Fighting Monsters.

A Friend In Deed: Surrounded by allies and friends on the UN Human Rights Council, Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, not only felt free to accuse Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, but also to claim that they were profiting hugely from their victims’ destruction. She did not, however, feel under any obligation to respond to the angry challenges of Israel’s defenders. 

IT WAS HER LITTLE SMILE that said it all. UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, appearing before the UN Human Rights Council on 3 July 2025, had not only accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, but also of profiting hugely from their destruction.

Her report to the Council was warmly welcomed by the League of Arab States, Venezuela, Palestine, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Qatar. But, when Hillel Neuer from the United Nations Watch organisation demanded to know why, in her entire report, there wasn’t a single mention of the October 7 massacre, Hamas, Hezbollah, or that leading sponsor of terrorism across the Middle East, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ms Albanese had nothing to say.

Surrounded by allies and friends, the UN Special Rapporteur was under no compulsion to answer Neuer’s questions. Hence her brief, but highly communicative, little smile.

Israel’s fury at the rest of the world’s failure to call its enemies to account is easily understood. Less easily forgiven is the Israeli state’s apparent loss of interest in trying to appraise the rest of humanity of its enemies’ ultimate purpose.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his allies clearly prefer to concentrate all their nation’s resources upon securing the complete destruction of Hamas and its allies. Very early in the Israel-Hamas War a decision was made that civilian casualties would no longer be permitted to impede Israel’s extirpation of Palestinian terrorism.

Previous forays into Gaza had been restrained by Israel’s sensitivity to global opinion. It understood that the civilian population of Gaza had become Hamas’s human ammunition against “The Zionist Enemy”. The more casualties inflicted by the Israeli Defence Force, the less international support there would be for the Israeli state. Hamas knew this. Indeed, Hamas was counting on it. The Israelis might slap its face, but they were not prepared to endure the consequences of cutting off its head.

The horrific atrocities and the unprecedented death toll – 1,200 people – of the October 7 2023 pogrom put an end to Israeli restraint.

On paper, Israel’s winning move was to do nothing. It should have refrained from firing a single bullet into Gaza, and from dropping a single bomb. Borrowing from Hamas’s own strategy, Israel should, instead, have taken on the role of victim, and used the massacre as a grisly illustration of the true nature of Palestinianism.

On paper.

But October 7 2023 did not unfold on paper. Rather than allowing the world to discern the true nature of Hamas, Israel opted, instead, to avenge its dead and abducted citizens by destroying the terrorist organisation completely – regardless of the civilian cost.

The warning of the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche: “Have a care when fighting monsters, lest ye become a monster yourself”, went unheeded by Netanyahu and his bloodthirsty Zionist allies. Month by month, the breadth of their vision narrowed, until they could no longer perceive how decisively world opinion was being turned against Israel by a Hamas enemy whose supply of human ammunition – claims of Israeli genocide notwithstanding – showed every sign of being inexhaustible.

As Gaza was steadily transformed into an trackless waste of rubble, and the body-count climbed inexorably towards 60,000, it became increasingly plausible for the likes of Francesca Albanese to prosecute their charges of genocide. Certainly, the Muslim world raised no objections to such claims.

Israel was now in the terrifying predicament of Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “I am in blood Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” Seized by that grim realisation, Israel plunged on. Soon its bullets and bombs were pummelling Lebanon – and then Iran.

Darkness now gathers around Israel as, methodically, Gaza is being flattened out. In the desolation that used to be Rafah, the IDF is preparing to build a “Humanitarian City” of tents for 600,000, rising to two million, Palestinians. Around these tents the Israelis propose to string coil-after-coil of razor-wire. Doubtless, there will be searchlights and watchtowers. Certainly, once the Palestinians are driven into this terrible encampment, they will not be suffered to leave.

Imagine the terror of the Gazans, as they shuffle under the tutelage of Israeli firepower towards the gates of this hellish place. We can only pray that, when they lift their eyes, they do not read the words: “Arbeit Macht Frei”.

The Gates of Auschwitz.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 18 July 2025.

The Right Move Against Hamas Was Not To Make One.

