Some say that the Nobel Peace Prize lost credibility when it was won by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973, given neither men were great at anything beyond blood thirsty realpolitik.
Anjeze Bojaxhui (known as Mother Teresa of Calcutta) in 1979 was another one, given the succour she gave to the likes of the Duvaliers.
In 1992, Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala was chosen, although there are considerable doubts about parts of her claimed biography.
In 2007 selecting Al Gore for promoting climate change was quite the stretch, only beaten by Barack Obama winning the prize in 2009 despite having done next to nothing (and later being President when Russia invaded Crimea, and Syria's government starting barrel bombing and using chemical weapons, and doing next to nothing about either).
The European Union winning the prize in 2012 meant the Nobel committee was entering the abstract (bearing in mind how it did nothing to stop the genocide in the Balkans), followed by the UN World Food Programme in 2020 - although its responsibility for increasing world food supply is not significant.
Liu Xiaobo, Chinese dissident won the prize in 2010, deservedly so. Note that for a moment.
For 2026, selecting Navi Pillay, South African lawyer, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and judge for the International Criminal Court, falls into the bracket of being disgraceful.
The only thing more disgraceful is the hagiographical coverage of her in some much media, and the list of usual suspects willing to whitewash her mixed record.
She isn't without some merit, seen in her earlier career. Albeit that the ending of apartheid in South Africa saw the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize given to Mandela and De Klerk. Her role in ending apartheid is but a footnote compared to them.
However, the Wall Street Journal editorial commenting on her winning the prize is telling, and the background as to why speaks volumes as to how unsuited this appeaser of tyrannies is for the prize:
Hamas celebrated her winning the prize, which for some should be enough to condemn her. Surely she said something in her history to condemn a fanatical theocratic terrorist group that engaged in a sadistic slaughter of innocent civilians? Well, no.
A short version of her record is here:
On the People's Republic of China, she is in obeisance. Remember Liu Xiaobo who won the prize in 2010? Pillay didn't attend the ceremony for him being granted the prize. Xiaobo had four terms in prison for criticising the regime in Beijing, and died from cancer after being granted "medical parole". This is one of Xiaobo's brave publications pushing for liberal democracy in China. Pillay ignored it, presumably she thinks Chinese people aren't capable of being allowed to decide for themselves who their government should be.
Ignoring China is one thing, but turning in names of dissidents to the most murderous regime in history is quite another. Campaigners for the rights of China's Uyghur minority have long faced threats, violence and imprisonment. Dolkun Isa is a Uyghur activist who lives in Germany, and he claims Pillay shared personal information about activists with the Beijing regime, without their consent, putting them at risk.
In fact it caused a human rights lawyer, Emma Reilly, who worked for her to resign because of how outraged she was at this behaviour.
Even Ken Roth, former Executive Director of Human Rights watch says she kowtowed to China.
Of course when it came to the Charlie Hebdo murders and the violence against Danish publishers for the cartoons of Mohammed, she basically said the victims had it coming for insulting Islam. She called for censorship against insulting a religion.
She said Charlie Hebdo was "irresponsible", and of course by implication inferred that any Muslims who threatened or applied violence against anyone upsetting them because of depiction of their religion, were not to blame, but were provoked.
When Russia invading Ukraine the first time, in 2014, she didn't want to call out Russian aggression, but talked about restraint on "both sides".
Pillay, like so much of the self-styled "human rights" establishment gives a free pass to Cuba's long standing one-party state, which has zero tolerance for political dissent or freedom of the press. If you can't be critical of any government that outlaws expressions of opposition to the ruling party, then you're no champion of human rights.
I didn't mention Israel because, of course, she claims there is a "genocide", doesn't say Hamas committed a genocidal attack, and if you think her language has done anything to encourage peace in that conflict, I can sell you a bridge.
There's no shortage of international affairs experts who regard her as odious with views incompatible with a liberal free society.
Of course former PM Helen Clark applauds her, presumably because Pillay is part of the international order of moral relativists with whom Clark spent her UN career working with. Her treatment of dissidents in China is blanked out.
Not sure that "work on the death penalty" has paid off much for opponents of Hamas, China, Cuba or Russia.
I'll leave the last word to Richard Haas, former US diplomat and for nearly 20 years President of the US Council on Foreign Relations.
Hopefully there is a mass boycott of her being granted the prize.
She is so unworthy, and it is embarrassing and a disgrace for anyone to support her, or to whitewash her record. It is particularly disgraceful that so much of the media has just accepted the prize without question or comment as to the controversy over it. Media who could never operate in the countries she kowtows to.
For decades after the Holocaust, mainstream discourse across the Western world treated Jew-hatred as the morally debased evil that underpinned the vow of “never again.” In the Islamic world, of course, antisemitism remained commonplace. Islamists—especially Wahhabists and Salafists—have long harboured genocidal intent toward Jews (and toward anyone who blasphemes the Prophet). Even mainstream opinion there often echoed the attitudes that once prevailed in the West until the industrialised genocide was fully revealed. Jews never expected much from that quarter, nor from the anti-Western axis of tyranny centred on Russia, the People’s Republic of China and their satellites.
But at least the world’s liberal democracies still knew evil when they saw it. Islamist and tankie cranks could be safely ignored.
Then came 7 October 2023. Everything changed.
The hatred that had been contained erupted and has festered ever since—day by day, week by week. We have watched it surface again and again: the storming of Makhachkala Airport in Dagestan by mobs hunting Jews off flights from Israel; the Manchester synagogue attack on 2 October 2025; Bondi on 14 December 2025; Golders Green on 23 March 2026 and again on 29 April 2026.
What some call the world’s oldest hatred is still very much with us. It has been fuelled by radical imams given platforms in Western countries. The baying crowds in Sydney shouting “Where’s the Jews?” or “Gas the Jews” (the former being the official, scarcely less chilling version) just two days after the Hamas attack were an early warning.
More chilling still are the Western academics only too eager to justify Hamas’s actions, and the politicians and activists who dismiss the sadism and brutality because of “context.” Context for the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.
That context is not that Gaza was under full Egyptian control from 1948 to 1967 and was never turned into a Palestinian state. It is not that Israel demolished every settlement and deported every settler from Gaza in 2005 to grant full autonomy. It is not the repeated Israeli offers of land-for-peace and a Palestinian state alongside Israel—offers rejected time and again by Fatah. And it is certainly not that Hamas’s founding documents explicitly call for the eradication of Israel and death to the Jews.
