Would our government defend us?
Imagine an extreme far-right militia invaded New Zealand, murdered 3,000 people and took 250 citizens hostage – back to their massive compound. Imagine that affiliated militia continued to fire thousands of rockets into our country, occasionally breaking through defences and exploding in neighbourhoods.
Dr David Cumin
Then, one of these violent far-right paramilitary groups landed a missile on a sportsfield that killed 25 children.
What would our government do?
Would they respond as they encourage Ukraine to respond – by condemning the funders and supporters of the militia, imposing sanctions on them, and giving tens of millions of dollars of military assistance to Ukraine?
Or would they respond as they have to the ongoing attacks on Israel – by condemning some of the acts while demanding “restraint” and “de-escalation”; and also funding organisations that have harboured, covered for, and supported the militia?
The strange thing about the latter response is also how out of step with our “traditional allies” – liberal democracies like the United States and European countries – it is. Our foreign minister condemned the murder of children at Majdal Shams and even named Hezbollah as the culprit; but the statement went on to draw a false equivalence with an IDF strike on a school that terrorists had taken over and then called for “restraint”.
Whereas, at least 5 hours earlier, Canada named Iran and called out the terror without calling for “restraint”; the US also named Iran and most other nations expressed support for Israel.
It seems that only New Zealand conflated the Hezbollah attack in the North with the IDF strike in Gaza and that our government was most outspoken about not wanting Israel to retaliate.
I hope we never have to find out how our leaders would respond to major, sustained, terror attacks on our nation. I hope they will not respond with the kind of restraint with which they are pressuring Israel.
I hope that there is a double standard here and their response to Ukraine is more aligned with their actual values. I hope it is only a gross double standard that they are applying to Israel – the Jew of the nations – rather than an honest belief that terror must not be confronted in all cases.
If it is simply singling out Israel for different rules, then the question becomes “why?”. The answer seems quite obvious when we consider the Prime Minister’s response to questions over his refusal to designate Hezbollah as a terror organisation. He wrote that “terrorist designations are complex and include a range of foreign policy…. considerations.”
Our foreign policy is not aligned so much with the countries that do designate Hezbollah – including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, … United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, or the United States.
I’ll leave you to consider where our foreign policy priorities are really aligned. And what that means for all the government rhetoric about “combating extremism”. Maybe there would be some attacks on our nation that our leaders would not work too hard to defend against. Maybe they wouldn’t defend us.
Dr David Cumin is co-director of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, among other roles.