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” - Sun Tzu (544 ─ 496BC)

ISRAEL’S LEGAL RIGHT to strike back at Hamas is unchallengeable. No nation, having suffered the sort of horrific attack unleashed upon Israel by Hamas terrorists on 7 October 2023, is ever going to be convicted in an international court of law for defending itself. It is the nature of Israel’s retaliation that is challengeable. In war, doing precisely what your enemy expects you to do is never a good idea. By responding to the 7 October attack in precisely the way Hamas anticipated, Israel has allowed the terrorists’ long-planned (and far more important) propaganda offensive to build and strengthen the pro-Palestinian Cause.

That Benjamin Netanyahu was Israel’s Prime Minister on 7 October was of enormous importance to the success of Hamas’ plans. With the survival of the Likud Party-led Israeli Government in the hands of its much smaller coalition partners – all of them murderously Zionistic – there was no way Netanyahu could have responded to Hamas with anything other than overwhelming military force. The only strategy acceptable to Netanyahu and his allies was the one which called for the utter annihilation of Hamas. If Israel had opted to do something else, then Hamas would have been bitterly disappointed – and thoroughly alarmed.

The massive propaganda effort which sprang into action the moment the Gaza fence came down and Israeli citizens began to die, depended absolutely on the screens of the world fast filling up with gruesome images of Palestinians (their children especially) being killed and maimed by Israeli shells, bombs and missiles. These would be the cue for Palestinian apologists all across the West to start talking about “disproportionate responses”, or, more simply, “genocide”.

Many of these defenders of “Palestine” would be well aware that the charge of disproportionality, when used in such a context, does not mean that one side, having killed roughly as many people as the other, is legally obliged to cease and desist. What must be proportionate, under international law, is the nation state’s response to the initial attack. By this measure, Israel’s response to the horrors of 7 October was unquestionably proportionate.

Those who challenge the assertion, should ask themselves how the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia would respond if thousands of their citizens were raped, tortured, shot, stabbed, and burned alive by enemy forces located within the operational reach of their armed forces. Can there be any doubt that their armies, navies and air forces would have been unleashed upon these enemy forces?

And, if those same enemies attempted to avoid the just retribution that was heading their way by situating their military personnel and resources in or below civilian structures, and by using the bodies of their own citizens as human shields (a war crime, by the way) can there be any doubt that the British, Canadian and Australian forces would not have allowed themselves a moment's hesitation before sending their ordnance to blow every living thing within its range to Kingdom Come?

As it says in the Bible: “He who sows the wind, shall reap the whirlwind.”

But the “useful idiots” who fling a Keffiyeh around their shoulders and recite the annihilationist Palestinian mantra: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”; are not influenced in the slightest by such counterfactuals. They are living proof of the saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; and further, that a little historical knowledge can lead otherwise intelligent and progressive Members of Parliament into some very dark places.

Chloe Swarbrick is a walking testimonial to the extraordinary effectiveness of Palestinian propaganda. On the AM Show of Monday, 20 November 2023, she made reference to the “Nakba” – the catastrophic evacuation of Palestinian cities, towns, villages and farms that accompanied the war between the newborn Israeli state and the armies of the Arab League. (Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, “assisted” by sundry Palestinian militia.) To hear Chloe tell the story, 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes by evil Zionists hellbent on seizing their land and property. The Nakba was ethnic cleansing on a massive and brutal scale.

Except, it wasn’t.

What happened in 1948 was the culmination of nearly thirty years of unrelenting Palestinian resistance to Jewish settlement in Mandatory Palestine. Arabs had been bearing arms against the Jews, and the Jews had been defending themselves, since at least the 1920s. In 1947, organisations representative of the Palestinian Arabs had rejected the United Nations partition plan (which the Jews, albeit reluctantly, had accepted). By 1948, the Palestinian leadership were confident that their Arab brothers would rout the Jewish militias, and that “from the river to the sea” Palestine would be what the Nazis called Judenfrei – free of Jews.

A great many of the Palestinians who evacuated their homes and farms in 1948 did so at the urging of the Palestinian Arab leadership. Let the armies of the Arab League do their work, these leaders advised, claiming that their family’s return would only be a matter of days or weeks. Few of those who decamped on the basis of this advice had the slightest concern about the genocidal catastrophe which, for the second time in less than a decade, was about to overtake the Jewish people.

