 If Reality Check Radio enriches your day and life, support us to keep bringing you the content, voices, perspectives and dose of reality you won't get anywhere else. Visit www.realitycheck.radio forward slash donate. I've had Ashley Church on before as well. Back then we talked about our faith journeys. Today though I wanted to touch base with Ashley regarding his article about the Israel-Hamas conflict. It's origins and busting some myths that the media perpetrate. He joins me on the line now. Welcome back to the crunch and the first crunch of the year Ashley Church. G'day Cam, nice to see you again. Welcome to 2024. I hope it started well for you. Yes, well you know it's a battle always but you know I'm looking forward to the first show and I'm looking forward to RCR for the year and you know we moved the dial last year with RCR with the election and all of that so it's been fantastic to grow about. One area that I keep getting criticism on is I haven't yet commented on RCR regarding the Israel-Hamas war that's been going since October 7 and I read your article that you wrote early on in that piece, a very reasoned article that showed both sides of the arguments and where you saw things lie and certainly I'd refer readers to your website for that which is at ashleychurch.com and if you search for Israel and Hamas the facts you'll find Ashley's article. Just want to touch on what you cover in that article Ashley. Yes, so basically where it came from was not long after this terrible attack took place on the 7th of October I looked around CAM for some Q&A material that I could use in social media posts that was really the genesis of it and there was various stuff out there but nothing that really covered the key data and also nothing which extrapolated from what had happened on 7 October and explained the history and why that had actually happened. So I wrote one myself and I wrote it as you say as a Q&A and I tried to keep it as simple as possible so it basically poses some questions that answers the questions and it doesn't go into a huge amount of detail in the answers themselves it gives just enough basically to answer the question but it's chock full of hyperlinks which means that where it answers in a three or four sentence answer there are also hyperlinks which enable you to go and find much more information of videos and other things for anybody who really wants to get down into the deep and dirty. So then I put it out there and it went mental it got picked up all around the world it got picked up by agencies in the states and Israel and other places and became almost a de facto sort of fact sheet on what was going on which was great. Yeah it's very good I mean I've referred lots of people to it because it doesn't have any emotion and there's no right or wrong these are just the facts I mean you even outline what Hamas is about and what they want which people seem to forget. And that's actually the starting point of it but pretty much the first question it asks is who is Hamas and Hamas so actually the first question it asks is what happened on 7th of October and it goes into a bit of detail about the attack that took place at 6.30 in the morning the fact that 1200 people were slaughtered some of them in their sleep they were people who in many cases had been in a music festival the night before babies would be headed woman rule raped it was a terrible terrible event and had it happened anywhere else on earth can it would have been the the cause of massive outpouring of grief around the world and there was a little bit of grief it lasted about five minutes and then it very very quickly turned into what we saw which was essentially blaming Israel for the fact that Hamas had attacked it anyway back to your question so the the attack was was was conducted by Hamas and they also took back into Israel about 240 hostages yeah yeah now it's at that point it's interesting to actually ask who Hamas are or who they are as an organization so Hamas has been around since the 1980s in fact 1988 at first emerged and it now rules the Gaza Strip it is effectively well if not effectively it is the the government of the Gaza Strip so just for those who don't understand the politics the Palestinian people on either side of Israel fall into two different territories on one side is Gaza which is the strip of land on the south east south west coast of Israel facing onto the Mediterranean and on the other side of Israel is another piece of land called the West Bank and that's ruled by a different organization called Fatah which is part of that's where the Palestinian liberation organization eventually became Fatah correct correct yeah and so Fatah is is a radical organization as well but it's nowhere near as radical as as Hamas so Hamas in 19 sorry in 2005 after a form of occupation over their territory by Israel Israel basically decided they would pull out of Gaza in its entirety they offered it back to Egypt didn't they offered it back to Egypt Egypt didn't want to borrow but Egypt's got a big wall up that nobody talks about huge bigger than israel's yeah and so they basically left them to it quite quickly the the Palestinians and the Gaza Strip had an election they elected Hamas to be their leadership and Hamas has both a political wing and a military wing although for all intents and purposes they are essentially the same thing one of the same yeah yeah and and and so determined were Israel to lead them to it that they actually forcibly removed 10 000 Jews had been living in Gaza forcibly removed them made them leave and removed the graves of Israelis who had been buried in the Gaza Strip so that they wouldn't be desecrated and left all the infrastructure in place that they built the infrastructure and basically left them to it so there was no occupation so when the term occupation comes up there was no occupation it was it was left to its own devices it was funded primarily from from on the large essence support of nations around the world of the UN and and it governed itself for for a period of almost 20 years and then they emerged as I say and and and to be fair I mean this didn't happen entirely in isolation they've been bombing Israel with with the monotonous regularity over that 20 year period but Israel has this thing called I am don't which is a very effective defense mechanism which shoots down most of those missiles as they can for many years they didn't have it though that's right and so it was it was damaging infrastructure in Israel anyway so Hamas have emerged and and carried out this attack you might say well why have they done so so it's important to understand who Hamas actually are what does Hamas mean