Palestinians in Gaza have lived under Hamas tyranny since mid-2007: no freedom of speech, no elections, no free press. Yet Western media, academics and politicians have swallowed every report from Hamas-approved sources as objective reality. Compare this with Israel, which permits protests, maintains a free press, holds elections and tolerates constant criticism of its governments. Stupidity or hatred—or both—has chosen to ignore the difference.
I have lost count of the vile statements by politicians, academics, celebrities and others who justify or even deny the slaughter. Jews are accustomed to haters denying what is done to them. Holocaust denial and minimisation have returned as standard features of “pro-Palestinian” discourse—a discourse that never demands elections, a free press or the right to protest for Palestinians themselves, but one scripted by Hamas, whose leaders sit safely in Qatar enjoying the martyrdom of their own people.
The UK’s 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report (PDF) is an excellent summary of what happened. What remains particularly astonishing is that the perpetrators recorded and broadcast their crimes in real time. Even the Nazis were ashamed enough to try to cover up the Holocaust. Not Hamas:
The perpetrators documented their actions on the day, through GoPro body cameras and mobile phones. They live-streamed and recorded their actions, uploading them to social media sites like Telegram. Many attackers used GoPro body cameras, mobile phones, and even the phones of their victims to livestream their actions. Videos and images were uploaded in real-time by Hamas and other groups to platforms like Telegram and sometimes directly to victims’ accounts. This footage showcased graphic killings, abductions, and desecration of bodies, often accompanied by celebratory captions. Footage depicted hostages being mistreated, corpses desecrated, and victims in their final moments. (pg.10)
...
Civilians were targeted with calculated and unreserved precision. Victims, spanning all ages from infants to the elderly, were often shot at point-blank range, burned alive, or killed by grenades. The systematic destruction included the deliberate annihilation of entire families in Kibbutzim. Elsewhere, children were
orphaned as their parents were killed in front of them as they hid.
The attackers abducted 251 hostages, including civilians, soldiers, and corpses from various locations. Hostages endured abuse during this process including binding and beatings. Children as young as 9 months and elderly people were forcibly removed from their families.
Women and girls were particularly vulnerable during the attacks. Reports detailed gang rapes, sexual
mutilation, and assaults on both living and deceased victims. There was a pattern across various locations
attacked on 7 October of “fully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down [that] were recovered – mostly women – with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head.” This was particularly prevalent at the Nova Festival.
The attackers looted homes, destroyed property, and set buildings ablaze, compounding the suffering of survivors. Kibbutzim and neighbourhoods were left in ruins, with fires burning for days. Forensic evidence highlighted the widespread use of incendiary weapons and flame accelerants, leaving many homes unrecognisable and further hindering the identification of the dead.
In Kibbutz Holit, Hamas gunmen broke into the home of Adi Vital-Kaploun who was looking after her 4-year old son and 3 month old baby. After killing Kaploun, the gunmen filmed themselves putting shoes on
the infant boy and rocking the baby in its crib, later posted online by Hamas. They then took the children
hostage and booby-trapped their mother’s body.
In audio captured during an attack on the Mefalsim Bend, a Hamas militant used the phone of a dead women to contact his father and tell him how many Jews he had killed. He says: “Hello Baba, I am speaking with you from Mefalsim. Open your WhatsApp, tell Wiam. Look at all the dead bodies. See how many I killed myself, Baba. Your son killed Jews! Here, I’m inside Mefalsim, Baba. I am speaking to you from a Jewish lady’s phone. I killed her and I killed her husband. I killed ten myself, Baba. Ten!. Ten with my owns hands. Baba, open your WhatsApp and see how many I killed”. Footage captured throughout the day frequently showed Hamas militants and other attacking groups celebrating the killings.
Hamas had—and still has—genocidal intent. It killed Jews because of what they are, not who they are. It glorified the death of Jews. Far more were murdered than taken hostage; many hostages were later killed or died in captivity.These are not the actions of “liberators” or the “oppressed,” except in the warped minds of those who embrace critical theory and radical post-modern structuralism. It is closer to the Khmer Rouge, who murdered teachers, business owners and the educated as “oppressors,” grooming young illiterate peasants to become the killers.
Yet the whole narrative was skewed, even before Israel responded.
It was, ironically, to use a term by communications academic, mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda, Mohan Dutta, a communicative inversion. The genocidal terrorist group that seeks to wipe out an entire people, wipe out a nation-state and implement an intolerant tyranny theocracy is suddenly the victim, and it is a "liberation" movement backed by people who declare themselves for peace, tolerance, diversity and against racism, misogyny and homophobia (despite that very group being more fascist and intolerant than almost any other on earth).
The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) group led by veteran hard-left activist John Minto has been at the forefront of providing succour for Hamas and its actions through double-speak that would make Orwell blush. It opposed Hamas being designated as a terrorist group claiming "it is for Palestinians to decide the groups they support for the liberation of Palestine". This is like saying it is for Germans to decide who they support for the liberation of the German people, to appease the Nazis. It being particularly precious to claim Palestinians in Gaza have any genuine means of expressing support or opposition to Hamas. Of course PSNA likes bringing up the Nazis...
Furthermore, PSNA said "It’s important to point out that under international law Palestinian resistance groups have the right to take up arms against their colonial occupier, Israel, in the same way the French resistance had the right to take up arms against the Nazi occupiers of their country during WWII"
In short, PSNA justified the attack, furthermore equating Hamas to the "French resistance". France, having been an independent republic, attacked unprovoked by Nazi Germany is somehow akin to Gaza under the rule of an Islamist eliminationist terror group. Hamas having been allowed to take control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority, which itself was handed control from Israel.
Of course equating Israel to Nazi Germany is quite the exercise in Jew hatred.
PSNA of course opposes the very existence of Israel in saying "Today Israel is responsible for the longest military occupation in modern history – 76 years so far and counting". In short, Israel shouldn't exist. Gaza was under Egyptian control for 19 of those years, and the West Bank under Jordanian control, so PSNA doesn't want a two-state solution, it wants a one-state solution and it is "for Palestinians to decide" who runs it. If you think either Hamas, which openly spreads Jew hatred, or Fatah, which is led by a Holocaust denier is going to led Jews live peacefully under a state either leads, you're an idiot or hiding what you really think. PSNA goes on to quote from the Hamas Charter (which of course it is at pains to say it doesn't support) which says it "Hamas rejects the persecution of people or the undermining of their rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian ground".
If you believe that then you probably also believe the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, Article 37, "The personal freedom of citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall not be violated."
