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.
LikeLiked by 1 person
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
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Ewen
Thanks, very clear thinking & a good balance versus many in the media’s point of view.
Many thanks
David
LikeLiked by 1 person
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.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I totally agree with you Ewen. Our country is in trouble not only economically but socially and especially spiritually. The Abrahamic covenant he made still stands. ” I will Bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, once again, Ewan for your clarity and for calling out the lies.
🙏🙏
Best Wishes,
Gerry Pyves Registered Psychotherapist MA (Oxon), PGCE, Dip TM, CTA, TSTA Member of ITAA, TAAANZ, PBANZ http://www.gerrypyves.com
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hello Ewen.
Let’s go back to “a time in history,” 1948, where I suggest today’s pain
began, and continues still.
Israel was created on confiscated land and terrorism was a strategy in
those early times and continues to be now.
Consequential resistance was/is inevitable, although the Hamas attack
was extreme, to say the least.
Kevin Murray
LikeLike
Hi Kevin
Happy to go back to 1948. Israel was established on land liberated from the Ottoman Turks by British forces (including our own ANZAC troops – refer my YouTube clip https://youtu.be/-ZVGWUCWwGk ) in WW1. After some years the UN proposed the partition of the British held area into a Jewish and an Arab state. The Jews accepted. The surrounding Arab nations did not and instead invaded the area to try and eliminate the nascent Jewish State. They failed. And have done every time since. It is true that as a result of that war, and others since (also started by Arab aggression) the land held by Israel has increased beyond that envisaged in the UN plan. However that land was not confiscated. It was taken in wars started by others, and held by Israel in self-defence against further aggression.
Ewen McQueen
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Ewen.
I’m sure that you are aware of a thread from Theodor Herzl’s 1897
Zionist Congress in Basel through Balfor’s 1917 Declaration through to
the League of Nations Mandate of 1923.
It would be naive to think that offering Jews of the world a homeland in
an area already occupied by many other cultures would end
amicably. Before this time less than 10% of the population was Jewish.
After WW2 the United Nations moved to establish the State of Israel,
which may or may not have been Balfor’s et al’s intentions all along.
Certainly much of the land needed for settlement was purchased on the
market, so to speak, but much more was confiscated in various ways, of
which you will be aware, no doubt.
Little wonder that the other inhabitants so displaced reacted then, and
continue to do so today.
It would have been better if returning Jews had integrated with the
existing population and together worked to create a stable country.
But there were other agendas at play, both religious and political. Of
course, these are are both used as excuses to create degrees of havoc
around the world.
Regards
Kevin
LikeLike
When Palestine was the original Jewish homeland, and after 6 million Jews were exterminated in the 1930s and 40s, mainly in WW2, it would have seemed humane for the decision makers after WW2 to have enabled any remaining Jews who wanted to, to return to their homeland.
It wasn’t part of any other country at the time, as it was a protectorate overseen by Britain after the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WW1.
I’m sure that Israel would have reached out and worked cooperatively with Arabs living in Palestine if they hadn’t attacked Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973.
Over 20% of Israel’s population is Arab, existing peacefully with Jews and even with key roles in society and government.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Ewen.
Jews had been settled on parts of that land for many centuries, as had
many other cultures.
Creating a State of Israel to rule over a particularly large part of it
might have seemed little different to any other invader.
Al-Nakba is remembered for the displacement and dispossession of
Palestinian Arabs during that time. Zionist terrorists forcibly expelled
hundreds of thousands of inhabitants.
This process has continued at pace more recently. No sign of reaching
out and working co-operatively anywhere.
The Arab resistance in the late 1940s could hardly be called attacks,
rather defence of their own lands.
Sadly, such is the way of the world. Similar examples of displacement
and confiscation under various guises are the European treatment of
native people as the USA was created,
and the British eventually did a similar thing here in New Zealand
after the Waitangi Treaty was signed.
On a different note I am presently reading your book, One Sun In The Sky.
Having completed 70 pages, my overwhelming feeling is one of gratitude
to you for having done the required research and laying out the history
so well.
I am sure it is your book, of course, so I am bemused.
Best Regards
Kevin.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Kevin
Pleased to hear you are enjoying One Sun in the Sky. You can be assured the same regard for truth I bring to my understanding of NZ history is applied in my understanding of the historical foundation of Israel. On that matter I would encourage you to read “My Country, My Life: Fighting for Israel, Searching for Peace” an autobiography by Ehud Barak a former Labour Prime Minister of Israel (and no friend of BB Netanyahu). He was a child with Arab neighbours in 1948 when war broke out and his whole life was bound up in the history of his country ever since, including attempts to negotiate peace with Arafat under the Oslo Accords. Many fascinating insights.
Kind regards
Ewen
LikeLike