Okay, I first heard about this a few days ago, but the Herald only reported on it yesterday:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10555398

Armed Hamas police broke into a Gaza City warehouse packed with United Nations humanitarian supplies and seized thousands of blankets and food packages.

…

The incident also highlighted difficulties facing donors seeking to bypass Hamas while helping Gazans to survive and rebuild after Israel’s punishing military operation.

In New York, UN deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said the UN Relief and Works Agency “condemned in the strongest terms” the confiscation of its aid supplies. The UN demanded the items be returned, but they remained with Hamas yesterday.

…

The seizure took place after UNRWA staff refused to hand over the aid supplies to the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs, he said. Similar aid packages were distributed to 70,000 residents over the past two weeks.

Ahmad Kurd, the Hamas official in charge of the ministry, did not deny the aid was seized, charging that the UN was giving the aid to local groups with ties to Hamas opponents.

“UNRWA did not do what it said it would do, and began distributing its aid to groups that tie their activities to political activism,” Kurd said, an apparent reference to Fatah, Hamas’ main opponents. In 2007, Hamas overran Gaza, expelling Fatah forces.

How crazy is this. Hamas made a large deal of innoccent civilians being killed in the latest conflict. But when it comes to helping them out only those who support Hamas will get help. The rest will die. Nice logic.

From: http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/4814924a22678.html

The Middle East is a tragedy wrapped in a catastrophe. This recent outbreak of hostility is small beer compared to its blood-soaked past but it has served to launch a new wave of liberal handwringing.

Almost without exception, liberals accept that the Israelis are the baddies. They are the ones with the fighter planes, helicopter gunships and tanks tearing through the ghettoes of Gaza.

…

The truth is considerably different. The Gaza Strip is a territory controlled by an Islamic fundamentalist faction that has sworn to wipe Israel from the planet. It has been doing its best by launching rockets at Jewish settlements, arming and directing suicide bombers, and ending the uneasy ceasefire.

It knows it cannot beat Israel militarily but that is not its aim. Its aim is to provoke a reaction and for any Israeli incursion to kill innocent Palestinian children. This is intended to incite other Arab nations to collaborate in the cleansing force required to be rid of these dreadful Jews.

The only problem is that Hamas are not freedom fighters. In fact, they are not even sane. They are religious fanatics. Fundamentalist nutters armed with guns, rocket-propelled grenades and rockets. Their idea of a Palestinian state is one that eradicates Israel. They emerged victors after a bloody civil war with the Fatah party in 2006 killing plenty of innocent civilians themselves and now consider that Hamas is the frontline in the fight against the infidel.

Yet these are the people that Minto, the Greens, the Catholic fringe and Kiwi liberals seek to embrace.

The history of the Middle East is labyrinthine but modern Israel was legally established by the United Nations in 1947. In fact, the UN plan was to establish two separate countries a Jewish Israel and an Arab Palestine. It was not a perfect answer but then none were available. It was the best of a bad situation.

To cut a long story short: the Arabs accepted neither solution nor resolution. Israel was a Zionist abomination and a pan-Arab military force instantly massed to invade. They were badly beaten, the nascent Palestine was scrubbed, and hundreds of thousands of displaced Arabs escaped into non-statehood.

Voila the grievance of these past 60 years.

For decades, any genuine solution foundered against the Arab insistence that Israel had no right to exist. That it was the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time. That impediment is now, mostly, gone.

But not for Hamas or their backers in Iran. Jews are devils end of story. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia may accept that Jewish folk are entitled to their place in the sun but as for Hamas-controlled Palestine that’s a different matter entirely.

Nothing less than the repudiation of the Israeli state and the confiscation of all their land will suffice. And so their continuing attacks upon Israeli civilians. And equally so, the expiration of Jewish patience.

This is not to suggest that Israeli actions over these past 60 years meet any antipodean morality test either. There have been inhumane actions and outrageous abuses. But not this time: not in Gaza in 2009. Israel is responding as any nation would were it under continual military harassment.

If Fiji, for example, were to send suicide bombers and rain down rockets on Auckland and surrounds, in protest at past actions, I wonder how long before New Zealand’s patience similarly snapped? Especially if the governing Fijian regime wanted this country for themselves.

Such a scenario seems surreal. We can’t possibly comprehend a thought process so perverse. It is not within our frame of reference.

…

Veteran liberal correspondent Robert Fisk has condemned the Israeli incursion as disproportionate. He draws an analogy with the IRA bombing Britain: did England carpet bomb Ireland in return, he asks? The difference being that the Irish government actively opposed the IRA’s leadership and tactics. And that the IRA wasn’t the government, using its institutions to wage a terrorist war on the UK with the ultimate aim of tipping England into the sea.

…

The death of innocents in Gaza is regrettable it is sad and it is wrong. But all the more so for being orchestrated by Hamas, in pursuit of their despicable ends.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10550878

Editorial: Desecration does nothing to help Gaza
The actions of an extremist Catholic priest in desecrating the Wellington memorial to Nobel Prize winner Yitzhak Rabin undo any good that a thousand others protesting against Israel might have hoped
to achieve.

