IT IS, of course, only appropriate that the Government should mark the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. Both Prime Minister Christopher Luxton and Judith Collins, who is leading the Government's response to the terrorist attack on the Christchurch mosques, are in Christchurch today. They have been joined in the city by Rashad Hussain. He is the US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom.

But Rashad Hussain is also the representative of a U.S. administration that has enabled and allowed Israel to commit genocide in Gaza. Almost all of Gaza is Muslim, with Arab Christians making up a tiny 0.2 percent of the population or approximately 2,000 people. 

While Hussain (who is also Muslim) might have expressed his sincere sympathies for the fifty-one Muslim worshippers who lost their lives on that tragic day five years ago, his sympathy has not extended to the over 30,000 people who have been slaughtered by the Israeli military in Gaza.

Hussain is on record as having condemned the 'terrorist attacks' on 7 October as 'barbaric' and 'inhumane' but there has no similar condemnation for Israel's barbaric and inhumane attack on Palestinians living in Gaza. Hussain has remained silent.

He told the local media that he was inspired by the local Christchurch Muslim community and the 'understanding and love' it had displayed in the face of the 'violence and unspeakable hatred, and tragedy' that visited them five years ago.

But, not surprisingly, our conservative media has chosen not to ask Hussain about 'the 'violence and unspeakable hatred, and tragedy' being played out in Gaza in 2024.

And while Christopher Luxton might have been ready to speak about an atrocity committed in Christchurch some five years ago, he continues to have little to say about the atrocities being committed by the Israeli military in Gaza today. Even the deliberate starving of Palestinians trapped in Rafah has not compelled Luxton to comment.