Melanie Phillips: The humanitarian front against Israel

Mass murder has been branded as conscience to mess with people’s minds

Amazing news: Amnesty International has now acknowledged that night follows day!

Well, almost. In a report just published, Amnesty has stated for the first time that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and torture, on and after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Brendan O'Neill: The Battle of Gaza City - it’s time to take sides

Why the army of the Jewish State must be victorious over the Islamist hysterics of Hamas.

‘I judge a man by one thing’, said the early 20th-century English Liberal MP Isaac Foot: ‘Which side would he have liked his ancestors to fight on at Marston Moor?’ He was referring to the Battle of Marston Moor of 1644, during the English Civil War, in which the Parliamentarian side under the command of the radical Lord Fairfax roundly defeated the Royalist side. It was the military victory that propelled these isles towards democracy. I’m starting to feel similarly about the Battle of Gaza City – that you can judge a person by which side they’re taking in this clash between the army of Israel and the neo-fascists of Hamas.

Mike's Minute: NZ's response on the war changes nothing

If it's any help to those chained to Nicola Willis' office, there is a decent piece I read yesterday asking whether Israel was heading towards a South Africa moment.

In an interview this week, Netanyahu seemed to accept some sort of isolation was a price his country was, and is, paying for as a result of the war.

Brendan O'Neill: As Bono now knows, you criticise Hamas at your peril

The mad backlash against U2 confirms pop music is under the spell of Islamo-fascism.

Bono’s getting flak again. What’s he done now? Foisted another U2 album on iPhone users? Donned his expensive shades for yet another gurning selfie with some president or pope? Nope, it’s far worse than that – he criticised Hamas.

JC: You Can’t Have One and Expect the Other

I just wish, when it comes to the Middle East conflict, politicians around the world would dispense with their holier-than-thou attitudes and start dealing in realities. On a broader level they are arguing against themselves: they spend half their time arguing for a ceasefire and the other half arguing for a Palestinian state. If you achieve the first then you can’t possibly achieve the second.

Dave Patterson: Israel, Gaza, and the US – Is There an End Game?

It seems like a stalemate with no end in sight.

Even those without attention deficit disorder find it challenging to keep all the world’s crises straight. The daunting situation with Israel and Hamas in Gaza, for example, appears to have no resolution in sight. There are a variety of competing solutions at play, most of them by countries with no dog in the hunt. Nonetheless, what is happening in Gaza is the fulcrum about which peace in the Middle East pivots. Solving the conundrum would be an accomplishment for the ages.

Brendan O'Neill: The West is complicit in Hamas’s torture of the hostages

The recognition of Palestine is a sick reward for Hamas’s anti-Semitic atrocities.

We know why Hamas would drag two Jews underground and starve them: because it is an army of anti-Semites founded with the express intention of persecuting Jews. We know why it would humiliate the Jews further by taunting them on film, forcing one to dig his own grave for the cameras and capturing the other weeping in ravenous pain: because it revels in the psychological torment of what it views as a ‘lesser people’. And we know why it would marshal these two skeletal men – Evyatar David, 24, and Rom Bravslavski, 21 – to the end of horrifying the people of Israel: because its sole motivation is to wound, ideally fatally, the Jewish State.

Ele Ludemann: Validating evil

Several Arab states are calling for Hamas to disarm and end its rule in Gaza:

Arab countries including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt joined calls Tuesday for Hamas to disarm and end its rule of Gaza, in a bid to end the devastating war in the Palestinian territory.

Ele Ludemann: No grey in October 7th atrocities

Few conflicts are black and white, but no intelligent and well informed person can think there is any grey in the October 7th atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel.

No matter people’s views on Israel’s actions since and whatever sympathy they have for the people of Gaza, they can neither excuse nor justify the rapes, murders and barbarism that took place on that dark day and which triggered Israel’s response.

Brendan O'Neill: The BBC’s shameful moral cowardice over Hamas

The Beeb is showing a film about Hamas’s pogrom but the film won’t feature the word ‘terrorist’. This is insane.

