Herzog deserves to be welcomed

If Isaac Herzog were not Jewish and certainly were not Israeli, an objective assessment of him would see him ticking most mainstream liberal boxes on political views. He was a member of the Israeli Labor Party before it merged with Meretz to be the new secular centre-left party of Israel. Herzog believes in a two-state solution and “land for peace”, which is the mainstream view of virtually all liberal democracies across the world on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is socially liberal. He was a strident critic of Netanyahu and was Leader of the Opposition for four and half years. 

President of Israel is not the same as President of the United States. It is not an executive function, but a constitutional head of state. It is elected by the Knesset for a single seven-year term, and is largely a ceremonial and administrative function, not political. The President doesn’t declare war or decide on the budget or pass laws.

He’s currently visiting Australia in response to the worst terrorist attack in Australia’s history, which targeted Jews for being Jews, on the holiest of days, in Bondi on 14 December 2025.  This is understandable, as Israel exists as the national homeland of Jews. He has travelled to Australia to offer condolences, sympathy and comfort to the families and friends of the 15 who were murdered, and the entire Australian Jewish community who feel vulnerable, threatened and frightened. 

None of this matters to the psychopathic hate mobs who have been protesting in Australian cities about his visit, calling him a “war criminal” (even though he has literally no role whatsoever in declaring, waging or ending war) and choosing to disrupt solemn occasions created by the Jewish community to support themselves, and to mourn the dead. 

Plenty of them are well meaning but ignorant people, who are riled up by anger about what happened in Gaza, which is nothing to do with Australian Jews and little to do with President Herzog, and of course which they don’t give any agency to Hamas which started the war by a sadistic massacre of Jews at a music festival, and abduction of hostages, many of which it killed.  A mix of understandable distress and anger about the suffering of some, blends with hyperbolic propaganda, and the deep buckets of Jew hatred spread by Hamas and its backers in Tehran and elsewhere, to a venal expression of hate.  Hate not just for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, but a hatred of Israel itself, demands that it be eradicated (and who imagines what happens to Jews and Arabs who are happily Israeli citizens during and after this process), and of course anyone who opposes them is a fair target.  Given most Jews support the existence of the State of Israel (even if many oppose the Netanyahu Government), it’s a very short jump to want to wipe Israel off the map and want to wipe Jews off the map or rather eject them from their homeland.  You know the land that, if it were in Australia would “always is and always will be” their land?

Some are not well-meaning people of course. Those are the ones flying the flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran, providing solidarity of the ones who claim that there is a Zionist conspiracy running the media, governments and the world. Those are the ones who think the Bondi massacre was a false flag, or Israel’s fault. Those are the ones who want Jews to be scared, because they are probably pro-Israel. Those are the neo-Nazis, Hamas supporters and utterly evil.

Yet they all march, protest and shout together. They say nothing about the 30,000 murdered for protesting the brutal authoritarian Iranian Islamist regime. Like they say nothing about mass murders in Sudan, Syria, Ukraine or Burma. For they aren’t human rights activists, they don’t care about peace, let alone freedom of individuals. Nor do they care about the deaths of Muslims (for the ones in Iran don’t count, because they are rejecting an Islamist theocracy), or Arabs (see Syria’s civil war which saw no protests of Russia backing barrel bombing/chemical weapon dropping Assad). 

It matters not to them that Herzog wants a Palestinian state, opposes settlements in the West Bank, wants peaceful co-existence and is simply in Sydney to give support, sympathy and courage to a Jewish community as shattered by its terror attack as Muslims in Christchurch were by the attack on them. They couldn’t just spend some days being quiet, letting Jews have space and time to be themselves, with a head of state that is there for them. No, they couldn’t.

The moronic can change, because almost everyone was once young, naïve and stupid. It doesn’t take much to learn something about the topic you protest about, to stop following your readily packaged social group going on protests you think are righteous because people you like think that way (and how could they be wrong). The malignant are another story. They deserve all of the contempt and disgust that polite company treats Nazis.

For they can't just let Jews live in peace.

 

Loony leftwing teachers

In the UK...

"A Labour MP was prevented from visiting a school in his constituency because the teaching unions and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign do not like the fact that he believes Israel should have a right to exist. The MP in question is Damien Egan, who represents Bristol North East" ...

We know of this story only because Steve Reed, the Communities Secretary, who describes himself as a Zionist, mentioned it during an address to the Jewish Labour Movement, without naming Egan. Reed said of the people who had scuppered Egan’s visit: ‘They will be called in, and they will be held to account for doing that, because you cannot have people with those kinds of attitudes teaching our children.

