RODNEY HIDE: If it happened here
Winston Peters is back on the MFA account telling Israel how to behave.
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.
Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader
Rodney let’s just pause your critique of Israeli/Palestinian conflict and take a wider look at cause and effect. The state of Israel came about through the treatment of Jews in Europe and the need to create a homeland for the survivors. Simple explanation I know. However to assist them in their efforts the Israeli’s of the time decided to engage in a spot of terrorism of their own. The Palestinian village of Deir Yassin was raided and hundreds of men, women and children slaughtered. The King David hotel in Jerusalem was bombed with some 90+ British killed. What is happening today is a consequence of both Israeli and Palestinian obstinacy not one side.
Dont know about anyone else but if I was living in a place where rockets/ explosives were lobbed at me for years ( regardless of those who argue whether I should be there or not) and I had an excuse to react Id be in balls and all.
Isn't it fun to debate and argue about things we do not understand and have no ability to influence?
Thank you, Rodney. I agree with you 100%.
Two things about Islam that most people seem to ignore:
the basic "belief system" of Islam is the most disgusting, vile, horrendous collection of untruths, with the driving force behind Islamism being conquest - submit to their beliefs or be killed. It is a DEATH CULT, run by misogynists and paedophiles.
Islam has always had phenomenally strong propaganda support from the stupid, weak, woke morons who are in politics and the media - including the BBC, which seems to be run by Islamists. The United Nations has joined the Islamists in spreading their messages, and even took part in the October 7th massacres.
So, supporters of Islamists, maybe it's time to extract…
Oh gosh, Rodney!
You didn’t just open the can of worms, you shook it violently!!
Pure Jew hatred fills the comments section aligned with main stream media bias capture and TOTAL lack of historical knowledge.
The reaction to your blog has unearthed the ignorant, the haters, the biased et al and they are not going back under their rocks willingly.
It is also absolutely impossible to turn the mob toward the human history that has led to this day in the Middle East.
So keep your peace of mind at heart and know you have to unsee and unhear their wallowing in the depths of hatred and ignorance….. I do.