As is Winston Peters. Donald and Winston have been vindicated, Chloë is irrelevant, Hipkins’ ambition to recognise a Palestinian State ‘as soon as possible’ is meaningless, Peeni Henare can cease to feel ‘embarrassed’ (or maybe not) and Marama Davidson can park her mini-comment that it was ‘cowardly’. These people have been found out for the ignoramuses they are. They have looked at the situation in the Middle East through such a narrow and bigoted lens that it prevents them from seeing the broader picture. They’ve gone quiet on the matter since.
If you rely on the mainstream media for an accurate assessment on what is happening then you are getting only one side of the story: the side that suits their narrative rather than an objective analysis. This is the problem with the political left, they just read and look at what is promoted by their friends in the media. They treat everything they read and hear as gospel, which means they are not in command of all the facts.
But I want to focus on where we are now. Trump is a peacemaker. When he’s not ‘Making America Great Again’, he’s working on ways to stop wars as he abhors the waste of human life. Many people think there is only one side to Trump: brash, egotistical and dictatorial hence but that is the public persona side. He likes to tell you how good he is. But if you listen closely, his more caring side comes through in a lot of his comments.
In nine months in office he has achieved more than any other president during their entire tenures. The deal he has put forward for the future of Gaza is one that has not only been accepted by Israel but also by the majority of Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has said they will look at the deal ‘in good faith’. That would be a first and in my view is unlikely to happen. They have 72 hours to release all the hostages from the time of the announcement at the press conference. That will be the real test of their ‘good faith’.
This move by Trump shows up those leaders who raced to recognise a Palestinian state to be nothing more than ideologues. I’m talking about the UK’s Starmer, Canada’s Carney, France’s Macron and Australia’s Albanese. There are obviously others, but these four lefties stand out. What they did was a charade of political grandstanding to achieve nothing beyond a ‘feel good’ factor. How were they going to achieve their aim? What was their plan?
They didn’t have one. Running around like headless chooks on the world stage is not a pathway to anything unless you have a plan in place to follow your desired goal. It took a near 80-year-old to teach these spring chickens a lesson in real leadership. Unlike them, he is refusing, quite rightly, to recognise a Palestinian state. What is proposed might be a pathway to a Palestinian state but as of now there will still not be one to recognise.
The same condemnation can be applied to Labour here, which is clueless when it comes to foreign affairs matters. The Greens might also consider removing that piece of material they drape around their necks: if they continue to adorn themselves with it then it will serve as a constant reminder to the rest of us just what a naïve and useless bunch of hippies they are.
Also proving to have backed the wrong horse is the left-wing media globally. It will be interesting to see their coverage from here on in, especially if Hamas do not agree to the terms of the deal. If that happens then Netanyahu has Trump’s full backing to ‘finish the job’. The war will continue until Hamas has been sufficiently eliminated and so there will be more unfortunate deaths of women and children.
If that is the case, prepare yourselves for a nightly assault on your eyes and ears of a diet of you know what while trying to digest your dinner. If this does happen, the left-wing media will blame Israel; and Hamas, the ones responsible for the continuation of the war, will barely get a mention other than firing the odd rocket in supposed self defence.
Some of the worst left-wing media are MSNBC, BBC and Al Jazeera. Most of their articles are anti-Israel. MSNBC, along with CNN and others, are simply Trump haters. None of these outlets even pretend to uphold the standards of objectivity in their reporting. The BBC have been caught out hundreds of times for their anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Trump has shown real leadership and taught a lesson to the leaders mentioned above. The same could be said of our very own Winston Peters. These are wise old heads trying to bring some commonsense to a highly volatile situation. These two have been ‘around the block’ a few more times than their younger counterparts. They realised more work was needed to be done before any decisions could be made.
It is unfortunate that the younger leaders, mostly on the left, just spout their rhetoric, based purely on ideology and nothing else, and offer nothing to go with it. They lack a basic understanding of what the requirements are for getting to where they want to go. Ideology is not an answer but reality is. They all need a dose of it.