Well, Steve, there’s people with those kinds of attitudes teaching our children in pretty much every school in the country, save for a few free schools and some of those in the private sector

"In fact I cannot think of a single occupation more likely to be stocked with these pig-ignorant dunderheads than teaching, a calling which they gravitate towards because they are useless at everything else and also to acquire a soupçon of power which is otherwise wholly absent from their wretched, impotent lives"

Rod Liddle, The Spectator

Happy New Year

It's a bit late. I thought of writing about the fact it is election year in New Zealand, but that seems almost inconsequential when the entire international order is being turned upside down, primarily because the President of the United States does not value individual freedom, liberal democracy, free market capitalism or alliances at all.

It's easy to cheer the overthrow of Nicholas Maduro, but perplexing to see the anointment of his Vice-President as someone Trump can "do business with" while snubbing the actual Opposition leader, who actually won the last election and has broad based support, because presumably she hasn't shown enough obeisance to him.  Venezuela is better off, but not by as much as it could be.

It's also easy to be hopeful that Iranians will shrug off the evil, totalitarian Islamic Republic, and starve the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah from waging terror on the people they govern and hate, but note that for all of the bluster, it's far from clear what anyone else is doing to help Iranians remove their racist, misogynistic masters.

It's not so easy to be optimistic about Ukraine, even though it has largely held off the Russian military from total victory, because on the one hand Europe has been pathetic in providing support it needs, and President Trump has decided that Russia taking over its immediate neighbours is none of his business.  On the other hand it is hard not to see Russia flailing about as a failing empire, with an economy largely fuelled by moral relativist allies buying its oil and gas, while producing 1980s era military hardware, as its population tumbles and it looks to Beijing to give it some assurance.

It's also not so easy to be optimistic about Taiwan, again although most of its citizens are willing to fight for their free, liberal democratic "Republic of China", because nobody really knows if Trump will help it, or not. Japan looks like it might help it, which would be a significant step. However, we know the leadership in both Canberra and Wellington are far more interested in selling goods to the aggressive PRC than in showing any moral leadership.  Meanwhile, the PRC itself faces multiple challenges, ranging from a spiralling property investment debt bubble, declining population (especially among working age adults), 30 million more men than women and a population increasingly fed up with the distractions of the CCP.

It's difficult to not be pessimistic about the divide between the US and Denmark, Greenland and the rest of Europe. The US has almost unfettered access to Greenland for military purposes under NATO. The mineral resources of Greenland are far too costly to extract given the thickness of the Arctic tundra. The idea that the US, rather than Denmark or the people of Greenland themselves should govern the world's largest island because of an "imminent threat" is just absurd.  There is no threat from the PRC through Greenland, and the threat from Russia seems specious when there us little effort to kneecap Russia's revanchism over Ukraine (and elsewhere). Turning all of Europe against the US is not something many would have forecast, but it makes Moscow and Beijing grin.

On the other hand, there is mild optimism that Israel remains capable of inflicting a bloody nose against Hamas when it seeks to wipe out Jews, although there is less optimism that an enduring peace settlement can come from Israel and the Palestinian Authority.  Maybe the overthrow of Iran could help that, but so would US pressure on Israel. 

There is some optimism that the self-sabotaging policies of many Western countries, in regulating and taxing industries for the sake of mitigating climate change, only to see those industries shift to China, India and elsewhere that do not care one bit about mitigating climate change, is coming to an end. However, there is little optimism that it will be matched by liberalising economies and freeing them from the constraints that mean Europe, in particular, generates little new business innovation on a global scale.

There is also optimism that the trend towards the post-modernist critical constructivism that ranks people like Marxist-Leninists, according to fictional hierarchies of oppression and domination, is losing traction. More and more people are resisting the confected idea that merely because of your race, sex, gender and sexuality you're either an enlightened downtrodden oppressed victim who needs to be "listened to" and "empowered" (even if you're already a high-profile politician or celebrity with a large personal fortune) or an obsolete oppressive white supremacist (you don't even have to be white) misogynist who should be "shut down" and "know your place" (even if you're an unknown nobody who owns little).  This whilst those claiming it are living in the economic and social system that has allowed the greatest level of prosperity, freedom of self-expression and diversity of viewpoints and lifestyles in human history.

However, the pessimism is that part of the reaction to this is to embrace post-modernist conspiratorialism that is xenophobic, ultra-nationalist and anti-capitalist, that doesn't just want to leave peaceful people alone, treats outsiders as the enemy rather than people who can embrace free-market capitalist high-trust liberal democratic society, and sees criticism of itself as being as binary as the far-left critical constructivists.

Nevermind, I have something else on my mind this year.