Jew haters do deny facts (except of course when live streaming their murders to their families). They deny the Holocaust happened because it hurts Jews more to pretend that those who were slaughtered never existed in the first place. Now they deny that Jews would be harmed by Palestinian militant groups if Israel were abolished, because it hurts Jews more to deny them indigenous status or a homeland.
Both the Green Party and TPM have fully embraced PSNA, so take from that what you will.
Even former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins talked of "genocide" in Gaza to describe Israel's military response. Nor can we forget how many have said attacks against Jews are "their own fault" for not opposing Israel, including Helen Clark's husband. There's no shortage of Australian artists and commentators who have said the same about the Bondi attack.
Think for a moment how you'd feel if your community had been attacked by blood-thirsty sadists who were gleefully proud of murdering unarmed civilians, ranging from babies to the elderly, and celebrated it with their family.
This isn't just the periodic rocket attacks Hamas lobbed into Israel proper. It isn't attacks on IDF soldiers in the West Bank, or confronted Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The "resistance" was a pogrom, by attacking a music festival and a kibbutz.
The aftermath of this evil is now a much smaller world for Jews. The Green Party of England and Wales only days ago passed a resolution saying "Zionism is Racism" (the UN General Assembly in the 1970s, when dominated by tinpot Marxist dictatorships did the same), with a motion calling for protection of Jews who attend "Zionist synagogues" defeated.
Imagine if a mainstream political party in Parliament passed a resolution saying "Palestinianism is racism" and was nonchalant about Muslims being unsafe attending Mosques deemed to be Islamist.
So today, think of those who were murdered for doing nothing wrong. For attending a music festival, for living in Israel - not occupied territory - not settlements in the territories - but Israel.
You may debate about the scale and nature of Israel's response, but the mere idea that one should be neutral about Hamas, that one should lie explicitly about the state of the conflict, that one should side with those who want Israel wiped off the map ("from the river to the sea") and just use talking points from one side is both stupid and evil.
The evil Hamas embodies is palpable, and there will only be peace in this part of the world when Hamas is no more.
However, what is most distressing is not so much the boiler-plate, tankie, Soviet-style support for Hamas and unique hatred of Israel (no other country receives protests or gets called for its destruction by the self-styled "peace" movement), but how this has all percolated into generalised hatred for Jews. You can see it here in the PSNA. Jews across the world are fearing violence. Jewish schoolchildren in the UK are being told to cover up signs of their "Jewishness" because they risk being attacked.
The irony being that politicians who claim to be "anti-racist" are only too willing to give a free pass to Jew hatred. The latest incarnation of pro-Palestinian terror is the Palestine Forum which chooses today to magnify its cause. That's not just bad taste, it is deliberately designed to blank out the Hamas attacks, minimise and ignore the victims and discredit the facts of the Hamas attack instigating the current round of conflict.
So today just take a breath, pause to reflect on the victims and the horror they faced by sadistic men wanted them dead, wanted them tortured and mutilated their bodies, even the bodies of their pets. Reflect on how you might have coped had you faced anyone who videoed the slaughter of your loved ones - much like the Christchurch mosque murderer videod his slaughter. Reflect on how you would want to treat the survivors and the grieving, and how much you would want the organisation and the ideology behind them to be wiped off the face of the earth.
The odds of peace in Israel are not great at present, and part of that is the fault of Israel. Yet it is difficult to imagine a peace and mutual co-existence when the cancer of sadistic Jew hatred remains at the heart of part of Palestinian politics. A hatred fed by men who live luxurious lives in another country, and frankly whose power and authority would evaporate if there was peaceful co-existence.
Most of all, if you know a Jew, give them your support. Reject the snide comments made by so many, that they are somehow powerful and money-grabbing. The language that talks of rats, that talks of "going on" about the world's only industrialised genocide, and being suspicious of a people that, mostly, just want to live in peace in the land of their ancestors, or the lands their ancestors settled in.
Maybe also think twice about voting for parties and candidates who reject this, who throw about propaganda about genocide and give succour to groups that seek to blank out what happened on 7th October and use it as a rallying point for what they want - which is the abolition of the state of Israel and expulsion of its non-Arab population.
After all, find another ethnicity which united hatred from white-supremacists on the far-right, Islamic fascists and far-left critical theory proponents?
The world used to be pretty safe for Jews, especially in liberal democracies. It's about time that we returned to that.
(Footnote: I was going to write more about Mohan Dutta, but he's not worth it. He's ignorant about the history of Israel, and engages in Orwellian doublespeak to slither out of accountability for his own solidarity towards Hamas and the entire Palestinian movement, including parroting its propaganda. It is the lives of those sacrificed by the sadistic monsters on this day that deserve to be in lights).
Morally it was entirely justifiable to attack the Islamic Republic of Iran. Many will disagree honourably because of concern that the international order, represented by sovereign states with recognised borders respecting each others territorial integrity, is fundamental to international peace and security. They believe that this order protects peace and supports negotiation and diplomacy as the path to dispute resolution. However, it is a defensible position that the Islamic Republic of Iran (distinct from Iran the nation) is not deserving of that protection or recognition, because it does not afford that to some other sovereign states.
It is a regime that has spent its entire history calling for death to the USA and Israel, and used terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Israel and Yemen to spread its evil poisonous misanthropic ideology of ultra-conservative Islamist theocracy. Besides calling for "death to Israel" it has actively spread anti-semitism globally, including hosting conferences questioning the Holocaust. It has the world's highest per capita rate of executions, killing over 972 in 2024 alone, and most recently reportedly slaughtering tens of thousands of protestors across the country. Its theocracy includes a morality police dedicated to policing what women wear and how people interact in public, and it uses rape as a punishment of dissident women.
Given its long standing global sponsorship of terrorism (which included the IRA back in the Troubles), its pursuit of uranium enrichment and lack of transparency, it is easy to justify military action to stop it obtaining nuclear weapons.
Whether or not it was tactically correct for the US and Israel to take on Iran only history will tell. As much as those against the war will be wanting Trump to lose, to embarrass him, this is a very narrow and suicidal position. The very last thing anyone who supports liberal democracy, rule of law, individual freedom, human rights and civilisation should want is for the Islamic Republic of Iran to defeat the US, Israel and by proxy, the Gulf states as well.
Overthrowing the regime would be a success, weakening it so it fails due to domestic pressure (including from the Kurdish north) would be a partial success, but emboldening it even if its ability to project abroad is significantly weakened, would be seen as a victory for the regime, and a victory for its proxies.
For it would embolden Iran and its proxies to attack not just in the Middle East, but beyond, endangering Americans, Jews (don't even think Iran separates Zionists from Jews). This would make us all less safe, it would embolden Islamists across the world to promote their ideology, and for a few to be willing to use force to terrify us all.
