Our soon to be gone but certainly not grieved, hugely embarrassing joke Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta, has issued an order on our behalf to both Hamas and the Israelis to cease fighting at once. That should sort them out, moreso as the head of the world’s largest pedophile outfit, namely the Pope, has also told them to desist. The deluded egos of Mahuta, the Pope (and others) in issuing such demands belies belief.
Back in the mid 1980s I wrote a newspaper column about this perpetual conflict. Specifically, I, an avid news reader, said I was not going to waste any more of my life reading about the constant outbursts of killing by both sides as I saw no end to it, not that is until ultimately Israel is destroyed.
However, this time is different by dint of the sheer scale of the Hamas attack and the tragic huge loss of mainly innocent lives on both sides.
The timing was possibly motivated by the year long anti-government mass protests in Israel which Hamas and its backers possibly saw as an opportune moment to act as they have. The odd thing about those protests is they’re against a move to give Parliament ultimate legal supremacy, exactly as here, in Australia, Canada and other democracies which is as it should be in a democracy.
When this current bout of killing temporarily peters out one after-effect I confidently predict, is a sizeable exodus from Israel, as has been the fate of Jews for 2000 years. That is the understandable pursuit of a safe haven to get on with their lives without existing in constant fear.
The tragedy of Israel is that it exists at all, albeit now too late to abandon.
The desire for a homeland was understandable, as it is with many other persecuted minority populations, but opting for Palestine by effectively displacing the locals was always a recipe for disaster.
The modern Zionist founder Theodor Herzl was a good man, open to suggestions where such a state might be located. The British offered him territory in Eastern Uganda which he wisely turned down. To dispose of the problem Britain, in league with France, offered Palestine, then under their control after the post-World War One collapse of the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
Absolutely no consideration was given to the locals who were treated abominably and over subsequent decades, systematically displaced from their homeland.
In the 1960s in Lebanon, I saw a concentration camp enclosing thousands of Palestinians ejected from their homeland to make way for the new Jewish state. What became of them I don’t know.
Subsequently, Israel has constantly failed to honour its various agreements on territory for the Arabs to establish a state, leading to its widespread condemnation. Life in Gaza had been hellish for the locals.
As I’ve written before, the perfect location for a Jewish state was in Paraguay, a potentially rich land desperate for migrants after a ludicrously ill-fated war which left the nation devoid of males over 12, nearly all having been killed, this reflected by a book I have entitled “Land of Woman”.
They would have been welcomed and with their energy would by now have established the richest nation in the world without the enormous waste on military expenditure that has marked their existence.
Indicative of the bitterness towards Israel in the Arab world was the report of an Egyptian policeman shooting dead some Israeli holiday-makers last week. I have an urgent meeting there in a fortnight and hope I’m not targeted as it’s not just Jews but supportive of Israel Americans in particular who are seen as part of the problem.
This battle will never go away.
Stalin created a very successful Jewish state centered on a pleasant Siberian city in the early 1930s. But the collapse of the Soviet Union saw its inhabitants, understandably fearful of chaos, which never in fact eventuated, flee westward to Georgia and from there to Israel.
In the post-war years as the true horror of the Nazi holocaust was revealed, Israel garnered world-wide support and sympathy.
But over the last few decades Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and particularly the forcibly impoverishment of Gaza and their seizure and continuing expansion into designated Arab land, has seen Israel become a pariah state in the eyes of the world, outside of America.
Perhaps it was undiplomatic in the circumstances but Sonny Bill Williams was 100% right in his comments.
For Israel to survive it will need to forfeit the Palestinian land its illegally seized in recent decades and encourage and assist creating a healthy Palestinian state.
The agreement with Egypt over four decades ago showed this is possible.
13 Comments
Extremists; who care not for human life, are the problem here, and their desire for control..
Its undeniable Israel is funded by the US Taxpayer, however I cant see this lasting forever; if you look at this.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/bidenomics-national-debt-increases-another-half-trillion-just-20-days
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Rob, are you able to talk about the plan to build an international airport in Gaza to develop it into a tourist destination?
The PLO had the opportunity years ago yet didn’t miss the opportunity to miss that opportunity, as Abba Eban might have said. All the Arabs have to do is withdraw the threats.
As a person with some Jewish ancestry I have for over 50 years deplored the Zionist annexation of Palestine territories. The great wrong and Nazi insanity of the Holocaust was no justification for the massive post 2nd World War expansion of the Zionists in Palestine. Jews and Palestinians had lived in a degree of commonality for centuries there. The great disturbance of European Jews by Nazism was not a reason to smash another culture. A separate state for Palestinians or some accord and integration of the two cultures gradually with new housing work and education might be the start of something better….it isn’t helped by the USA having Isreal as a quasi military base…they talk with a forked tongue when it comes to a two state solution. Surely there has to be a solution…but Isreali politicians…corrupt also I might add are Hawkish and are part of the problem…
Having flown for the Palestinian airline at one point in my life and having seen the situation for myself, I agree with your views and it’s refreshing to see the situation described with such clarity by a New Zealander. Cheers Sir Bob.
However I’ll have to point out to you a small item in this column that will certainly provoke the ire of the woke brigade. Pedophiles have now become offended by being called pedophiles and, as the woke tell us, prefer the term MAP (Minor Attracted Person). And the conflict in Palestine continues..!
Thank you, Bob, for this summary. It provides an easy to read background that illuminates the decades-long story behind this, which I reckon so many people would be ignorant about. (And I readily – though somewhat ashamedly – admit to being among the ignorant.)
Pro Palestine protests in Sydney were ridiculous. Leave all that hatred behind when you arrive in the first world.
How do Pro-Palestine protests display hatred? Antisemitic maybe, but Pro-Palestine?
Right on the money as usual Bob. The ongoing theft of the Palestinians’ land was always going to be the central problem. The old story of violence begetting violence plays out at the national and individual levels. One hopes sense will eventually prevail.
Some poor deluded locals are now stuck in the (un)holy Land. What a name.!
Probably a better summary of the situation that I ever learned in school, thanks! But Bob, don’t got to Egypt now, change your meeting location to Dubai. It’s too dangerous and volatile right now.
There is a world of difference, morally speaking, between causing the unintended and regretful deaths of non-combatants when acting in self-defence against the aggression of those combatants, and the hate-filled, targeted, and genocidal massacring of non-combatants.
There is a no comparison, morally speaking, between the one who throws the first stone, and the one who repels stones being thrown at them by whatever means necessary.
Choosing to sell one’s land to another, and impoverishing oneself in the process, is not the same as having a stone thrown at one.
Having one’s land or means of livelihood taken from one by another because one was actively pursuing to physical annihilate that other, is not the same as having one’s land stolen.
In any conflict between a civilised life-loving people and a hate-filled barbaric death cult, the moral thing to do is to support the civilised people.
Shame on anyone who cannot discern the difference(s).
Bob, as I see it, the Israelites and Palestinians have lived in this same area for 3000 years side by side, not always peacefully. It is basically a tribal and religious arm wrestle. The only way to settle it is for the idiots and fanatics to disappear on both sides and people just to accept each other and live. Only a grand hope! Too hard headed on either side.