Rodney Hide: One law for Tamaki, another for the party of October 7

"Bash the Jews. Cut their heads off."

A man shouted that at a pro-Palestinian protest in Auckland in July 2014. It's on video. Dr David Cumin and historian Paul Moon reported to the Herald that the Human Rights Commission didn't think it worth investigating, let alone prosecuting. Its reasoning, as they reported it: no violence followed, so it didn't incite anything.

Remember that reasoning. It's about to become very selective.

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.

Ashley Church: Did Israel have advance knowledge of 7 October?

Separating what was known from what wasn't

There’s a theory about Pearl Harbor that has been circulating almost since the day the Japanese attacked the American Pacific Fleet on 7 December 1941.

It says that President Franklin Roosevelt knew the attack was coming and allowed it to happen because he wanted the United States to enter the Second World War and needed an event dramatic enough to change American public opinion.

It’s a compelling story, which probably explains why it has survived for more than 80 years. There’s just one problem. There’s no credible evidence that it happened.

Brendan O'Neill, The UK government has swallowed the Great Lie of Israelophobia

If it wasn’t for Israel, if it wasn’t for that monstrous, marauding state, there’d be peace in the Middle East. This is the Great Lie of Israelophobia. It’s the truthless, venomous current powering the global loathing for the Jewish State. You hear it on the street, on campuses, in mosques: that peace demands the muzzling, if not the outright destruction, of the bloodthirsty Jewish nation. Yesterday, staggeringly, we heard a version of this lie from the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom.

Brendan O'Neill: Andy Burnham’s shameful pandering to anti-Israel bigots

His pompous, fact-lite sermon on Gaza is a transparent effort to win back Muslim voters and the keffiyeh classes.

Here he comes, pandering Andy Burnham. The King of the North throwing out the red meat of Israelophobia to keep certain voters sweet. The incoming PM yapping piously about Israel’s possible ‘war crimes’ in a bid to win back restive Muslim voters and the keffiyeh classes who’ve abandoned Labour for the crackpot Greens. That’s what I saw in Burnham’s staggeringly pompous digital sermon on Gaza – not an act of geopolitical conviction but a masterclass in demographic toadying.

Melanie Phillips: Amoral Andy sticks it to the Jews

Who cares that no-one knows how he'll govern Britain? He's passionate about Gaza

Well that didn’t take long, did it?

On the day that 322 politically bankrupt and panicky Labour MPs made it all but certain through their backing that Andy Burnham’s coup against Sir Keir Starmer had succeeded and he would replace him as prime minister, Burnham — whose only claim to fame is the common touch he brought to his role as mayor of Manchester — chose to celebrate by sticking it to the Jews.

Bob Edlin: If Luxon wants to duck out of accepting his Board of Peace invitation.....

If Luxon wants to duck out of accepting his Board of Peace invitation, he should take his cue from Canada’s Carney…

Perhaps it will be announced some time soon, but at time of writing PoO could find no record of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s decision in response to the formal invitation to join US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza.

No doubt he was chuffed to get the invitation, although permanent membership comes with a price tag.

Simon O'Connor: A ceasefire of silence ...

When I visited the Gaza envelope earlier this year, I took one critical question with me and now I think I have an answer.

There is a ceasefire.

After two long bloody years, Hamas has finally done what it should have done many months ago – release the Israeli hostages. As we tragically know, they did not, and many of the Gazans they claim to represent have died as a result.

Brendan O'Neill, Trump’s peace plan is the Western left’s worst nightmare

By turning the screws on Hamas, Trump has exposed who’s really responsible for this dreadful war.

Has the prospect of peace ever been greeted with such gloom? No sooner had President Trump unveiled his peace plan for Israel-Gaza than the opinion-forming classes were frantically sowing cynicism. The possibility that the ghastly war in Gaza will be brought to a close gave rise not to optimism but to sarcasm, suspicion, even an eerie grumpiness unbecoming of a deal that might save thousands of lives. From the BBC to Sky News to the Israelophobic swamp of social media, the cry went up: ‘It’ll never work.’

Philip Crump: Trump and Netanyahu announce details of US peace plan for Gaza

After the theatrics of the UN, Trump announces an ambitious peace plan for Gaza.

At 7:30am this morning, one week before the second anniversary of October 7, President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu began a press conference at the White House to announce a plan for “peace in the Middle East” including a reconstruction and governance plan for Gaza and an expansion of Trump’s first term Abraham Accords.