If the Islamic Republic survives, it will embolden Putin and Xi to give it succour, money, arms and to push on. Putin already knows Trump wont stop him in Ukraine, Xi already knows the US will do little in the South China Sea, and wonders if he can attack Taiwan with little more than sanctions.
At this stage the biggest risk is that Trump chickens out, and wants a "deal". There is no "deal" with those who want you dead, who want your country dead and another dead. As much as the international law purists want pontification from the Western world about the legality of the war on Iran (they think it isn't legal), that horse has bolted.
While it's entirely possible (and probable) the Iranian regime could be replaced by one that is far from ideal (see Iraq, Libya and Syria), it is also likely it could be better. Better is not wanting to destroy other countries, better is not wanting to fund, train and arm multiple terrorist proxies across the Middle East, and across the world to "globalise the intifada" against the infidels.
Better is not expounding an ideology that is a fundamentalist misanthropic dark-ages view of humanity, as serving a supreme religious leader who sends people to their deaths for the sake of Allah, who restricts music, literature, art, apparel, human relationships and human expression, for the sake of blasphemy. Humanity, and in particular Europe and the Western world have been spending centuries unshackling themselves from the tyranny of theology.
The end of the Islamic Republic of Iran wont remove this, as there are plenty of others expounding such a view, including some it is attacking, but it will remove the most toxic, virulent and violent example embodied in a outwardly aggressive state. For it to "win", survive and double down on militarising itself and securing weapons of mass destruction would be dangerous to us all.
Either Donald Trump holds his nerve, crushes the Iranian regime, rides out the oil shock and reopens the Strait of Hormuz, or he and America are finished, exposed as unserious, fickle and incapable of forward planning, a superpower manquée felled by drone-wielding barbarians.
The challenge is Trump’s character, his willingness to accept short-term economic and electoral pain, not America or Israel’s exceptional military capacities. Does the US president, a hawk on Iran for 47 years, have it in him to finish the job, going down in history as the saviour of civilisation from nuclear Islamism, or is he merely the unidimensional man child his critics believe him to be?..
The great danger is that Trump snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. A loss would involve the Iranians shutting the Strait for an extended period, the Americans panicking at elevated oil prices and the US president walking away with a premature declaration of victory. Iran would be bloodied, but unbowed.
This would be a calamity from which neither Trump nor the West would recover. It would be interpreted by our enemies, chiefly China, North Korea and Islamists, as proof that their stereotype of the average Westerner is correct, that we are coddled, narcissistic consumers who cannot handle even the smallest discomfort.
It would also embolden the West’s defeatist class. Their “analysis” relentlessly asserts that the US cannot possibly win, and dismisses any contrary evidence. Everything to them is a miscalculation; killing Ali Khamenei will backfire, we are told, but not killing him would have been criticised just as harshly.
There is nothing wrong with caution, but some of these people sound as if they want Iran to win. These same experts rightly loathe Putin, correctly seeing him as a fascist monster, who is willing to kidnap children and ethnically cleanse civilians. They rightly support Ukraine, emphasise its victories and urge it not to give up when Russia strikes a blow.
Yet they are not as passionately opposed to the Iranian regime, even though it is just as fascistic as Putin’s. They loathe Trump and Israel. They were willing to suffer high energy prices to help defeat Putin, but cannot tolerate dearer petrol to take out the Iranian regime. Their double standards and hypocrisy are vile.
This is a civilisational struggle, a battle between good and evil. The West must win, or all bets are off...
Unless you're an Islamist, a tankie or a Jew hater, all of whom loathe individual freedom, secular liberal democracy and capitalism, you'll be elated at the sight of thousands of Iranians worldwide cheering on the attacks by the US and Israel on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Of course international relations lecturers, the UN and international law advocates will all claim that the attacks are "illegal", which may be true. They cite the inviolability of state sovereignty - the concept that all states are entitled to have inviolable borders and to be free from aggression.
The point of this is that people should be free from war, but the single biggest philosophical question in the context of the attack on Iran, is how legitimate is that principle when it protects a regime that wages war on its own people.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a tyranny, a misogynistic theocratic autocracy that does not hesitate to imprison, torture and execute dissidents. From its oppressive ultra-conservative treatment of women, to its global sponsorship of terror and promotion of its bigoted intolerant brand of theocratic totalitarianism, it is wilful blindness for anyone to claim that this regime was in any way peaceful, or had any remote sense of moral authority.
The celebration of Iranians in the US, UK, Australia and elsewhere for the killing of the Supreme Leader is a message of the illegitimacy of a regime that does not tolerate challenge, does not allow for peaceful transitions of power, and suppresses freedom of speech and the media egregiously.
The Iranian Islamist regime has funded, trained and armed terror groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Israel, and has provided arms for Russia's aggressive revanchist war against Ukraine.
There are fair and reasonable questions to be asked about the attacks on Iran:
Will the Islamic Regime actually be overthrown? Or could it remain in power through sheer brutal force against Iranians who seek to overthrow it?
What sort of government will replace it, and could it be worse (more radical)?
How will its proxies, such as the Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas respond, spreading conflict further?
After all the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime saw the power gap replaced by an Iranian backed regime following the disaster of ISIS. The regime of Muammar Gaddafi was followed by civil war and bifurcation of the country. The US couldn't sustain the overthrow of the Taliban. So there is good reason to be sceptical about the US being willing to do what is necessary.
However, it is not a reason to cite the belief that the Islamic Republic of Iran is entitled to protection under "state sovereignty" because it doesn't respect the sovereignty of multiple sovereign states, nor does it respect the autonomy of its people.
Those granting the Iranian regime moral equivalency to Israel, the United States, to any liberal democracy, are either completely banal, or morally bankrupt.
When the Iranian revolution happened in 1979, there was much domestic opposition in Iran to the regime of the Shah, which was itself autocratic and intolerant. Some liberals and many Marxist activists backed the Islamic Revolution, and were promptly arrested and had their political movements suppressed.
Anyone who supports individual freedom and peace will want the end of this regime, let's just hope it happens, and Iranians, the Middle East and the world will be freer and more peaceful after this action against one of modern history's most brutal, terror promoting and fascist regimes.