for a start what is the word Hamas mean I'm not even going to attempt to give the Arab translation because like I can't pronounce it but it's an acronym which means Islamic resistance movement and Hebrew incidentally as a coincidence the word Hamas actually means violence which is which is interesting yeah and it's driven very much by and this is a key thing to understand it's driven by the same objectives which motivated ISIS and in fact according to a number of leading Muslim academics not not Western academics Muslim academics they actually say that it is ISIS so so for all intents and purposes it operates in exactly the same way it it's purpose as an organization is not the creation of the Palestinian state it's not to have peace with Israel it's not any of these things that the protest movements claim that it is its movement is the annihilation of the state of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate and in fact if you go further than that it's it's a long term purpose and it's made no secret of this is as a permanent state of total war and the eventually the creation of a caliphate worldwide so it's very clear in its objectives not interested in peace not interested a state it is determined to completely remove Israelis which it seizes the blood on that band from that that area in its entirety now by the way that's not my opinion that comes from something called the Hamas Charter and the Hamas Charter is available online for anybody who wants to read it and it's very clear it goes through what its objectives are it goes through what its goals are and it goes through its very clear attitude with Jewish people and its desire for the elimination of Jews worldwide so when they when when green politicians and various other people march down Queen Street and chant from the river to the sea Palestine will be free what does that mean so the river so the river in question when from a Hamas perspective they're talking about the Jordan River on the eastern side so the Jordan River runs pretty much all the way up as a line between Jordan and Israel right up to the sea of Galilee and down to the dead sea and down to the dead sea here so so that's a that's a natural border on one side and the sea is is the Mediterranean so the only piece of land that exists between those two geographical features is Israel itself so what they're saying is from the river to the sea elimination of Israel in its entirety and that's completely consistent as I say camp with with the the Charter of the mass which that that's exactly what they say now the irony of it is the people who make who chant that phrase and and you know the people that protest and march in the streets that you just mentioned before around the the streets of the western world in most cases have absolutely no idea what the river and the sea actually are or what would have been comedic if it wasn't so serious but it is comedic somebody's put a video out on youtube asking protesters what's the river and and um no one can answer it uh i think i saw somebody say the Balkans was the the the sea was the Balkans for god's sake yeah all the all the sea was the um the Black Sea yeah yeah which of course which of course borders Ukraine Russia and uh and Turkey um nowhere near this area um same with the river they couldn't name what the river was either yeah completely right so so you know it's very easy to to to make these these chance and to you know to get up and talk about the river to the sea but when you actually analyze what they mean by that it is a horrific uh uh called a genocide of the of the of the Jewish people just to touch on that yeah how many Jews live in Gaza no not one yeah how many Jews live in Syria uh there'd be less than 50 how many Jews live in Lebanon probably a few more but again less less than a couple of hundred and Jordan uh again there might be someone doing business in Jordan because Israel has a peace treaty with Jordan but long-term residents might be four or five hundred certainly wouldn't be any more than that Saudi Arabia oh none and Egypt same as Jordan they have a peace treaty with with uh Egypt so so there would be probably a greater degree of commercial relationship between about a few hundred a few hundred maybe yet certainly not many certainly not talking thousands yeah so I named those countries on purpose they're the countries who have borders with Israel yep and so when they say from the river to the sea Palestine will be free what they really mean would be free of Jews correct absolutely just like it isn't all those countries around absolutely correct incidentally there's a there's a corollary to that question which is how many people of those various different ethnicities live in Israel yeah who might have who might have descendancy or ancestry in those various different nations how many Arab Israelis are there two million and growing living in Israel with the same rights as as Israeli citizens so so that then leads to the other claim that people make about Israel is that it's an apartheid state the nonsense and the only are there any laws that Israel has that prevents a non-Jewish person from I don't know being an MP or a judge or a chair no there is one law and one law only that differentiates between Jewish Israelis and all others and it's and it's actually a negative for Jews all Jews have to perform two years military service compulsory military service uh Jews of Israeli so they're not a Jewish descent or exempted from that big compulsory but there's plenty of Arab Israelis in the idea and they do that voluntarily but but in respect of the broad question that you asked in respect of every other aspect of life uh completely equal completely equal so so the rights are the same I think where this this uh suggestion of apartheid comes from camp firstly it comes from people who don't understand so they say this stuff without actually having clue of what they're talking about yeah secondly it comes from misunderstanding of the of the status of Gaza and the status of the west bank so Gaza as I said before has run as effectively as as an independent state for 20 years so its people are citizens of Gaza they're not citizens of Israel and I think if you if you postulate this claim that protesters do that it's been occupied by Israel and it's separated from Israel that's the only way if you stand on your head and put your hand behind your back you might be able to claim that there's some form for tartare but part but it simply isn't true it's completely separate but many many uh Arabs uh in Gaza actually worked in Israel didn't they they did and it's interesting because that's clearly not happening at the moment for obvious