Trying to Avoid the Facts

A crisis brings out the best and the worst in us, and Christopher-Get-Boosted-Bishop is an excellent example: he was completely wrong about Covid vaccinations and boosters but is spot on about Hamas being a terrorist organisation.

So why did Get-Boosted’s leader get Hamas so wrong?

Luxon was asked about the email on AM on Wednesday morning and said there was “strong emotions on all sides of this debate”.

Yeah, well we learned from Covid that conjuring up strong emotions can make political gains, specifically the emotion of fear to addle brains and avoid discussing Covid and vaccine facts.

He [Luxon] said he spoken to Bishop about the email.

“He’s responding to a private email. My conversation with him was like, I think you’ve got to be a bit more careful about that language.”

Luxon said he wanted to be clear that New Zealand condemned Hamas.

This is what makes me nervous about Luxon’s leadership: publicly prioritising appearance over fact. It’s not a good look (pun intended).

Doesn’t it go without saying that people who take pleasure in brutally torturing, murdering and kidnapping women and children in the worst imaginable ways and recording their obscene behaviour on video to brag about it, are fully depraved?

When you look at the statement that we signed up asking for humanitarian assistance, when you look at the actual speeches that have been given in the [United Nations] General Assembly and at the Security Council by our own Ambassador to the UN, it’s very strongly worded statements about how we do utterly reject and condemn Hamas’ attack on Israel.

We do defend Israel’s right to defend itself, but we do expect all parties to comply with international law.

Christopher Luxon

Luxon must be one of perhaps a handful of New Zealanders who look to the UN for guidance. For decades UNRWA has been supplying Gaza with aid and relief funding that Hamas turns into rockets to fire into Israel, but Luxon cheers them on and gives oxygen to the unsupported notion of Israel carrying out war crimes against Hamas.

The middle ground Luxon takes may be motivated by wanting to appease the Hamas-hugging Greens or perhaps to curry favour with antisemitic UN member countries but, until proven otherwise, he is simply repeating a lie.

The Israel Institute of NZ, with a vested interest in antisemitism, paid more attention to Bishop’s comments than either the NZ media or Christopher Luxon combined.

Luxon is using a media tactic of repeating unsupported allegations to stop the public from seeking a more informed view. I expect better. If he has been media-coached to avoid the black-and-white statements that polarise people and lose support from the extreme edges of politics he deserves better. Is he taking the middle ground, the path of least resistance, because it’s politically less offensive to the majority? In this instance, it’s disturbing because he’s factually wrong.

Media can be relied on to dumb down a situation by greying out the black-and-white issues and making the rights and wrongs of a situation as murky as possible.

Terrorism is integral to Hamas; they are proud of their objective to annihilate Israel and fully intend to continue doing so. Ghazi Hamad from the Hamas Political Bureau makes it very clear.

CBC/Radio Canada President and CEO, Catherine Tait, recently said, “Canada, UK, US consider Hamas as a terrorist organization but we as journalists do not make that attribution.”

If someone won’t say who the bad guys are, what does it say about them?

Mainstream media are directly responsible for their own demise and the subsequent rise in the use of social media.

Someone who knows first-hand what it’s like to live in an Islamic theocracy ruled by fear, because she still has family living there, is Iranian-born Auckland socialite Gilda Kirkpatrick, who summarises recent media lies.

Kirkpatrick asks a good question: why do so many consistently lose their minds to media fear-mongering while a smaller minority successfully navigate their way through?

The answer to this question is that generally, unless we work in politics or media, we aren’t politically motivated about something until it personally affects us. If we have a vested interest in the outcome we will take a closer look at the facts and how they are presented.

That’s exactly where NZ mainstream media lost popularity and social media kicked in, to provide a platform for lies and truth to be disseminated and discussed.

NZ mainstream media have only themselves to blame for the economic malaise from which I sincerely hope they do not recover. We don’t need them.