The UK is having one of its regular by-elections, this time in Gorton and Denton, a constituency in Manchester. The constituency was new at the 2024 election, and at the time was won by Labour's Andrew Gwynne with 50.8% of the vote, with Reform a distant second on 14.1%. Gwynne had been an MP for a previous constituency since 2005. He was suspended from the Labour Party for a series of Whatsapp messages ranging from joking about hoping a constituent dies, retweeting "sexualised comments" about deputy Angela Rayner, and claiming an American psychologist's name was "too militaristic and too Jewish", he subsequently resigned from Parliament due to ill health.
Gorton and Denton has a relatively low income nationally, with a significant (27%) Asian ethnic minority population, mostly Pakistani, but 57% are white Europeans. A slight majority voted for leaving the European Union in the 2016 referendum.
The campaign has been dominated by the Greens and Reform. The Greens claiming to be the party of the poor and for the Pakistani and Bengali population. Its campaign video depicts Keir Starmer and Narendra Modi, explicitly designed to stir up anti-Indian bigotry, as well as depicting Foreign Secretary David Lammy alongside Benjamin Netanyahu, designed to stir up anti-Israel bigotry. Reform's reaction to this is to call for a hardline against illegal immigration. Labour looks well behind, and the Conservatives are nearly irrelevant. The Greens say they are fighting the hate of Reform and racism, but Allister Heath, editor of the Sunday Telegraph sees the Greens as pandering to racist hate even moreso and calls for this all to stop.
We should start by calling out the Greens for what they have become: a hateful, despicable, extremist party that has identified an entrepreneurial opportunity in weaponising tribalism, division, stagnant living standards, misinformation and envy. Their behaviour in Gorton and Denton has been abominable.
Following a playbook pioneered by far-Left parties worldwide, the Greens, now led by Zack Polanski, are targeting a red-green coalition of white, woke “progressives” and the reactionary subset of the Muslim electorate. These two groups may appear culturally incompatible, but they can be united not just by their support for socialism but also their often virulent Israelophobia, an atavistic prejudice that the Greens unashamedly pander to....
The Green candidate in Gorton and Denton was photographed wearing a keffiyeh, symbol of Palestinianism, has accused Reform of Islamophobia and racism, and has fronted a video in Urdu featuring Benjamin Netanyahu and Narendra Modi meeting Labour politicians, as if these were self-evident provocations and proof of a grand betrayal....
It’s a scandal. Extreme tribalism of the sort promoted by the Greens is incompatible with a democratic culture that requires a strong sense of commonality, a belief in a peoplehood that transcends differences of ideology, race, religion or class. It requires a neutral, single-tier rule of law, where citizens are treated as individuals, not as members of a group. Democracy isn’t just about tallying votes, and handing power to the winner. It is about debate, trying to change people’s minds, feedback mechanisms and punishing or rewarding politicians who fail or succeed.
None of this is possible in a world in which voters vote along religious or ethnic lines, and where the best that can be hoped for is peaceful coexistence and Northern Ireland-style or Lebanese confessionalist power-sharing. Under that scenario, democracy becomes a mere game of arithmetic, of demographic superiority. Outcomes are pre-determined, governed by community leaders.
This may not trouble the Greens: they have reinvented themselves as a vehicle for a new Left that combines Marxism-Leninism, Third Worldism, critical theory, and other radical anti-Western and anti-bourgeois philosophies. They detest private property and family values.
They support quasi-open borders and are soft on crime. They are infected by every Left-wing pathology of the past 200 years, every intellectual error. They have imbued the poison of “anti-colonial” Soviet propaganda, of woke writers such as Derrida, of fanatics such as Edward Said.
Britain used to be a beacon among nations, a country uniquely hostile to extremist parties. The British Union of Fascists never won a single council seat. The Communist Party of Great Britain only seized a couple of parliamentary seats in the 1930s and 1940s. The National Front never made it to Westminster. Militant grabbed Liverpool City Council but was kicked out of Labour by Neil Kinnock. The British National Party won councillors and MEPs, but just 1.9pc of the vote in 2010.
Our record mixes world-class success with catastrophic failure. Some groups have integrated extraordinarily well, and children of immigrants often do better at school and in the labour and housing market than the white British. There has been a surge in mixed-marriages.
At the same time, we have suffered the rise of Islamism, separatism and intra-minority tensions, fuelled by race-obsessed woke policies that denigrate Britishness. We use incorrect metrics: materialistic markers of achievement, rather than ideology. Numerous Islamists are well educated; doctors have been stuck off for anti-Semitism. Many British Jews, whose synagogues offer prayers to the Royal Family weekly, are having to reconsider their future in Britain.
The Panglossians, who believe that tensions will diminish spontaneously; that sectarian voting will wane as it did in England and Scotland by the 1970s; that secularism will dissolve all differences; that Islamism is overblown; that today’s minorities will rapidly become latter-day Huguenots or Irish immigrants, indistinguishable from the rest of the population in all but surname, are delusional.
In addition to slashing immigration, we will need to be more muscular. We will need to crack down pitilessly on extremism, including in some mosques or in local areas where prejudice is rife. We will need to learn from Singapore and other well-managed multicultural states. We cannot allow our country to fragment. Regardless of race or religion, we must all be British.
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.
"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"
When Jews get targeted in what should be safe liberal democracies, it doesn't quite see the same response as when Muslims or targeted or even the general populace. We all recall that, by and large, the Christchurch mosque attack saw universal outrage and condemnation. Muslims targeted for who they are. Utterly innocent, and nobody would utter that they had some fault because they hadn't condemned say the Taliban, ISIS, Iran or any of the multitude of Islamofascist terror or totalitarian regimes. Certainly had anyone wanted to protest against the actions of any such groups the very next day, it would have been frowned upon and scorned. However, when it comes to Jews, targeted by association with Israel and therefore the actions of the Israeli Government in Gaza, there is no thought around taste and sensitivity. The "pro-Palestinian" protestors (who range from people expressing concern over humanitarian conditions, to those wanting to wipe out Israel and "globalise the Intifada" (!) don't give a damn, after all it wasn't THEM doing it. Besides, "genocide". If you think that there is a deliberate campaign to wipe out an entire people, then a few Jews being killed by a jihadist are a mere detail.
Jews, you see, have a tryptych of groups who hate them. Traditionally their chief enemies were the (self-styled) Christian-aligned far-right, which of course inspired the Nazis, and are seen today in the actual far-right (you know, the Holocaust denying, "wrong side won the war", white power, big state type - not the current trend to call free-market liberal or traditionalist conservatives fascists). Their attacks on Jews are rare, thankfully.