reasons and so uh Israel's currently uh bringing in uh tens of thousands of of Indian workers who who are very very thankful of the work that was previously being conducted by Gazans and the reasons Gazans did it was because the wages and the salaries that they were able to earn in Israel were substantially more than they could ever have earned in Gaza or they they were you know able to feed their families and look after themselves well that's all gone Hamas has destroyed that so what about the claims that this is a freedom movement that uh that there was a a brutal siege uh by Israel on Gaza that uh wouldn't permit any water or electricity or all of these sorts of things uh food stuffs going into Gaza yeah so that's not true that's simply not true in fact there was there there have been uh uh uh has been an enormous amount of humanitarian aid that's gone into Gaza uh since uh Israel has moved in there um after October 7th um but about 70% of that by by IDF estimates has been stolen by Hamas and has been used uh essentially to support their soldiers and the people that are fighting the Israeli so it's not getting to the people it's it's aimed at and so from Israel's perspective Israel is actually going above and beyond it's doing things that you simply wouldn't expect in wartime um of of of a of a party to that that conflict um and that's pretty typical of of Israel not just in respect of the provision of humanitarian aid but also in respectable sorts of other things when they have moved into an area to clear out Hamas they have made sure first they've let the citizens um of Gaza in that particular area know they've created clear paths protected by the IDF so that people could move move south when that was happening they've gone they've gone out of their way to protect the citizens of Gaza and done everything that they possibly could um to minimize any casualties of civilians and to make sure that they're focusing almost in their entirety uh on on the the combatants from Hamas itself which is in clear conflict to the nonsense hearing the media about how they're attacking indiscriminately that's simply not true I visited Israel in 2014 and um fantastic it reminded me a lot of New Zealand you know maybe 40 years ago this real can-do attitude but uh when I was in sterot um being rocketed by Hamas uh when I was there um at one point I think it was like 15 missiles in five minutes which is kind of frightening but those people lived there 900 yards from the from the uh Gaza border um with bomb shelters and all those but I said to uh the you know the people that were running the tour well how does Gaza get its power and its water and they said oh from us yes I said what do you mean you said well you know we've got a nuclear power station at Askelon another one at Ashtod um and we also um pump fresh water into there yep um and provide most of the services um the and I said oh do they pay for that uh no we do it for free yeah and uh at that point there was rockets being aimed at those nuclear power stations which provide the power power for Gaza I couldn't work it out I just could not work it out Brewery cam the the the lens to which Israel will go to to provide I guess what it sees is its humanitarian humanitarian responsibilities to people that it didn't create who were created by events that happened in 1948 but who it has taken on a an obligation to to play its part in looking after them and just interestingly too not just in regard to humanitarian aid but even you might have noticed over the last couple of days there's been some reports around some idea forces that that appear we don't know yet because it hasn't been investigated but it appeared to have killed somebody who who killed a Palestinian who for whom it wasn't apparent that they were combatant um in cold blood now the reason that's important because and I'm sure that we all sorts of media about how terrible that is and and how merciless is this the guy that had his hands up at yeah yeah yeah so that's being investigated at the moment but here's what's important about that that made that made the evening news it was the lead story in Israel it's being investigated by multiple agencies in Israel in other words the the apparatus of the state the apparatus of the military is turning itself on its head to find out who did it what the story behind it is and to take action if they find that it was actually done in a way that was malicious now that now compare that to Hamas who killed 1200 people in cold blood on the 7th of October and have shown no regard not just for the human life of Israelis but for the civilians in Gaza who it's actually used as human shields in order to protect itself from the from from the attempts by by um by the Israelis to eliminate it so the contrast between the western ethical values of Israel which which regards every life it's precious and and the the values of Hamas which are basically blood thirsty and will do whatever is necessary in order to achieve their their aims now it kind of moves on to their allegations that every time there's a conflict like this uh where Israel reacts to defend its citizens and this was a let's put it plainly it was it was an invasion by Hamas who was the sovereign government of Gaza so it was an act of war against Israel on December the 7th. Hamas broke the existing truce that was in place by doing it and Israel responded with immense firepower and overwhelming and now there's this call that the protesters make that the response should be proportionate now i'm a you know study military history i'm a member of anti-karm so i kind of know all of this sort of stuff in world war two you know when the the allies bombed Dresden and created a firestorm and killed tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of German citizens there were no calls for proportionate response then when no the allies bombed or the United States bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima uh there was no calls for a proportionate response to the Japanese tyranny that was uh you know so this concept of proportionality camp has no basis well i can't work it out because if you're conducting a war if you're proportionate you're never going to end that war it's going to be a stalemate it'll be like world war one where there was a proportionate response and is met with trenches and it became a four-year stalemate that killed millions of people so that's what happens isn't it if you have proportionate responses absolutely and so your example of the Germans is that is particularly prescient because there were far more and i haven't got the number in my head but there were far more Germans killed during world war