New Zealand PM Luxon slams Israel's Netanyahu over Gaza war: ‘I think he has lost the plot'
The situation in Gaza was unacceptable, Luxon said.
New Zealand is weighing whether it should recognise a Palestinian state.
New Zealand's Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Wednesday that Israel's leader Benjamin Netanyahu had 'lost the plot' as the country weighs up whether to recognise a Palestinian state.
Luxon told reporters that the lack of humanitarian assistance, the forceful displacement of people and the annexation of Gaza were utterly appalling and that Netanyahu had gone way too far.
'I think he has lost the plot,' added Luxon, who heads the centre-right coalition government.
'What we are seeing overnight, the attack on Gaza City, is utterly, utterly unacceptable.'
Luxon said earlier this week New Zealand was considering whether to recognise a Palestinian state.
Close ally Australia on Monday joined Canada, the UK and France in announcing it would do so at a UN conference in September.
AFP
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached 'unimaginable levels', Britain, Canada, Australia and several of their European allies said on Tuesday, calling on Israel to allow unrestricted aid into the war-torn Palestinian enclave.
Israel has denied responsibility for hunger spreading in Gaza, accusing Hamas militants of stealing aid shipments, which Hamas denies.
Ahead of Wednesday's parliamentary session, a small number of protesters gathered outside the country's parliament buildings, beating pots and pans.
Local media organisation Stuff reported protesters chanted 'MPs grow a spine, recognise Palestine'.
Yael Guisky Abas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
On Tuesday, Greens parliamentarian Chloe Swarbrick was removed from parliament's debating chamber after she refused to apologise for a comment insinuating government politicians were spineless for not supporting a bill to 'sanction Israel for its war crimes'.
Swarbrick was ordered to leave the debating chamber for a second day on Wednesday after she again refused to apologise.
When she refused to leave, the government voted to suspend her.
'Sixty-eight members of this House were accused of being spineless,' House speaker Gerry Brownlee said.
There has never been a time where personal insults like that delivered inside a speech were accepted by this House and I'm not going to start accepting it.
Gerry Brownlee
As Swarbrick left, she called out 'free Palestine'.
Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said as little as two weeks ago he would not be drawn on a timeline for recognition of a Palestinian state.
His incumbent centre-left Labour Party, which won an increased majority at a general election in May, has previously been wary of dividing public opinion in Australia, which has significant Jewish and Muslim minorities.
But the public mood has shifted sharply after Israel said it planned to take military control of Gaza, amid increasing reports of hunger and malnutrition among its people.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched across Sydney's Harbour Bridge this month calling for aid deliveries in Gaza as the humanitarian crisis worsened.
'This decision is driven by popular sentiment in Australia which has shifted in recent months, with a majority of Australians wanting to see an imminent end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,' said Jessica Genauer, a senior lecturer in international relations at Flinders University.
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Atlantic
23 minutes ago
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The Limits of Recognition
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Last year, the city of Toronto averaged more than one anti-Jewish incident a day, accounting for 40 percent of all reported hate crimes in Canada's largest city. Jewish neighborhoods, Jewish hospitals, and Jewish places of worship have been the scenes of demonstrations by masked persons bearing flags and chanting hostile slogans. Gunmen fired shots at a Toronto Jewish girls' school on three nights last year. A synagogue in Montreal was attacked with firebombs in late 2024. On Saturday, an assailant beat a Jewish man in a Montreal park in front of his children. David Frum: There is no right to bully and harass Canadian governments—federal, provincial, municipal—of course want to stop the violence. But their inescapable (if often unsayable) dilemma is that many of those same governments depend on voters who are sympathetic to the motives of the violent. Canadian authorities of all kinds have become frightened of important elements in their own populations. Just this week, the Toronto International Film Festival withdrew its invitation to a Canadian film about the invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The festival's statement cited legal concerns, including the fear that by incorporating footage that Hamas fighters filmed of their atrocities without ' legal clearance,' the film violated Hamas's copyright. (In polite Canada, it seems that even genocidal terrorists retain their intellectual-property claims.) Another and more plausible motive cited by the festival: fear of 'potential threat of significant disruption.' A small group of anti-Israel protesters invaded the festival's gala opening in 2024. The legal violations have been larger and more flagrant this year. All of this forms the backdrop necessary to understand why the Canadian government has joined the British and French governments in their intention to recognize a Palestinian state. The plan began as a French diplomatic initiative. In July, France and Saudi Arabia co-chaired a United Nations conference on the two-state solution. Days before the conference began, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that his