The bigger problems are Islamists, often motivated by wanting to wipe out Israel, but also buying into pretty much the whole panoply of neo-Nazi conspiratorial Jew hate, and the far-left. The far-left, who also tout the anti-concept "whiteness" see Jews as "ultra-white". Jews are rich, successful in many industries and in politics, and of course are seen as "colonists" wherever they go. In the far-left's endless desire to categorise people under critical theory as "oppressed" vs. "oppressors", Jews get placed in the latter, so they don't count... again. They don't count.
If they were from any other minority, no one on the left would have the slightest trouble denouncing the deaths of 53-year-old Adrian Daulby and 66-year-old Melvin Cravitz as the result of a lethal racist attack. A terrorist with the resonant name of Jihad Al-Shamie – talk about nominative determinism – went for them because they were Jews.
He continues:
Last night pro-Palestinian demonstrators couldn’t give it a rest – not even for 24 hours. They were outside Downing Street and Manchester’s Piccadilly station, chanting all the old slogans and ducking all the hard questions. ‘Globalise the intifada,’ they cried – does that mean killing Jews in Manchester? ‘Palestine will be free from the river to the sea’ – does that mean driving out all the Jews living between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan?
It should be the easiest thing in the world for pro-Palestinian demonstrators to reject accusations of Jew hate and dismiss these questions as smears. It’s not anti-Semitic to denounce Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli far right. Nor is it in any way racist to deplore the reduction of Gaza to a charnel house of rubble and bones.
Yet much of the British left cannot defend itself against charges of bigotry because many leftists (not all, but many) refuse to define anti-Jewish racism and declare it unacceptable. They can’t and won’t because any condemnation of anti-Semitism would imply a condemnation of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian theocrats. Rather than take a stand against the very people who have led the Palestinian cause to disaster, they prefer to say nothing at all.
Excitement is the often overlooked element when it comes to anti-Semitism – an excitement that is almost sexual. There is a sadistic feeding frenzy to this anti-Jewish crusade, as though the rape rampage of Hamas made the cause of anti-Semites more, not less, worth rallying around. The ‘Paraglider Girls’ convicted this week appeared like overgrown Girl Guides, their grim insignia a twist on badges for Kayaking or being an Emergency Helper – only evil.
The fact that the pro-Palestinian marches started before Israel actually retaliated was a big tell; these people weren’t marching against Israel defending itself, but in favour of Israel being attacked. Unless they all had access to a big old time-travel machine, of course.
Nazis did this, the far-right does this, Maoists do this, and the Islamists do it.
It is, of course, entirely possible to protest against the Israeli Government, to call for peace and negotiations for a two-state solution. Remember though that many of the protestors for Palestinians don't want this. John Minto's Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa explicitly says:
PSNA aims to change public opinion and bring pressure on the New Zealand government to join the majority of the international community in requiring Israel to recognize and support the following principles:
A just peace in Palestine depends upon the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland and the dismantling of the Zionist structure of the state of Israel, recognizing that the further partitioning of Palestine in order to create the so-called Two-State Solution would only lead to further injustice and suffering.
Acceptance of the primacy of international law and United Nations resolutions as the basis for the ending of military occupation and all forms of ethnic discrimination in Israel.
The international community's responsibility for upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the urgent need for the state of Israel to be called to account for its gross abuses of Palestinian human rights.
Justice requires the establishment of a single state in Palestine, bi-national, secular and democratic, with full and equal citizenship for all with ethnic and religious rights protected in a democratic constitution.
So it wants Israel to recognize (sic.) that it should be destroyed, it rejects the "so-called Two-State Solution" and wants a single state that is secular and democratic. This is the policy of Hamas, it isn't even the policy of Fatah and the Government of the Palestinian Authority.
The entire mainstream left, including academia and much of the media refuses to call out the extremists in the pro-Palestinian movement, who celebrated October 7th and call for destruction of Israel, chant "from the river to the sea" as part of that, and then call to "globalise the intifada".
Murdering Jews at synagogues is what globalising the intifada looks like. For all of the mealy mouthed nonsense, it's a movement of violence and harassment, and it co-opts far-left Jew haters and far-right ones to join in on their embrace of the world's oldest hatred.
Unless those wanting justice for Palestinians can purge themselves of their Jew haters, can purge themselves of those who are the Islamist far-right (a tautology I know) as much as the Zionist ultra-nationalists who want to declare Judea and Samaria as Israeli land and purge it of Arabs, are the equivalent, then they are accomplices to Jew hatred.
Here’s what happened next, as their friendly faces turned to, well, something else. “Go away,” one said. “Go away. You are a bad faith actor. We don’t want to talk to you. Just f*** off. It’s a really boring old line. You are disgusting.” “I am disgusting?” “Yes, you are disgusting. You are not a journalist. It’s very clear what your position is here.” Now, their voices were getting louder: “Piss off.” “Thanks for your time, I appreciate it,” I said retreating, but they were not finished. “What are you doing here anyway? You are prejudiced. Hopefully nobody will ever buy a book you write. You are a charlatan. You are a fucking racist.”
So they couldn't even accept Hamas bore some responsibility. Couldn't even say "sure, but Israel has overreacted".
It got worse:
I wish I could tell you that this was a one-off but I spoke to at least two dozen people and, with two exceptions (including a lovely black guy from north London who conversed intelligently and politely), the motivation for being here was obvious, potent and implacable. The hatred of Jews. I heard conspiracy theories (October 7 was a false flag operation), blood libels, and the pervasive view that the Manchester atrocity was not a heinous attack but righteous comeuppance for an evil people. My sense is that many felt liberated to say what they really thought by the proximity of like-minded others; the classic symptom of mob mentality.
We all know criticising Israel isn't anti-semitic. It's entirely reasonable to oppose Israel's actions in Gaza and not regards Jews as being to blame, wherever they may live (bearing in mind even around half of adult Israelis oppose the Netanyahu government).
However, we also know Hamas is explicitly dripping in Jew hatred. Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas has many times expressed Jewish conspiracy theories and questioned the Holocaust. Jew hatred is central to Palestinian politics, although it need not be so. Those who participate in pro-Palestinian protests that welcome Jew haters on marches - people who cheer on murdering innocent Jews a part of "globalising the Intifada" - are part of a movement of Jew hatred.
Think again, if there were protest marches that welcomed people who thought the Christchurch mosque attack was a false flag, or even justified, then we all know what those protests would be called.
It's time for the "pro-Palestine" movement to either exclude Jew haters, or be branded terror-backing hate groups, and for the far-left politicians who back them to deserve to be as ostracised as Nazis.
Who was it again who said that if you go on a protest and Nazi's attend, you're at a pro-Nazi rally?