two than there were um allied forces killed um and citizens and civilians as well far more German civilians killed yeah but the Germans were the aggressors it was the Germans who were attacking so so do we turn around should should Churchill have turned around and said well we you know we have to pull back we have to be proportionate in our response because we're killing too many Germans that would be a nonsense and i think any decent reasonable person sees that there's a logical fallacy in that sort of approach and yet that's exactly what's being argued here the other thing that's important to understand is that within that you know that that that glaciers concept of proportionality uh the only if it's targeting overwhelmingly it's targeting Hamas it's targeting Hamas combatants now we're hearing all sorts of figures at the moment coming from the uh Gaza health ministry of figures of sort of controlled by Hamas people it's which is controlled by Hamas it's exactly right that would be like listening to gobbles of the propaganda ministry during world war two giving us all our information about casualties during that conflict it's exactly the same thing so a we don't know if that number is correct and b equally importantly we don't know how that number is made up and it may well be that the vast majority in fact i suspect we'll find it is when this thing or when the smoke settles the vast majority of those people are actually Hamas combatants so and then people say well there's women and children um there are woman combatants and there are child combatants in fact Hamas has made a almost a a science of using children as as suicide bombers over the last 20 years so this idea that women and children are somehow exempt because they're you know they've got some sort of naivety and the whole process is not there's plenty of videos um out there of children in Unrah that's the the refugee organization created by the united nations from palestinians uh Unrah schools where they're dressed up as Hamas terrorists uh you know subjugating and israeli um you know it's treated like a dog on the ground or got guns to the heads or being stomped on there's plenty of videos of of school aged children being indoctrinated under the auspices of the united nations and can that's another thing and i know we're jumping around a bit but that's a really important topic so there's this whole issue at the moment around Unrah and and what's going on there in this discovery that um and at the moment they're only saying 12 they're talking about 12 when we're employing since more than that since it's more like 1200 exactly so so one was about 30 000 people of which about 90 percent are palestinians there's there's only a very small number of those people who aren't actually the rest are probably foreign foreign nationals from you know you're used to the UN yeah now what's important to understand and the idea that this has only just emerged and it's only something that's only happened and it's just a very very small problem that's rubbish isn't it they've been organizations for the last 15 years in fact an organization i belong to the israeli institute of new zealand along with david kuhman um we've been bringing this information to the new zealand government's attention for several years we we had a meeting with the ministry of foreign affairs and trade about four years ago where we outlined to them the fact that Unrah employees have produced schoolbooks which teach kids to hate Jews and violence is an honorable pursuit that have been that have been giving money to Hamas for the purchasing of property for the building it's worse than that though it is it's not just perpetrating violence it's teaching them the Shahid martyrdom is is an admirable goal for a child to aspire to absolutely so this idea that all we've got to do is just get rid of bad apples and reform under his complete nonsense it is rotten camp to the core it is rotten to the core it needs to be disbanded and if there's to be an agency of that kind it needs to be something completely different and in my view it shouldn't be run by the u.m because it's proved itself completely inept and incapable of doing that i i mean i've been looking um following um you know u.n watch for yeah probably 15 years where they've been raising these issues i understand it's more than 20 years that they've been raising these issues of uh of unrah's inappropriate funding of yeah terrorist ideology well those tunnels the the 500 uh almost 500 miles of tunnels that they're so far found in Gaza didn't make themselves they came from somewhere um but but it's it's just horrendous and it's and and this idea that uh as i said before this idea that it's just uh you know a few bad apples and it could be resolved is it's nonsense and New Zealand and every other nation that funds this organization need to cut funding completely and look for something completely new to to to produce that by the way unrah itself's interesting because unrah was created in the wake of the so-called refugee crisis of 1948 um when when the two Palestinian states or territories were created there there is another agency that handles refugee causes around the world it's the office of the united nations um human rights commissioner and it's so so unrah looks after Palestinian refugees and the uh office of the um uh refugee the other officer looks after every other refugee in the world now the interesting thing about um the uh unrah is it's got a very specific definition of of what what what is a refugee that's different to anywhere else on the planet and by that definition the 800 000 people who were originally refugees in 1948 have exploded out to five million so they now count there as being five million refugees 70 years on which is a complete nonsense that counts people that have hang on a second people that have moved to canada new zealand australia the united states moved on with their lives had kids they're still counted as refugees by that agency but but hang on a minute israel's charged with committing genocide i know where you're going but yeah the population of palestinians has increased what's that that's about 500 isn't it but yeah fivefold um it's a nonsense so and but even if that weren't the case just the international definition of genocide is clear and and there are a number of different moving parts to to what constitutes genocide one of them scale one of the big ones is scale the other one's intent um and the scale would have to be if you want to look for scale there've been conflicts in yemen um and and various other locations around the world over the last 20 years where you've seen millions of people slaughtered