Chloe Swarbrick should know this, but since her knowledge of the Arab-Israeli conflict appears to have been gleaned from the tendentious accounts of Palestinian nationalists, Islamic fanatics and that great throng of usefully idiotic allies who retail “Free Palestine!” propaganda in the West’s universities and news media, the chances are depressingly high that she does not.

And this is the strategic problem confronting Israel. That the effectiveness of the disinformation from which Palestinian nationalism and religious fanaticism continue to draw their strength depends, almost entirely, on Israel’s willingness to confirm its emotional truth by blowing Palestinians and their defenceless communities to Kingdom Come.

The only winning move for Israel, when subjected to the atrocities of 7 October, was, paradoxically, not to make one. To do nothing. This necessitates imagining an Israel led by a Prime Minister of enormous courage and wisdom – enough to face her people with solemn determination and tell them that, this time, unlike all the other times, the Israeli people will not take the bloody bait laid before them by the jackals of Hamas and their Iranian backers. This time, not a single bullet will fly, not a single bomb will drop. This time the Palestinians of Gaza will be left in peace to contemplate the true nature of the organisation that governs their little strip of hell.

One can only imagine the dismay of Hamas, and all the “Hamas adjacent” politicians, journalists and students who have spent the past six weeks waving Palestinian flags, tearing down the posters of Hamas’ hostages, and telling us what a genocidal, colonialist, monstrosity Israel is, and has always been. Why? Because who, and what, would the world be looking at if there were no babies’ bodies to evoke our horror and disgust? Who would be caught in the media spotlight and forced to answer for their atrocities? Their war crimes? Their unrelenting antisemitism?

Let me give you a hint: it wouldn’t be Israel.

This essay is exclusive to Bowalley Road.

Between The Motion, And The Act, Falls The Shadow.

The Politics Of Gesture: It must be exhilarating to stand shoulder to shoulder with your Green Party comrades on the streets of a New Zealand city, while all around you angry young men and women chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” So easy to get carried away beneath a forest of red, green, black and white Palestinian flags, your ears ringing with righteous indignation. Why not promise to table a motion seeking Palestinian statehood? What else could you do?

THE GREENS have failed to win parliamentary support for a motion supporting Palestinian statehood. Sponsored by the Greens’ foreign affairs spokesperson, Golriz Ghahraman, the motion reaffirmed “the right of Palestine to self-determination and statehood”, and called upon the government of New Zealand to “recognise the State of Palestine among our community of nations”. Both National and Act were quick to signal their opposition to recognising Palestine as a sovereign state. The right-wing parties’ objections abruptly ended Ghahraman’s initiative. Without securing the unanimous permission of the whole House, her motion could not even be introduced – let alone debated.

The Right’s veto was probably welcomed by the Labour Government. Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta hardly needs to be warned by her diplomatic staff at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade that the merest suggestion of New Zealand recognising Palestinian statehood would immediately pitch this country’s relationship with Israel into crisis.

Nor would such recognition be unanimously received by New Zealanders as either justified or wise. Sympathy for the Palestinian civilians caught up in the military exchanges between Hamas and the Israeli Defence Force may be universal, but it should not be construed as support for this country recognising Palestine as a sovereign state. Too many Kiwis have too many questions about what that would amount to in the only place that matters – on the ground – to simply wave Ghahraman’s proposition through the checkpoint of political scrutiny.

Not when so many people on Twitter have read Green MP Ricardo Menendez March’s tweet declaring “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” Not when so many television news viewers have seen Ghahraman, herself, protesting against “Israeli aggression” under placards and banners proclaiming exactly the same sentiments.

Surely, the Greens are aware of how Israelis interpret this Palestinian slogan? That if Palestine occupies all of the territory between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, then the State of Israel must have ceased to exist.

Ghahraman cannot be so naïve as to believe that the so-called “Two State Solution” is about Israel and Palestine occupying the same territory! Not when Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank of the Jordan River lies at the heart of the conflict. No, to assert that the sovereign state of Palestine will extend “from the river to the sea”, is to declare one’s support for driving the Jews into it.