Father Gerard Burns daubed a drop of his own blood mixed with red paint across the Rabin memorial, inspired perhaps by an equally misguided Auckland cleric who poured his own blood on the carpet of the US consulate at the beginning of the Iraq war. At least in that repulsive act the first priest was, in the twisted logic of his protest, at the right place.

For Father Burns to desecrate the Rabin memorial is not only in breach of any civilised standard of protest but utterly wrongheaded in terms of his target. Rabin, a former Israeli general-turned-two-time-Prime-Minister, was perhaps the greatest hope for peace between Jews and Palestinians in a generation. He was assassinated by an ultra-conservative Jew because he was too accommodating to the Palestinians in seeking a lasting peace. He died after a rally for peace, with the words of Shir LaShalom, or Song for Peace, found bloodied in his pocket. He had been honoured, with Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres, by the Nobel judges. The memorial in central Wellington marks that commitment to peace.

The sins (as Father Burns might see them) of his successors in the Israeli Government cannot be visited upon Rabin. The Friends of Israel group rightly calls for the Catholic Church to discipline the priest and apologise to Jews in New Zealand, for whom desecration of their monument causes deep offence. The vandalism has received worldwide attention, the kind of attention that shames Catholics of goodwill and undermines their own public stands for justice and peace. The organisers of the Wellington march opposing Israel’s heavy-handed military action in the Gaza strip should also demand an apology from Father Burns. They must know that their message against the killings of civilians, including children, is diverted and made hollow by a calculated insult to Jews everywhere.

Father Burns no doubt views the hurt and harm caused by his desecration as out of proportion with the tragedy in Gaza. In lives lost, that is correct. No one died, as the saying goes, because of his stunt with paint. Yet something dies when whole communities are insulted, deliberately, by an act so heavy with the symbolism and fear of their past. Should Catholic monuments, for example a memorial to the revered Bishop Pompallier who brought the Church to New Zealand, be attacked because of some stance taken by the Vatican, similar outrage would ensue.

…

Extreme responses seldom get things in proportion. And, sadly, Father Burns’ drop of blood mocks the deaths of those for whom he claims to speak.

The Israeli Defense Force is actively posting videos to You Tube showing its actions. These are uneditted and without opinion from the media. Make up your own mind about Israel targeting terrorists and weapons vs civilans, the secondary explosions in many of the videos are huge.

Okay,I have been very reluctant to blog about the ongoings in Israel partly because I have been busy, and partly because Kiwiblog have been doing a good job of keeping the issue balanced, at least in the NZ Blogosphere.

But the reason why I am blogging now is because John Minto and his rent a protest crowd have really got my back up in the last two days.

Now I will come back to Minto and his bunch of loonies in a few minutes but first lets get things in perspective.

Israel is not a large country. I have combined an image of Israel and part of the north island together to show it in comparison to NZ.

The Gaza Strip is highlighted in Red. It is about the same size as the distance from Manukau to Huntly. 100km max. And Gaza city itself is about the same size as Auckland City, as in the city city, not Manukau, Waitakere or the shore.

So as you can see they are fighting over a very small piece of land, but at the same time a very heavily populated land. So as you can expect when you are dropping bombs or firing tank shells civilians are naturally going to be caught in the crossfire.

However that is no excuse for not defending yourself. And that is what Israel are doing.

Israel has spent the past week inside its own land trying to prevent terrorists from firing rockets and random into civilian towns. Rockets that have rained down for the last 8 years, or 400 weeks for those of you who want things in perspective.

Israel is the only jewish state in the world. There are many many christian states, many muslim states, and many states of other religions, but only one jewish state. And more importantly for those who don’t believe in religion, Israel is the only democracy in the Mid East.

And so I find all the protests against Israel quite ironic. But at the same time it doesn’t surprise me when they are vastly outnumbered in terms of supporters (primarily due to religious beliefs).

Okay so lets come back to New Zealand.

Firstly Wellington. There was a lovely “peaceful” protest down there earlier this week. And I say “peaceful” in quotes because I am disgusted by the actions of a priest of the catholic church who thought it was wise to mix blood with paint and smear it on a jewish memorial.

Now two things strike me about this action. The first is that how would NZ’s respond if an environmentalist decided that Sir Ed’s grave was a good place to smear blood on after all he sent polluting tractors to the south pole and therefore help start melting the ice caps by putting out too much heat and carbon. People would think that they are crazy and demand that they be prosecuted to the nth degree of the law. However NZ just turns a blind eye to the actions of a high ranking public individual who vandalises a memorial. Would I be arrested if I were to throw red paint over his church for all the killing the catholic church has done through the ages?

The second thing is this. The accidental symbolism. In jewish custom smearing blooding over a door frame protects you from G-d’s destruction. That is the Exodus story. The passover. This priest appears to have accidentially asked G-d to passover Israel’s sins, so in a way I thank him for doing that.

And now lets come to today in Auckland. John Minto is the hero of the 1980s and the anti Springbok tour protests. At the time they were good things. Because they actually had an impact because they were a nationally sanctioned team.

But today, threatning to throw shoes at an Israeli individual who has no ties to the Government is disgusting. Whatever happened to welcome to New Zealand, what ever happened to respecting everyone? Since when did NZders’s throw shoes at people just because of their nationality?

And for those who have no idea what I am blogging about check this out: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10550934