rwanda yeah those are scale that's scale the the 20 000 that we're talking who are who are most likely mostly combatants is not scale and the intent israel has been clear on its intent it's intent is to remove the mass from existence for many form of power that is not genocide it's gone out of its way to protect the the civilian citizens of that country sometimes under duress because those citizens don't always want to be protected um but israel has done everything it can it's done absolutely the opposite cam of of what the the um international definition of genocide tells us a genocidal nation would do if that was actually its intent yeah i found it interesting that these claims of genocide started almost immediately uh once israel pushed back yeah uh defending the country from an invasion yeah and i thought it rather strange if you were a genocidal country run by genocide heirs that um telling a civilian population that you're about to um is invade a particular city or an area and perhaps you'd like might like to move south would have been contrary to the goals of being um genocidal and telling them by uh dropping millions of flyers to tell them it's happening to ring every phone number of every cell phone number that they can give that that they have available to them from israel to actually ring them and speak to them in arabic and tell them the attacks coming um and and so various different other ways no army in the world does that no other army in the world goes to those sorts of measures to try and protect the people of the uh the nation where it's attacking in fact they created a corridor uh uh of tanks uh to facilitate the movement of those civilians yeah because humas were trying to kill them while they were shooting sure humas was shooting them if they if they tried to move south so so the israelis were doing their best to protect them from that it's yeah the use of language in this conflict is is stunning the the difference between the reality of what's happening on the ground and the language which has been used by the media and by the protest movement the disconnect between those two things is like i have never seen uh anything like it for i suspect if i went back to to the period during world war two when this was starting to happen to the jews then we'd probably talking about something that's on a similar scale to that the difference this time being that the the jews are in a position to actually do something about it they're not being uh uh attacked by an enemy who's completely overrun them well come back to the genocide in a minute because i want to touch on that the you know icj uh preliminary uh borders etc but i just wanted to focus on the population the palestinian population uh and and the key date that everybody talks about which is of course 1948 when israel declared independence formed the state of israel the palestinians call this nakba they don't uh that you know i think it translates to the tragedy or something like that yeah or the travesty or something the trauma or something the trauma yeah trauma and they say that that's the point at which they were dispossessed of something that they already owned that's not true though is it in 1948 there was no country of palestine well this is the funny thing that was controlled by um by arab palestinians yes so it's interesting because the the the um the narrative again from the previous movement is that that as you say that the israelis overran an existing nation and took the land and that you know that they that they should be forced to give it back and that's based on the idea that there was previously a palestinian state can there has never been a palestinian state in history and don't believe me go and have a look online do a search on great kings of palestine or great events in palestinian history you won't find anything you won't find anything because it doesn't exist the the land i mean i won't bore you going too far back except to say that the the israeli connection to that land goes back at least 3000 years and possibly longer and and uh sorry the jewish and jews were part of that country were were occupants of that country through a succession of conquerors right up in large numbers right up until about the sixth century ad and what changed was the with the muslim the success of muslim invasions and the the invasion of jerusalem as well as other parts of the middle east um by by about uh sort of 680 690 ad uh the muslims were really putting the heat on the jews and there was a mass exodus of them off to other parts of the world to europe and and to other parts of the middle east but they continued to have a connection there's an unbroken connection of jews to that land right up until 1948 now there were other people living there there were other arabes um and people we call palestinians today are ethnically most likely to be of jordanian descent or what we now call jordanian jordan didn't exist back then either so 1948 though it was a british protectorate protectorate yeah and palestine and how did it become a british protectorate and at what stage did it become a british protectorate yeah so between um between the 17th century uh sorry the 16th century and the beginning of the 20th century it was part of the ottoman empire which was a turkish state of turkey correct yep and uh obviously turkey was one of the um the powers that britain defeated at the end world war one and uh that was essentially the end of their hold on the middle east and that was taken control of by the french and the british and the uh the the british went about basically creating what they hoped would be democratic states in the middle east so they created the state of iraq um they created the state of uh they created lebanon they created syria uh egypt was obviously already there and they created jordan so they created the hashamite kingdom of jordan so we although that's a kingdom in other words it has a king um that that royal family was only created in 1947 in fact that was created and that was intended to be a palestinian state because the majority of the people who lived there were what we now call palestinians it was actually um originally called trans jordan wasn't it because it was both sides of the jordan river the west bank and the other side yep now the land that's now occupied by by the jews israel uh that was the remainder of what had originally been a proposal to to create a much larger state in fact the talk of that started in 1917 under the auspices of a guy called um belfort and uh belfort the belfort declaration was essentially the founding document upon which britain decided that it would go it would do what it could to actually establish