Settlements. Settler violence. Annexation. Two-state. International law.
Every press release of this sort lands the same way in Jerusalem: your enemies hear that New Zealand is not with you. Your own voters hear that Wellington’s first instinct is to manage Israel’s response, not to name the aggressor and stand clear.
That is not neutrality. It is pressure — applied to the side that was invaded.
It is well to remind ourselves of the scale of 7 October 2023.
Hamas and its allies murdered 1,195 people in a morning. They dragged 251 hostages into Gaza. They burned families in their homes. They raped. They filmed it. They gloried in it.
Israel’s population was under ten million. New Zealand’s is half that.
Scale the slaughter to us and you are looking at something like 650 New Zealanders dead before lunch, and well over a hundred dragged across a border into tunnels run by a death cult that still calls for our elimination.
Imagine that hit the Bay of Plenty. Or Northland. Or a music festival outside Auckland.
We would not be holding seminars on “proportionate response.”
We would put security first. We would expect the world to back us. And, for a fortnight, we would get it — the free nations on our side.
So why the difference with Israel?
Because Israel is the Jew among nations. Years of propaganda have taught our politicians that Israel is a colonising power, while crowds chant for its violent elimination — “from the river to the sea.”
“Proportionate” is a word never applied to the aggressor who started the war with massacre, only to the democracy that refuses to lose. A Foreign Minister can condemn Hamas in one paragraph and still spend the next year issuing instructions that, in practice, constrain only Israel.
Peters will say he supports Israel’s right to exist. He will say Hamas has no place in a future Palestinian state. Fine. Then stop writing as if Israel’s duty is to lose more slowly.
A country that woke up to 1,195 of its own dead should not have to ask Wellington’s permission before finishing the job.
A country that has the right to exist has the right to defend itself.
Hamas and its allies murdered 1,195 people in a morning. They dragged 251 hostages into Gaza. They burned families in their homes. They raped. They filmed it. They gloried in it.
Israel’s population was under ten million. New Zealand’s is half that.
Scale the slaughter to us and you are looking at something like 650 New Zealanders dead before lunch, and well over a hundred dragged across a border into tunnels run by a death cult that still calls for our elimination.
Imagine that hit the Bay of Plenty. Or Northland. Or a music festival outside Auckland.
We would not be holding seminars on “proportionate response.”
We would put security first. We would expect the world to back us. And, for a fortnight, we would get it — the free nations on our side.
So why the difference with Israel?
Because Israel is the Jew among nations. Years of propaganda have taught our politicians that Israel is a colonising power, while crowds chant for its violent elimination — “from the river to the sea.”
“Proportionate” is a word never applied to the aggressor who started the war with massacre, only to the democracy that refuses to lose. A Foreign Minister can condemn Hamas in one paragraph and still spend the next year issuing instructions that, in practice, constrain only Israel.
Peters will say he supports Israel’s right to exist. He will say Hamas has no place in a future Palestinian state. Fine. Then stop writing as if Israel’s duty is to lose more slowly.
A country that woke up to 1,195 of its own dead should not have to ask Wellington’s permission before finishing the job.
A country that has the right to exist has the right to defend itself.
Rodney Hide is former ACT Party leader, and Minister in the National-ACT Government from 2008 to 2011. This article was first published HERE
7 comments:
And Israel is being accused of “genocide” for retaliating to the horrifying atrocities carried out on their people during October 7?
Have you ever heard of anything more bizarre?
Our home grown imbeciles like Swarbrick, in serious need of a lobotomy, celebrated the occasion, draped in a Palestinian tea towel waving her Palestinian flag chanting, “from the river to the sea” glorifying genocide and demanding your vote.
And the imbeciles, like Chloe, demanding we support a two state solution. Except Hamas and the Palestinians have made it clear - they have zero interest in a two state solution. Their only interest is the total removal of Israel. Nothing else, from the river to the sea, gone totally.
Facts on the history of Palestine
1917 Pre british mandate
Jews only 6% of population
occupied 2% of land
1920 ---1946
350000 jews entered palestine
1947 UN partition plan
Arab 45% jews 55% of land taken of arabs
1948 Zionists jews expelled 750000 Palestinians
Took over 78% of Historic Palestine
There was no Historic Palestine, it was a protectorate of turkey other wise known as The Ottoman Empire, they lost it to the British empire, who sold it to the Jews for dept relief after the 1st world war, NZ and Aus supplied the troops, so we liberated Israel, personaly i think that there needs to be a Roman solution to the wars there, make of it a desert and call that peace.
To yet another Anonymous at 11th, 09:20: There is not and has never been a viable state called "Palestine".
Anon 9.20's "facts" prove nothing except that s/he has no comprehension of the history of Israel, Palestine and the Middle-East in general. Of course there were very few resident Jews pre-mandate. Centuries of Islamic oppression had driven them out. The place had been owned by the Ottoman Empire for four hundred years. The Jewish return only happened after the fall of the Ottomans and, the record shows, the Jewish immigrants by and large bought property off the existing residents, whom it would seem were only too eager to get rid of the low value, unproductive land, as it then was. Since when does that constitute the land being "taken of (sic) arabs". Israeli sovereignty over a specific territory was then confirmed by international law and the Israeli Constitution offered equal citizenship to every person resident in the new nation, whether Jewish or Muslim. We all know how that was received by Israel's new neighbours, the Islamic successors to the Ottomans. They encouraged the non-Jewish population to flee, and could have solved the refugee crisis decades ago once they lost their wars. However it suited their agenda to keep the people in camps under their control, thereby punishing them for being on the losing side of the wars they started. And by the way, Israel has conceded the two-state solution as part of peace negotiations on a number of occasions only to have the Palestinian leaders walk away. Nevertheless Israel unilaterally returned the occupied Gaza Strip to Palestinian control in 2005, withdrawing both their army and their settlers, only to be rewarded by HAMAS subsequently raining missiles on innocent Israeli civilians, culminating in the events of 7 October 2023. So don't give me a list of trivial statistics on who occupies what land. Context is everything.
And Srebrenica genocide never happened yea right the world stood by did what we never learn
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