by Simon O'Connor

I am writing on the road, currently in Provo in Utah (next to Salt Lake City) for a symposium where I am presenting a paper at Brigham Young University (BYU) on religious freedom and belief. It is one of the reasons I have not written for a week or so, but I did want to share a few thoughts on these three recent events. Each of which, as the Substack title suggests, comes with no surprises. I will share a few highlights of Rachel and my trip at the end.

THE MAORI PARTY SPLINTERS

As you will know, the Maori Party has split with it’s sister group, Toitu te Tiriti, with accusations of bullying, fraud, and not applying tikanga.

This should not surprise anyone for two very simple reasons – both groups (and the individuals within) preference tribalism and revolution. For me, the revolutionary and often violent rhetoric of both groups was the surest sign things would go awry. As with any revolutionary group, the first set of radicals are replaced by the next. For anyone with a sense of even recent history, the French and Russian revolutions are cases in point. As they continue this path, each group must compete to be more radical, more zealous, and ultimately contemptible of each other.

Secondly, the infighting is not just revolutionary, but tribal. It is of no surprise that the son would support the mother – in this case, the head of Toitu te Tiriti and his mother who is a Maori Party MP. Affiliation is not to ideas and reason, but to blood and clan. It has, and remains, a timeless recipe for conflict around the world. Until they move away from tribalism, splintering and infighting will continue.

MANCHESTER

We have also witnessed the horrific attack on a Jewish synagogue in Manchester. As Britain’s Chief Rabbi himself said, “the day we hoped we would never see, but which deep down, we knew would come”.

This should not surprise any of us when calls for ‘globalising the intifada’ are tolerated daily and when mainstream media relentlessly promotes a singular, simplistic narrative of the conflict in Gaza.

This attack is at the extreme end of the continuum of violence that I recently wrote about, but the underlying dynamics also exist here in New Zealand. For example, you may have read how pro-Hamas groups have celebrated the harassment and threats made against a New Zealand Jewish woman running in a local body election. As I write, the home of Winston Peters has first been doxxed and targeted by people similarly aligned, and have now gone as far as smashing a window of his home with a crowbar.

We must be careful to stop the continued slide down this continuum, or else worse will inevitably come.

It is also important to highlight the hollowness of many comments made by politicians and media personalities. Statements such as ‘diversity is our strength’ or ‘this was an attack on all of us’ simply downplay and deflect, disabling honest and open conversation.

CEASEFIRE?

This leads me to the Middle East and the recent push for a ceasefire. Unsurprisingly, those who for months have been loudly calling for a ceasefire are now embracing silence or actually encouraging Hamas to not accept the Trump-led deal.

It is hard to reconcile the suggestion that there is a genocide occurring when those same voices simultaneously reject a means to end the killing. When we reflect on previous and accepted genocides, no ceasefire offer is ever given. We can think of the Armenian genocide; the Holocaust of course; or more recently what happened to the Yazidis.

The ceasefire proposal also contrasts American strength with the weakness of Europe. At this stage, it looks like the Trump-led ceasefire proposal may be the closest move towards peace so far (at least in part). The EU’s approach to recognise a Palestinian State, along with the likes of Australia and Canada, has proven to be hollow and ineffective virtue signaling.

I do not find myself completely surprised by this, for compromise is viewed as weakness by extremist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. While many of us are used to showing compromise and good faith with the expectation of reciprocation from the other, this is not how fundamentalists operate.

Finally, quick comment must be made on the performances of the likes of Greta Thunberg and others of the flotilla. The flotilla’s behaviour is insulting to not only Israelis but the suffering Palestinians as well. To go about suggesting that deliberately sailing into an inclusion zone and being detained is kidnapping, is grotesquely appropriating the experiences of those actually kidnapped. It echoes the students at Columbia University calling for humanitarian aid, hours after they stormed a campus building and locked themselves in. As we might expect, the performance continues with flotilla participants making all sorts of claims around treatment, which frankly, are hard to believe. Strikingly, and what reinforces my comments above, is that these performers are spending all their time talking about themselves – not the cause they claim to support.

SUPRISINGLY POSITIVE

To end on something more positive, Rachel and I have been enjoying exploring parts of Utah, Montana, and Idaho over recent days – including Yellowstone National Park and other sites. A few photo highlights below:

Finally, to return to the positive, click here for a video I took of a mumma bear and her cub in Yellowstone.

Originally published at On Point.