a a a a jewish state in the middle east um but but over the following 30 years it was horse trading between the britain the um and the the arab's mostly around trade trade links and trade routes etc and they continually reduced that down to what was what was finally a very very small sliver of land and in 1948 probably driven by guilt of what had happened to the jews during the holocaust the relatively newly formed united nations voted on petitioning that the brits walked away from it they didn't want they didn't want a bar of that so they voted against the petition and then left and that newly uh created state was was um created in june 1948 um the following day oh and i should i shouldn't mention too when that happened uh in the weeks leading up to that because obviously the the the uh the jews were aware that this was all taking place at the u.m the jews put a call out to the um to the arabs that lived in israel at the time and said stay here and work with us and we will build a new country and some did and some did well the two million that are there now they are mainly the descendants of the people that decided to stay so so they became citizens of israel like any other citizen and have full rights such like any other israeli does the ones that the remaining states in the middle east um put the call out to those that live there and said no don't stay um basically escape to the leave escape to the borders because we're going to move it and we're going to clean out the jews and then you can go back and for those who left and went to syria and lebanon and and jordan and egypt what happened to them well they were treated terribly so so that's the other it's still in camps aren't they they are so there are there are palestinian refugees in in all of those countries as well as on the borders of israel but you don't hear about those others because that's not that that doesn't fit the narrative around but you know the terrible colonial uh israeli aggressors so there are palestinian refugees in all sorts of places but the ones that we we hear about today are the ones that went to both sides of israel to gaza the gaza strip we talked about before and to to the west bank which is bordered by um jordan on one side and israel on the other now here's what's interesting is the gaza strip was actually annexed by egypt uh up until 1967 so egypt actually controlled the gaza and palestinians for a long period of time after the war well it was part of part of egypt wasn't it that the gaza strip and the syni and then um in uh in uh 1966 yeah and here's the thing cam the egyptians found it unmanageable and they pulled out they don't want a bar of it and since then they've built a a massive great wall um which you never hear about in media because it doesn't fit the narrative um and and you know because in my view the best solution to the problem would be basically to let egypt annex it again and take it into egypt and make it part of egyptian territory but that will never happen egyptians so so in 1948 was the creation of the state of israel yeah right between 1917 and 1948 it was a british protectorate correct uh france obviously uh had a had a bit of to say in syria and uh lebanon yep uh for that period of time prior to 1917 uh it was uh part of the ottoman empire correct and from about 1566 if uh if my history serves me right uh that that area was controlled by the ottoman empire absolutely correct and before that uh a series a series of empires including the the uh seljuks uh and uh egyptian various different egyptian military uh dictatorships for several hundred years before that as well 10 in total 10 in total between about 632 in 1917 or 10 different uh yeah caliphates in charge of that territory all islamic yeah so none of none of which had a base in in uh the territory that we we now refer to as palestine they were all both else we are somewhere in egypt somewhere and of course the name palestine comes from the romans was a latinization of philistines correct so and biblically the philistines lived in gaza they did they lived in tyre and which is which is and and also dan and gaza and what's interesting about the philistines there is no absolutely no ethnic link between the philistines who disappeared from history and and the people we now refer to as the palestinians who we know where they've come from i've come from other parts of them at least so so they are you know it's one of the equations i could ask is what does that mean there's no palestinians well you of course there's palestinians the same way that New Zealanders and australians are our people that didn't exist three well it's like just like saying you know such thing is as you know cappadochians when in fact there were turks right because the ottoman empire encompassed all of that area and they all become turks it's it's it's it's okay to refer to them as palestinians isn't either wrong with that no but don't confuse that with the historical people that lived in that territory because they're not the same people they're completely different people so this idea that there's a link between them to somehow form this this imaginary um tie to the land that doesn't exist is historically an okay so that's given a little bit of history and everything so now we get to the main charge that is held at israel that they're committing genocide and we've just seen south africa take a case to the icj the international court of justice uh accusing israel of genocide but they didn't find that in there in their finding that ironically they announced the day before national holocaust remembrance day yeah international remembrance day um kind of rude of them to do that but anyway they did the only orders they made though in that and and it hasn't been reported in the media they made no orders of israel they said you've got to be careful and the israeli said thank you very much we will be careful but they only the only order they made was for hamas to release the hostages correct there's there's a slightly different slant on the orders so the orders were more in the nature of sards can somebody if they're still bashing their wife in that in that you know there's no possible answer to that because if you're not uh you know what do you say so basically they gave five orders which which had an influence that something bad was going on and israel should stop doing it but without any evidence that there was anything in israel basically came back as you say and said well we're happy to comply with those because we're not doing them um there was also an inference that there will be a subsequent and it's worth pointing out that the lowest threshold for proving a genocide was at this