm wrong but the Gazans appear well feed, well dressed and sporting recently trimmed modern hair cuts.
Its naive in the extreme to believe the anti Israeli reporting we are receiving in this country.
Ten hostages are not worth one child's life. Wow, that is some moral mountain you are climbing on.
Personally they should never have invaded. Just close the border completely and leave the rest of the hand wringers to deal with them. Israel is like some poor person with a state tenant next door that continually abuses them. Egypt has a border, let them deal with them. Build a port for them, whatever. Choices and consequences.
Thats a very simplistic view Heather, which is not normal for you. This is war, Declared on Oct 7. It is most uncommon for a waring party to let any aid into a war zone.
I listened to a pro Israel Colonel who went to Israel with a group of 14 Generals from 9 countries, None of whom were biased toward Israel. The consensus at the end of the visit, they all agreed that no other country had ever fought a war with so much consideration for the civilian population.
In regard to the aid program have you not seen the 950 loaded trucks parked in Gaza waiting for the UN to work with the GHF and deliver. I'm not so sure that its the IDF preventing the distribution.
Listening to the Hamas narrative is the same as relying on 'Tokyo Rose' and Joseph Goebbels for balanced reporting during WW2. We would laugh at anyone who did that............as one of NZs top broadcasters its time to up you game
Heather, you do not have one clue what you are talking about. Just like when yourself and Mike Hosking try doing economics. Its best you guys stick to being DJs and stop doing foreign policy, military intelligence, and economic policy. Its partly why NZ is doing bady, Best Robert
Yeah, yeah, we all get it. War is hell. Always has been. But one big difference between medieval war and modern war is that the jihadists of yesteryear didn't have cellphones to distort the narrative. HAMAS can stop the war tomorrow by returning the hostages and confirming Israel's right to live in peace behind defensible borders. But they won't and they consider every child's death to be a victory in the propaganda war. Opinion pieces like this buy right into that brutal Islamic reality.
The NZ media seem to ignore that there is a war going on and make it sound like Hamas aren't fighting. I read regular accounts in the international media of gun battles and Israeli soldiers getting killed.
The first casualty in war is the truth . Telling lies is part of the propaganda and war effort and Hamas influenced Western Media is aligning itself to the pro Palestinian cause in order to demonize Israel . Hamas don't care about the Gazan's plight . They sell food supplies intended for Gazans on the black market to fund their war machine. That is what is important to them. At present Hamas are winning the propaganda war . Anti -Semitism is growing in the West, Hamas are very happy with that. This is one of their main aims along with world wide jihad which apparently will bring about some sort of apocalyptic return of a Muslim Mahdi. This is not about territory alone but Muslim religious dominance, against Western Judeo-Christian roots.
I've never read such a sick article that attaches different values on a human life - in this case depending on whether one is Israeli or Palestinian. The line, "10 [Israeli] hostages is not worth even one of those [Gaza] children's lives. You do not starve a child to death to get 10 hostages out" is warped. Many remaining hostages are also very young and sick, at around and just over 20 years old. So to be clear, Heather thinks its better to save one Gazan child who is, say, 12 years old than 10 Israelis who are 20? What a chilling arithmetic. Say people live to about 80. Then those 10 young Israelis represent 600 life years between them, compared to 68 life years for the 12 year old. Every lost life is a tragedy, either Palestinian or Israeli. But it seems Heather puts a different value on life depending on one's background. She should issue a retraction on Monday morning.
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