Today commemorates three years since the homicidal psychopaths in Hamas invaded Israel and delighted in killing men, women and children. They laughed as they did so, exulted in their orgy of hate and violence, and excitedly phoned home to tell parents of how they had killed Jews with their own hands. Crowds in Gaza cheered. Sick.
Today I stand with Israel, and the Jewish community in our nation as they remember this horror. As do many New Zealanders with any degree of moral clarity. Unfortunately, that does not include most of our media and political elites. Last night’s leaders’ debate was another example of the total inversion of moral reality which has come to dominate the world over the last three years.
Just days after the attempted murder of hundreds of Israelis on an aircraft, and on the eve of the October 7th commemoration, Jack Tame’s foreign policy questions to Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon were straight out of the inversion playbook. Is Israel committing genocide? Will you recognise Palestine? Hipkins and Luxon dutifully trotted out the required condemnation of Israel, and naïve calls for peaceful co-existence with two states living side by side.
How do you live side by side with people who want to kill you?
That would have been a good question for Jack Tame to ask. And here’s some more. What would you do if your neighbour invaded your home, killed many of your family, and took some of your children hostage? And then when you went to rescue your children, your neighbour hid behind them and his own family, whilst continuing to attack you. If in spite of your reasonable efforts to avoid it, some of his family were harmed whilst you tried to rescue your children – who’s fault would that be?
Simple questions. But real questions. And moral clarity requires us to face reality.
What has happened in Gaza is catastrophic and tragic. But it wasn’t inevitable. It happened because of Hamas and their genocidal attack on October 7th.
The pro-Hamas protestors tell us October 7th didn’t happen in a vacuum. They are right. It happened in the context of a malevolent Islamic jihadist ideology which has sought the destruction of the State of Israel ever since it was re-established in 1948. It happened in the context of decades of Israel being willing to engage in dialogue, negotiation and even compromise for peace. And that willingness being met with decades of war, terror and intransigence.
The questions and answers on Israel in last night’s debate were a disgrace to our country’s name. We need leaders with the moral clarity to face reality on this issue. Sadly, there are few in sight.
Ewen McQueen
October 2026
My observation and hunch is that many of the people shouting the loudest around this topic have little background about Israel and Judaism. It’s tempting to keep imagining peace is possible and I’ve been in that spot myself before I had to come to grips with reality. Listening to Golda Meir, Bill Clinton and others helped. Now I just encourage people to watch Fauda all the way through and also understand that Israel is a great mix of people and cultures. The only democracy in the area.
But I also think there is a need to face into religious extremism. To try and understand what that is about and how destructive it can be. Those are not conversations many people are willing or able to have. I’ve encouraged the Religious Diversity Centre to attempt this in their 2027 Dunedin gathering.
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But they do have moral clarity. They know right from wrong, good from evil. But it isn’t politic to say so. Politics makes cowards of them all, apparently.This is very sad because we are asked to vote for these people
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Hi Ewen
Thanks, very clear thinking & a good balance versus many in the media’s point of view.
Many thanks
David
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Totally agree, Ewan.
Hamas has one aim; to destroy Israel. They know they don’t have the military firepower so they they have done it by character assassination- making Israel seem like the perpetrator by feeding false facts to an obliging media and anyone who will listen.
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