early stage because there is no evidence South africans didn't actually produce any evidence they produced headlines and quotes made by people that didn't actually produce any evidence of genocide there will be probably a more substantive report that will get two or three or four years time which will be completely meaningless but you absolutely correct cam and respect of what came out of that tribunal's finding a few weeks ago there was no finding of genocide now that's in contrast when you go online now social media you'll see people talking about how even the icj cj has found uh that israel is committing genocide it's not true people like people like martin bradbury and john linto and all the you know screaming skulls out there that um that hate israel and jews they're the ones who are all saying that but the only order that was given by the icj was for hamas to hand over the to the hostages absolutely correct and it was interesting because they almost gave those and this probably gives even more credence to it because when you watch that the the deliverance of that it was done through gritted teeth which means that that that tribunal would have bought if it could possibly have found anything that it could have i would have they would have uh because they certainly weren't partisan toward israel quite the opposite um but they they were unable to find any evidence of genocide why because there is a genocide going on therefore all the reasons that i explained before um so that was that was a kangaroo court it was jacked up by by that claim from south africa all the way it was given to south africa by the way it was interesting germany inserted itself as a party to those proceedings and and its reason for that and i thought it was actually pretty gutsy of germany to do it was because if any nation understood genocide it would be them well they wrote the manual didn't they they did and they they inserted themselves and on the side of israel and said well we want to be heard because this isn't genocide we'll tell you what genocide looks like so and that's given no weight yeah so did south africa do this out of the out of the um the great benevolence and they're concerned for the palestinian people there's some ulterior motive there yeah when it first happened the claim was that they were doing it because they understood apartheid and you know that they would all that's nonsense what we've learned since then is that the whole thing was funded by by run um who uh apparently had paid uh off uh a and c debt um so so this is this is basically a an incident of of one hand scratching the other so this was purely this was another ploy by Iran and we haven't talked about Iran yet this was another ploy by Iran to try and influence public opinion and world opinion on what's going on in Israel by using proxy so in this case how much were the how much was this debt is it you know like 50 000 or something i think oh no no we'd be i don't know what it is but we talk well i do i took the liberty of looking it up right it's 120 million rand so there you go so 30 pieces of silver yeah so um and also um that that's a debt that the a and c had and they were about to be um have a judgment lodged against them which means that the a and c would have ceased to exist as a political party and that would have been the end of the government in south africa and a few days after the 7th of october the minister of foreign affairs visited of south africa visited iran and then the government of south africa expressed solidarity with the palestinians to to you know 100 in a public display broadcast on television and then magically 120 million rand drops into the a and c's accounts and they've managed to pay off their debt but i'm told that the legal team that was assembled for this genocide case in the icj would have cost not less than 200 million to prepare and argue for the final trial and it'll be about 1.5 million billion rand for the whole thing yeah all right so this is iran uh meddling in world affairs to promulgate their uh terrorist beliefs actually and that's not new cam so iran's a known um majority contributor to to the mass in gaza has been for for a very long time but also funds another terrorist organization lebanon called hezbollah uh which is involved in similar sorts of activities in fact they've been at the same time this has been going on they've been firing missiles into northern israel exactly they'll be next um but also various other organizations around the world iran is is a massive player in funding terrorist activities around the world and this was just another part of that process now it's interesting because well you know two of us talked about this it sounds like conspiratorial old men go and check it out don't don't take my word for it don't take your word for it go and actually check out the various headlines even you know terms that are not uh particularly well favored toward israel like the new york times and the guardian in the uk um go and read the stuff in those publications because as much as they might be gritting their teeth when they say that they've all written about it so so it's it's not hard to understand follow the money the old saying follow the money it's not hard to understand where the stuff's coming from and why iran's made no secret over the last 20 or 30 years of its determination to eliminate the jewish state and this is just another part of that process i see in the news uh on wednesday morning um that israel is discovered in the tunnels vast quantities of cash uh and uh proof that iran has been funding to the tune of tens of millions of dollars uh us and they've discovered this in the tunnel so the evidence is building now of of iran's malign influence in these conflict areas that if they hadn't funded amas and hezbollah and these other organizations that maybe we would actually have peace in the region yeah i don't know whether we'd have peace but we would have the whole thing would have would have played out differently uh because they wouldn't have had the resource amas and hezbollah wouldn't have had the resources um that they've had um and so so the result of the whole thing would have been different but it's it's it's a unique it's a unique period of history when you've got a terrorist organization running essentially a nation because that's what gaza is uh and world opinion um uh coming down heavily certainly for the first part of this conflict in favor of that terrorist organization i've never seen anything like it the one good thing about it is that you would have noticed this too over the last few months as more information has come out and as that information is tend to support