The 20 point plan, which has had input from many nations, is focused on ending the war, returning the hostages and setting the conditions for enduring security for the Palestinians and Israel.

JC: Winston’s Home Truths at the United Nations

Winston Peters’ address to the United Nations is to be applauded. Following on from President Trump’s home truths, he delivered a few of his own. His speech, of course, has not gone down well with the homeland fantasists on the left. Labour’s Peeni Henare called it “embarrassing” while the Green’s co-leader, Marama Davidson, said it was “cowardly”; Typical for those on the left who refuse to recognise or can’t cope with the realities of today’s world.

Melanie Phillips: The fantasy state of "Palestine"

Time for the US and the Jewish world to start holding their supposed champions’ feet to the fire

In his barnstorming speech this week at the United Nations General Assembly, in which he lobbed one uncomfortable home truth after another at member states, US President Donald Trump told the world body itself that it was useless. Instead of stopping wars and saving lives, he said, it produced only empty words.

The problem with the UN is rather more acute than that. Supposedly the guardian of peace and justice in the world, it has become instead an avatar of evil.

Chris Lynch: New Zealand rules out recognising Palestine for now, commits $10m Gaza aid

New Zealand will not recognise Palestine at this time, Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced at the UN General Assembly in New York today.

Peters said with the war ongoing, Hamas remaining the de facto government of Gaza, and no clarity on next steps, it was not prudent for New Zealand to move ahead with recognition.

Dr Will Jones: Hamas Executes “Israeli Collaborators” in Streets of Gaza

Hamas has executed three Palestinians accused of “collaborating” with Israel on the streets of Gaza, just hours after the UK, Australia and Canada announced their recognition of a Palestinian state. The Telegraph has more.

Mike's Minute: Two obvious tips for Chris Hipkins

Chris Hipkins came undone yesterday, twice.

You would hope, given there is literally no pressure on him right now and he basically gets to spend his days bagging the Government, he might want to sharpen up, given next year is a whole different kettle of fish.

Simon O'Connor: More biased voices wanted

Stuff is calling for kiwis to share views on what's happening in Israel and Gaza, but don't expect there to be any balance.

The Stuff headline (below) can be best described as a lie. To date, Stuff has shown little interest in presenting a range of views on this complicated conflict, and this call made at the start of the week will be no different. I would anticipate a careful selection of ‘voices’ that reinforce the single narrative Stuff has been pushing for months now. More worryingly, it will probably enable the usual tropes, slurs, and half-truths to be repeated. What we are witnessing is not reporting but propaganda.

Brendan O'Neill, How the West’s Israelophobia has made life hell for Palestinians

The human catastrophe in Gaza is a product of the delirious moralism of our anti-Israel elites.

A question haunts me: why are there still women and children in Gaza? This is a strip of land 25 miles long and seven miles wide. It’s a quarter the size of London. And for nearly two years it has been engulfed by war. An army of anti-Semites is fighting one of the dirtiest wars humanity has ever witnessed, hiding in civilian infrastructure to plot its murder of Jews. Israel is dropping bombs. There are gunfights. And there are all the horrors that attend war: death, hunger, sickness. And yet there they are, the women and children, fleeing the fighting and scrabbling for food alongside men.

Professor Ananish Chaudhuri: Death and displacement in Gaza are heart-breaking but

I see progressives, both in New Zealand and overseas, routinely excoriate Israel for carrying out “genocide” in Gaza. In fact, accusing Israel of “genocide” has become a rite of passage in establishing one’s bona fides as a progressive. Except, as with many other contemporary progressive shibboleths, there is little factual basis to this claim.

How is genocide defined?

DTNZ: Israel plans to move Gaza population to single ‘humanitarian city’

The Palestinians will not be allowed to leave the camp except for “voluntarily” emigrating to other countries, Israel Katz says.

Israel is preparing to establish a so-called “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where the Palestinian enclave’s entire population is to be moved, the country’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has announced. Critics of the initiative promptly branded the “city” an internment camp and warned of potentially widespread human rights abuse.

Mike Butler: Hamas, Israel, the West's decline

The Builder’s Stone – how Jews and Christians built the west – and why only they can save it by Melanie Phillips, starts with the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, and discusses precisely how Jews and Christians built the west and why only they can save it. Phillips, a British journalist, author, and publisher, is a well-placed to write on this issue.

“Phillips” was the surname adopted by her parents, who moved to Britain from Poland and Russia after the Holocaust, because “their real name was difficult for the English to pronounce”, she said.