nation would recognize a Palestinian state in September. The French initiative was almost immediately seconded by the British government. Canada quickly followed. This week, Australia added its weight to the group. Anti-Jewish violence has been even more pervasive and aggressive in Australia than in Canada, including the torching of a Sydney day-care center in January. (Germany declined to join the French initiative but imposed a limited arms embargo on Israel.) All four governments assert that their plan offers no concessions to Hamas. All four insist that a hypothetical Palestinian state must be disarmed, must exclude Hamas from any role in governance, must renounce terrorism and incitement, and must accept Israel's right to exist. Those conditions often got omitted in media retellings, but they are included in all the communiqués with heavy emphasis. As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters on July 30: 'Canada reiterates that Hamas must immediately release all hostages taken in the horrific terrorist attack of October 7, that Hamas must disarm, and that Hamas must play no role in the future governance of Palestine.' All those must s make these plans impossible to achieve, from the outset. How do the French, British, Canadian, and Australian governments imagine them being enforced, and by whom? Even now, after all this devastation, Hamas remains the most potent force in Palestinian politics. A May survey by a Palestinian research group, conducted in cooperation with the Netherland Representative Office in Ramallah, reported that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians reject the idea that Hamas's disarmament is a path to ending the war in Gaza, and a plurality said they would vote for a Hamas-led government. Observers might question the findings from Gaza, where Hamas can still intimidate respondents, but those in the West Bank also rejected the conditions of France, Britain, Canada, and Australia. What does recognition mean anyway? Of UN member states, 147 already recognize a state of Palestine, including the economic superpowers China and India; regional giants such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Nigeria; and the European Union member states of Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Sweden. About half of those recognitions date back to 1988, when Yasser Arafat proclaimed Palestinian independence from his exile in Algiers after the Israeli military drove Arafat's organization out of the territory it had occupied in Lebanon. Such diplomatic niceties do not alter realities. States are defined by control of territory and population. In that technical sense, Hamas in Gaza has proved itself to be more like a state than has the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Even the mighty United States learned that lesson the hard way over the 22 years from 1949 to 1971, when Washington pretended that the Nationalist regime headquartered in Taipei constituted the legitimate government of mainland China. Macron, Carney, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are savvy, centrist politicians. All regard themselves as strong friends of Israel. Starmer in particular has fought hard to purge his Labour Party of the anti-Semitic elements to whom the door was opened by his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. If they're investing their prestige in a seemingly futile gesture, they must have good reason. They do. All four men lead political coalitions that are fast turning against Israel. Pressure is building on the leaders to vent their supporters' anger, and embracing the French initiative creates a useful appearance of action. The Canadian example is particularly stark. Prime Minister Carney has pivoted in many ways from the progressive record of his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. He canceled an increase in the capital-gains tax that Trudeau had scheduled. He dropped from the cabinet a housing minister who had championed a major government-led building program. (The program remains, but under leadership less beholden to activists.) Carney has committed to a major expansion of the Canadian energy sector after almost a decade of dissension between energy producers and Ottawa. The new Carney government is also increasing military spending. Many on the Canadian left feel betrayed and frustrated. Recognizing a Palestinian state is a concession that may appease progressives irked by Carney's other moves toward the political center. But appeasement will not work. In the Middle East, the initiative by France, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom has already pushed the region away from stability, not toward it. Cease-fire talks with Hamas 'fell apart' on the day that Macron declared his intent to recognize a Palestinian state, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Hamas then released harrowing photographs of starved Israeli hostages, one shown digging his own grave. Embarrassed pro-recognition leaders had to deliver a new round of condemnations of Hamas at the very moment they were trying to pressure Israel to abandon its fight against Hamas. Nor does the promise of Palestinian recognition seem to be buying the four leaders the domestic quiet they had hoped for. On Sunday, British police arrested more than 500 people for demonstrating in support of a pro-Palestine group proscribed because of its acts of violence against British military installations. Those arrests amounted to the largest one-day total in the U.K. in a decade. Hours before Prime Minister Albanese's statement promising recognition, some 90,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked traffic on Sydney Harbour Bridge. Their organizers issued four demands—recognition was not one of them. 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