Ele Ludemann: When aggressors become victims

If people had used the March 15th Christchurch mosque attacks to vilify the victims, there would have been national and international outrage.

But since Hamas invaded Israel three years ago, torturing, raping and imprisoning innocent people of all ages, it’s the victims who have been vilified with Jews all over the world subject to verbal and physical attacks.

The attacks have been minimised and those who took part in the atrocities excused, even supported.

Ani O’Brien reminds us:

Three years ago today, there was no war raging in Gaza. There was a ceasefire.

Then, in the early hours of 7 Oct, Hamas launched a coordinated invasion of Israel. Thousands of armed men crossed the border & they deliberately went looking for civilians. They went into homes & murdered families. They killed children & elderly. They abducted men, women & children & dragged them back into Gaza as hostages where civilians cheered.

And they attacked the Nova music festival. Hundreds of young people were dancing in the desert when terrorists descended on them. It is grimly familiar to see Islamist terrorists choosing a place of music, dancing, & freedom as a killing ground. Manchester. The Bataclan. Nova.

There are photographs & videos of what happened that day because, extraordinarily, many of the perpetrators filmed it themselves.

There is a plethora of evidence of sexual violence. There is the intercepted call in which a Hamas attacker excitedly told his parents that he had killed 10 Jews “with my own hands”. They raped & burned bodies, hunted people through fields & into bomb shelters, & paraded terrified hostages through Gaza. It was an atrocity.

And something happened in the West almost immediately afterwards that I still struggle to comprehend. Before Israel had even buried its dead, people thousands of kilometres away began finding reasons why the victims had it coming.

Within days, the murderer and the murdered had begun swapping places in the popular imagination.

Three years later, antisemitism has returned with a fervour to Western society with a speed and confidence that should terrify us. . .

In New Zealand, just about as far away from the atrocities as you can get, politicians chant from the river to the sea, and free Palestine.

Rodney Hide points out that we’ve even got a political party registered as Free Palestine:

The Palestine Free from the River to the Sea Party is contesting our general election on 7 November. It’s on your ballot paper as “Free Palestine”.

Yes, our Electoral Commission registered it. It did so on 5 August, despite 207 submissions against. It ruled the name wasn’t “offensive”. It did draw the line at the party’s logo, a Palestinian flag, in case voters got confused. The name was fine. So a flag might mislead you. A party named for a slogan that wipes Israel off the map does not.

Auckland barrister Ian Dunwoodie complained to the Ombudsman. The Chief Ombudsman found the Commission’s decision “not unreasonable”.

And you’re paying. The Commission has allocated the party $82,011 of taxpayers’ money for election advertising on television, radio and online. Its leader, schoolteacher Paul Hopkinson, calls it “government funding of $82,000 to help raise awareness of the Palestinian cause”.

What cause? The party tells us. Its very first founding principle calls for “the dismantling of the Zionist structure of the state of Israel”. It rejects two states. It wants a single state in Israel’s place. It pledges “unconditional and complete solidarity for the Palestinian resistance in all forms”.

The website adds “accordant with International Humanitarian Law”. The party’s launch statement didn’t bother: “Unconditional support for all forms of Palestine resistance.”

The only way to peace, it says, “is to put an end to the apartheid state of Israel”. It signs off: “Resistance Until Victory!”

We saw the resistance on October 7.

So there it is. A party campaigning within New Zealand, in our election, at our expense, for the destruction of Israel. . .

On X, the Auschwitz Museum posts photos of people of all ages who were imprisoned in the concentration camp, most of whom were gassed or died.

Those forgiving the atrocities of October 7th, the ones who vilify the victims and make the aggressors victims, are inviting a repeat of the holocaust.

On October 7th we should be saying never again but in London a pro-Palestine march is taking place.

The day when the victims should be remembered in sorrow, is being used to celebrate a movement that seeks to destroy their country and annihilate their people all over the world.

The victims are being vilified, the aggressors framed as victims and their atrocities are used to encourage more.

It is sick, dangerous and should be universally condemned.

Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.