The BBC has reached a new low. It has tumbled further down the well of moral relativism. This week, it will broadcast a new documentary about Hamas’s massacre at the Nova music festival on 7 October last year. But according to the doc’s director, the version the Beeb is showing ‘won’t describe Hamas as terrorists’. If this is true, if the BBC can’t even park its weird aversion to calling Hamas terrorists when it is airing a film about Hamas’s butchery of the young at a festival in the desert, then that shames Britain.

David Farrar: A small glimmer of hope

Reuters reports:

A majority of Gazans believe Hamas’ decision to launch the Oct. 7 attack on Israel was incorrect, according to a poll published on Tuesday pointing to a big drop in backing for the assault that prompted Israel’s devastating Gaza offensive.

Dr Simon Smelt: Asks NZ Labour Party - Why are you against peace?

Why are you against peace?

There was a ceasefire in place on Oct 7. If Hamas hadn’t committed massacre and outrages, there would be no war. To demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire (no mention of any return of hostages) fits beautifully with what Hamas wants and therefore encourages them. Such a move would be seen as a huge triumph for Hamas, strengthening them enormously. Their future grip on Gaza would be assured. They are already more popular than the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, so would become unstoppable there also.

Brendan O'Neill: Rafah reminds us of the evils of Hamas

Why are so many in the West washing away Hamas’s responsibility for the Gaza catastrophe?

The anti-Israel set is right about something for once: it is unconscionable that Rafah has been turned into a warzone. It is an affront to humanity itself that a city once teeming with civilians fleeing the ravages of war elsewhere in Gaza should now be reduced to a hellish battleground. But who did this? Who was it that decided to use this former city of civilians as a launchpad for war? Who was it that posted their military commanders there, hid their ammunition there, fired their missiles from there, dragged hostages there? Who was it who hid the machinery of war among the women and children of Rafah, knowing full well bloodshed would ensue?

Brendan O'Neill: A judicial pogrom

The ICC’s threat of arrest warrants against Israel’s leaders is an affront to democracy and humanity.

So it’s a crime now to defend yourself against fascist violence? Some of the imperious prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC) seem to think so. Just 226 days after the Jews of southern Israel were subjected to the worst act of anti-Semitic slaughter since the Holocaust, the chief prosecutor of the ICC says he’s seeking arrest warrants for Israeli officials. The preening overlord of international law says he has ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe they’ve committed crimes against humanity. Behold the great moral inversion of our times: the victims of a crime against humanity are themselves suspected of crimes against humanity. The targets of fascism are treated as fascists. Rarely has the moral decomposition and blind arrogance of globalist institutions been so graphically illustrated.

Bruce Cotterill: Asylum seekers ahead - Proceed with caution

It’s nice to see our political leaders playing a constructive role on the international stage again.

Last week, we saw our Foreign Minister joining other global leaders in calling for both sides in the Israeli conflict with Palestine to give serious consideration to the cease fire terms that were before them.

David Farrar: Rewarding terrrorism

Winston Peters announced:

New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says.

Guest Post: Moral Equivalence Hamas and Israel

A guest post by a reader on Kiwiblog:

There has been much outrage this week over the deaths of aid workers from western countries in Gaza.

Brendan O'Neill: Al-Shifa Hospital and the crisis of the West

Why are so many in the West buying into Hamas’s lies about al-Shifa?

‘Let Hamas use hospitals to plot its murderous assaults on the Jewish State.’ Few people outside of Hamas’s own inner circle would say something like this out loud. Few people would give voice to such a pro-war-crime position. No one who wants to be thought of as a moral person, a halfway decent person, would so cavalierly engage in Hamas apologism. And yet this, in essence, is what the West’s activist class is saying when it rages against Israel over its incursions into al-Shifa Hospital. They’re saying Israel should back off and let the people who are already in the hospital – Hamas – do their thing. It’s a pro-terror stance masquerading as peace activism.