the israeli position that the mood is slowly too slowly for my liking but the mood is changing the mood of the world is changing and you're not even seeing the same degree of activity from the protest groups that you were seeing in that first couple of months they've got a lot more quiet and you're hearing a lot more from nation states that are actually finding the outside of the other and supporting israel um so that's heartening but but it should have happened four months ago what i can't get over is the absolute denial of the atrocity that occurred on october the seventh now i was invited to to a briefing uh to see uh the the footage that was actually from hamas cameras of what went on it's the most harrowing 40 minutes i've ever seen and and you know being a student of war and uh understanding these things and and having you know relatives that served in gillipally and uh and in vietnam uh you know nothing could prepare me for those sights and sounds that i that i witnessed people asked me why did i watch that and um i gave the same answer that uh general eisenhower gave at the end of world war two when he was inspecting the death camps and uh he said get the media in here get the press in here record everything photograph it video it because and this is a quote some bastard somewhere down the track is going to deny this ever happened and that's why i i watched that and it was appalling yeah um you know people say that you know the beheading of babies didn't happen well no they in the videos that i saw that's exactly what happened yeah yeah and i i couldn't agree with you more um and it took me just to just put in perspective i'm a fairly tough sort of a guy right i could not speak for hours after that it was so shocking even um you know i mentioned before the new york times and they they're certainly not partial to what israel uh they did they did an investigation which i i honestly believe when they started they thought was going to find the opposite they were going to find that it had been exaggerated by the idea and they came out with an absolutely stunning indictment of a mass the sexual crimes that they'd committed the repeated rates what had happened during that time which and you know this is the new york times we're talking which moved the dial on that quite substantially about two months ago yeah and we'll see more of that i think is the history of this thing slowly plays out and we see more and more of what actually took place this will be albeit not on the same scale but this will be every bit as horrific as as some of the detail of what took place during the holocaust which which raises an interesting question cam because it is that this stuff keeps happening to the juice this stuff keeps happening and this is not new the holocaust wasn't the first time this stuff's been going on no there's been pogroms and all sorts ethnic cleansing yeah and it raises a question in my article actually like when i get to the end of the article i say why does this happen what's it because it's anti semitism where does it come from and for me and this is getting into every fairy stuff for some people you you simply can't justify this on rational grounds you can't you cannot find a logical cause for this you cannot argue logically why people would ignore the reality and the facts and hate the israelis and the jews and the way that they do right around the western world you have to look at it and say there is something else at play here that's not normal because otherwise why do people act this way that would jews in a way that they don't would any other nation in history and that for me and i suspect for you is one of the big reasons i'm so motivated to do what i can yeah i'm motivated by a number of reasons one is my core religious beliefs same yeah the second thing is is that i believe that the mainstream media are propagating lies about israel and lies about the conflict and lies about the integrity of the government of gaza in the form of amas and i see it as a responsibility to be the other side of the narrative to be the balance because the balance is missing in our new zealand media and indeed in worldwide media on these issues it's a terrible blindness that the media and western nations have when it comes to dealing with israel couldn't agree and so i see it as my responsibility to be the balance and not to get tied up in emotional arguments and and silly against this deal like we have today in a nice rational conversation dealing with facts verifiable facts independently verified facts that these things happened that these this is why this is happening and this is what the history is and this is the history of the area and all of those sorts of things because if you fail to understand history then you fail then you are doomed to repeat the errors of that history totally and so that's why i subjected myself to watching that video that's why i've been vocal in other media platforms but i wanted to take the heat out of this debate despite multiple calls you know for months on end for me to cover this on the show i wanted to do it in a calm and rational manner in keeping with you know my new my new persona so to speak nice cam right and so ashley i thank you for coming on the show today to rationally explain that without getting into any heated arguments or discussions that we're just dealing with facts and i and i implore people to go to your website it's easy to find do a search for ashleychurch.com and search for israel and hamas the facts you'll find a very good summation with huge numbers of links to this conflict and hopefully people will understand it a little bit better and and look on the on the news that they're getting from the mainstream media is as suspicious as to its origins thanks mate always enjoy our time and i look forward to our next chat on whatever topic it might be well you're welcome on the crunch at any time ashley thank you for coming thank you talk soon i really recommend you seek out ashley's article it is very very informative search for ashleychurch.com israel and hamas and you'll find it easily it's a difficult topic to discuss dispassionately but i reckon we gave it a good go let me know your thoughts on this topic good or bad by emailing inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057 thank you for tuning into rcr reality check radio if you like what you're listening to just like what you're listening to either way we want to hear from you get in touch with us now you can text us with your message to 2057 that's 2057 or email us at inbox at realitycheck.radio we would love to hear from you to connect with us 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