Winston Peters has done the right thing. The entirely performative act of recognising the “State of Palestine” by three countries with left-wing governments is not a reason to follow. For a start, at least in the UK and Australia, the respective Labour (and Labor) parties fear losing Muslim voter support to minor parties or independents. The UK, Labour lost four predominantly Muslim electorates to independents in 2024. Some Australian federal divisions have similar challenges, with both independents and the Greens presenting challenges. France doesn’t quite have the same challenge, but France’s colonial past drives it to take its own stance to wage power in the region.
Objectively, nobody honestly believes that the “State of Palestine” actually exists. You’d think that might matter, but in this post-modernist age of relativism, then if you “believe” something is real, then it is true. So, let’s go through the factual basis for rejecting the recognition of something that can’t objectively be recognised as such.
The act of “recognising” a sovereign state is that of one state acknowledges another entity is legitimately its “equal” at least under international law. Almost always, this is a formality because states meet the formal legal criteria for actually “being” states. That being:
•Clearly defined borders
•Effective government over those borders and most of its territory
•A permanent population (comprising its citizens)
•The means to engage in relations with other states
The “State of Palestine” lacks most of this criteria for a whole host of reasons. It doesn’t have clearly defined boundaries. The State of Palestine has never existed, as before 1967 the West Bank was under the control of Jordan, and Gaza under Egypt. Given discussions on peace under the Oslo Accords were about this topic, it is clear this is far from settled.
There is no effective government over the borders of a not clearly defined territory as Israel and Egypt have control over those borders. Even if there were such control, there is no government with control over both the West Bank and Gaza, and even the Palestinian Authority has limited powers over part of the West Bank. With Hamas controlling Gaza, it hardly is a territory with effective control by the government. It’s hard to imagine a sovereign state without sovereign powers including that of entry or exit of its territory.
It may be possible to identify a permanent population, although many Palestinians identify as “refugees”, inferring they are not permanent residents of the land they live on. However, this isn’t such a barrier.
Of course, there are Palestinian ambassadors, embassies and other trapping of being a state, in terms of foreign relations, so arguably it does meet that criteria.
However, that’s not enough. There are not clearly defined borders, there is no effective government over most of the territory that could conceivably be part of a Palestinian state, and certainly not its borders. It may be easier to claim a permanent population and the means to engage in diplomatic relations, although given it can’t control its borders or airspace, it’s rather empty.
By contrast, Taiwan (Republic of China) absolutely meets all of those conditions, even if de jure it claims sovereignty over all of the territory governed by the People’s Republic of China, it’s clear where the demarcation line between the territory governed by the two Chinese governments is (and we all know the government in Taiwan has long ceded any formal interest in expanding its control beyond its current territory). However, you won’t see any serious campaigns to recognise Taiwan (for many reasons), but I digress.
Luxon and Peters had a choice. Look like they are following the UK, France and Canada (and over a hundred less than liberal democracies along with outright dictatorships), or look like they are following the US. What he did do was neither, although the critics bay it is some sort of Trumpian act (the ultimate pejorative nowadays, much worse than supporting Hamas or Iran), it is aligning NZ with Japan, south Korea and Singapore.
When the UK and others recognised the “State of Palestine” Hamas claimed that its tactic, of the 7th October pogrom “worked” alongside its sacrifice of thousands of Gazans as human shields for its members. “Pro-Palestine” activists don’t care about that, because far too many of them minimise Hamas’s pogrom, let alone its theocratic fascist policies (zero tolerance for political or religious dissent, zero tolerance for equal rights for women, let alone LGBT people), because they are driven more by hatred of Israel and Western capitalist liberal democracies than concern for Palestinians.
That doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a “State of Palestine” at some point, once there is a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that resolves the borders, the relationship between both entities, Israeli settlements, sidelining eliminationists on both sides, and guaranteeing peace and security for citizens in both entities. It appears difficult to envisage when neither side is willing to compromise or negotiate, but neither Netanyahu nor Abbas will govern forever. However, until there actually is a “State of Palestine” agreed which lets it fulfil all of the legal conditions for statehood, it is pointless “recognising” it.
Recognising Palestine DOES give succour to Hamas AND to Netanyahu, because it gives them both reason to snub any compromise. “You see, murdering Jews en masse DOES work, because it means they will create thousands of our martyrs and the world will hate them”. For Netanyahu “see the world hates us, to hell with them, we will ensure there is no Palestinian state”.
It's empty showboating, there is no State of Palestine yet, it’s absolutely right to refuse to engage in the nonsense of pretending there is one to recognise, even if you wish it existed. Peace on that sliver of land is a long way off, but it wont come from engaging in propagandist make-believe.
You'd have to be an Islamist, an anti-Western tankie or a moron to not wish the fall of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The 1979 revolution was anti-humanist, anti-reason and implemented a regime that - if it were led by fundamentalist Christians - would be called far-right and fascist. It's a theocracy, with law determined by its single interpretation of the one religion, with little tolerance for other religions let alone atheism. It is a tightly controlled democracy, with choice between a preset selection of Islamist candidates. There is little freedom of speech, nobody can campaign for the end of the Islamist regime. Media is entirely controlled by the state. Women are second class citizens, with the morality police controlling what they wear in public, because the men of the Islamic Republic can't be trusted to control their libidos, their hands and their penises if they see a women's head and hair. Of course it's fairly obvious how difficult it is to be openly LGBT in the Islamic Republic.
By any measure the entire Western self-styled "liberal" left would loathe and despise the regime. On top of its fascism, it has long had a nuclear programme which has been enriching uranium beyond that needed for civilian use. It is pursuing nuclear weapons, notwithstanding like north Korea before it, the claims it is not doing so. Its economy is, in part, built on extracting fossil fuels.
However, the Islamic Republic does have several positive points - from the hard-left point of view - it has always called for "Death to Israel" and "Death to America", which reflect the deeply held feelings of anti-Zionists and anti-capitalists the world over. To express this, Iran has funded, armed and trained its proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah. It has engaged in Iraq and Syria, although of course it was wrecklessly attacked by Saddam Hussein's Iraq with Soviet and US endorsement in 1980 and was undoubtedly the victim in that horrendous conflict.
Today, Iran has been a strong supporter and arms Russia, in support of its aggression against Ukraine. Iran mistakenly shot down Ukrainian flight PS752 in 2020, (but then the US mistakenly shot down Iran Air flight IR655 in 1988).
The consequences of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons is potentially catastrophic for Israel, but also may provide access to its proxies for such technology. Iran philosophically is antithetical to the values of open, tolerant secular liberal democracies.
Israel's action against Iran, if it can end its nuclear programme, will help make the Middle East and the world a more peaceful place. If it can result in the fall of the regime, it will be all the better for the people of Iran and for promoting peace for Israel/Palestine, Lebanon and the Middle East more generally.
Israel has done it before. In 1981 it destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, as Saddam Hussein's first attempt to develop a nuclear weapons' programme. This bought a great deal of time, and potentially saved hundreds of thousands of lives. At that time it was condemned by the UN Security Council, including the US, but it was morally entirely justified.
The only negative to Israel's action is if it fails, if it emboldens the regime further if it is not overthrown, and Iran's allies provide it with more support to develop WMDs. This is why it is important for the US to help it finish the job.
Those claiming moral equivalence between the liberal democratic open Israel, that is not a theocracy, that allows public protests, free press and does not seek "death" to any other countries, and the Islamic Republic of Iran are either morons or despicably evil. The people of Iran deserve better than the calcified misogynistic theocracy in Tehran, and no such regime should feel free to develop nuclear weapons.
There is a pragmatic argument as to whether Israel's actions could prove counter-productive, but that is not an argument against disarming Iran. Those who protest or are openly in support of the Islamic Republic of Iran are actual far-right fascists, and should be called out for it. As Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, Israel is doing the West's "dirty work for us". Let us hope it works.
To come back locally. I wonder if one, just one, journalist in NZ might ask any of the hard-left party leaders - Swarbrick, Davidson, Waititi or Ngarewa-Packer, whether they think it would be good if Iran's regime fell over or even....just even, if it would be good if Iran had nuclear weapons.
I doubt any journalists would have the courage to do so, or if any did, the answers would be at best evasive at worst a repulsive eructation of moral equivalency.
If ever there is a display of values by politicians it is how they apply their own values to people abroad.
I wrote in my previous post that I am embarking on a journey, thanks to the sagacious commentator and academic, Dr. Mohan Dutta. Although he is unaware of this, I am truly grateful for him showing me a new way and recognising that I may have been duped, for years, to be an instrument of dark forces, from overseas and paid for by mining and fossil fuel interests, who only want to make a profit exploiting others.
I said I had questions, and I do, as I have been deconstructing the network of connections that means libertarianism is actually a vehicle for fascist white-supremacy and neo-colonialism, including Zionism, which is a tool of not only apartheid, but allegedly genocide. This is serious stuff and very confronting for anyone who has spent a good 25 years or so promoting libertarian ideas and politics, to be told that actually what you advocate for isn't more freedom, less government and getting the state out of people's lives, but rather a sinister strategy to facilitate takeover of society by mining and fossil fuel interests. It's not advocacy for individual rights, but advocacy for racism and oppression of people.
I'm unsure what this really means for what form of government we should have, how laws should constrain freedom of speech, funding of political activities and the rights of mining and fossil fuel companies. I don't know what it means for foreign affairs, beyond ending diplomatic relations with Israel. However, I do want to know, and I want to know whether everything I believed in is for naught, or if there are shreds of campaigning for individual freedom that are worth continuing with.
So here are some of my questions:
1. Given Zionism is irredeemable (apartheid, settler-colonialism), do Jews have a right to self-determination as a people? If so, where? If not, what is it about them that denies them this right? Are they not a nationality or race, but just a religion, or is it that they have a right to self-determination, but somewhere else? If so, where?
2. Does the right to self-determination on land where your ancestors once lived and governed, disappear if the people who moved there subsequently, and were part of empires that conquered that land, still have their descendants living on part of that land? If so, does that not also apply to lands with generations of settlement of people who live on land previously occupied and governed by other people indigenous to that land? How is this applied consistently in a principled way?
3. What makes "whiteness" a unique characteristic among racial groups globally? Does it apply to all ethnicities that are visibly "white", notwithstanding the diversity of languages, religions, histories, cultures and experiences? If not, what is its essential nature? (I know there are books, but they are not all consistent).
4. Is it possible to want individual freedom, small government and human beings interacting voluntarily without being part of a scheme to enrich mining and fossil fuel companies?
5. Many declared white-supremacists are anti-semitic, and hate Jews as much as other races (such as the Nazis), what makes them different from the ones that are libertarian, who like Jews and hate Nazis, is this just internecine warfare between people who are similar, or something else?
6. Islamist militant groups universally use violence as a form of resistance and often expound racist rhetoric that is Islamic supremacist in nature. Where do they fit in, or am I misconstruing their otherwise heroic revolutionary acts of self-determination that are not to be interpreted under the lens of "whiteness"?
7. If libertarianism is fascist and white supremacist, are statist authoritarians (those advocating a very intrusive and dominant state role in the economy and society) anti-fascist and anti-racist? Or rather, is the solution to libertarian fascism and racism the adoption of a large government that has significant control over economic and social systems?
8. If education vouchers are a tool of white supremacy, does that mean that Sweden (a pioneer of educational vouchers) is a white-supremacist state? Are all European states white supremacist? How do they avoid this?
9. Is Zionist backed white supremacy the most virulent and destructive ideological influence in the world today, or are there others? I gather the Hindutva moment is similar, as Dr Dutta has written much about it, but do other countries or cultures also promote similarly fascist ideologies? If so, what are they?
10. If the solution to Palestine is for Israel to be disbanded, should we even consider the future of Palestine at that point? What would happen to the Jews there? Jews in most Arab countries have declined in number precipitously, is this something to be concerned about, or should we just not care what happens to the Zionists?
11. What is the answer to Ukraine? Is this just white supremacists fighting each other? Should we all just let them fight and hope for peace?
12. How should the international order be restructured for decolonisation and anti-racism? Presumably it means the US withdrawing globally, along with disbandment of NATO and an international order of the South having more power (excluding fascist Hindutva India). Can we trust the People's Republic of China to lead a new peaceful world order, or will a multi-polar world just be more peaceful and just? Does there need to be reparations paid by Western countries (and presumably Japan) to the South? How is consensus to achieve this to be reached to take such taxes from people in those countries? How do we avoid corruption in the South seeing such money accumulating in the hands of national elites?
13. Decolonisation should always exclude violence against civilians, but does that include what a post-colonial government does to civilians? Some post-colonial governments have been brutal to the civilian population in implementing their policies (see Equatorial Guinea, Uganda, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Zaire/DRC), how should we respond to this?
14. Virtually all of South and Central America is dominated by people who are, by the definition applied to Aotearoa, Australia, Canada and the USA, settler-colonialists. How is this injustice to be addressed? Is resistance against these governments, from Mexico to Chile, justified?