This is not, of course, what Ghahraman is saying. Announcing her intention of tabling her statehood motion on the Greens’ website, she states: “The path forward from the latest bout of violence must be lasting peace, supported by the international community. Statehood as part of a two state solution would uphold and celebrate the inherent rights and dignity of Palestinians.”

Well, it might, but an awful lot of things would have to happen first.

For example, Hamas (still designated as a terrorist organisation by the New Zealand government) would have to recognise the State of Israel’s right to exist. Also, the roughly 600,000 Israeli settlers currently living on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem would have to abandon their illegal settlements and return to Israel. The Palestinian Authority, which, fearful of a Hamas victory, recently cancelled the elections which threatened to deliver just that, would have to re-establish democracy on the West Bank and Gaza. (The people of Gaza have not been permitted to cast a vote since they were incautious enough to elect Hamas in 2006.) Similarly, Israeli voters would have to summon up the courage to elect someone other than Benjamin Netanyahu as their prime minister. (Instead of voting over and over and over and over again to make such a transfer of power impossible.) And, last of all, American politicians would have to collectively decide to tell the all-powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to find someone else to intimidate into backing the State of Israel – no matter what it does.

After making all those things happen, the Two State Solution will be a piece of cake!

Politics, politics, politics: it’s no more avoidable in Israel/Palestine than it is in New Zealand. The tragedy that is unfolding in Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank is not an accident, it is the culmination of a series of self-interested political moves undertaken by the most ruthless players on both sides of the conflict.

Netanyahu is fighting for his political life – and to stay out of jail. He is willing to do whatever it takes to win the support he needs to stay in office. If that means throwing red meat to the most extreme Zionist parties, then so be it. Raising the tensions between Jews and Arabs in the Holy City makes perfect sense if you’re desperate to prevent your political rivals from enlisting the support of Arab-Israeli parties in a government of national unity.

Likewise, if you are Hamas. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of the rage being stirred up by Netanyahu and his Zionist allies in East Jerusalem and around the Al Aksa Mosque? Why wouldn’t you demonstrate to the Palestinian people who the true defenders of the Motherland are? Especially in the wake of the Palestinian Authority, a body mired in corruption, calling off the scheduled elections. Get those rockets in the air. Bring down the wrath of Israel’s jets. Watch the body-count grow and grow – as it always does.

Suits Netanyahu. Suits Hamas. A government of national unity made up of Jews and Arabs, ready to at least think about peace, serves the interests of neither.

It must be exhilarating to stand shoulder to shoulder with your Green Party comrades on the streets of a New Zealand city, while all around you angry young men and women chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” So easy to get carried away beneath a forest of red, green, black and white Palestinian flags, your ears ringing with righteous indignation. Why not promise to table a motion seeking Palestinian statehood? What else could you do?

Well, you could listen to a couple of anthems. The first is called Palestine’s Freedom Song, written and recorded by a pair of young Palestinian sisters brim-full of courage and determination. This is what they sing:

We own this home
We own this land
From the river to the sea
Our motherland
We’ll set it free
We’ve got our stones
And the olive tree

The second is called Hatikvah (The Hope) and it really is an anthem – the national anthem of the State of Israel. This is what the Israelis sing:

Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free nation in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

If Golriz Ghahraman, or anybody else, can think of a way to reconcile the irreconcilable aspirations expressed in these two anthems, then the world would love to hear it. But people of good will have been searching for a very long time – and nobody has found it yet.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 20 May 2021.

Pissing-Off The Israelis Is A High-Risk Strategy.

Dangerous Foes: For those readers of Bowalley Road who feel disposed to dismiss any prospect of an Israeli destabilisation of New Zealand politics, the example of the United Kingdom repays close attention. Ever since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party, the Israelis have sanctioned, funded and organised one of their most shameless interventions, ever, in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation.

NEW ZEALAND’S GOVERNMENT faces a difficult choice between doing the right thing and the expedient thing over Israel’s latest outrage. This country has a proud record of lending its voice to the United Nations’ condemnation of the Israeli state’s repeated violations of international norms in its treatment of the Palestinian people. In the current international climate, however, upholding that proud diplomatic record risks making New Zealand politicians targets for Israeli destabilisation.

The latest, and potentially one of the most dangerous, Israeli threats to the Palestinians has been issued by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. His proposal is, in essence, to annex the entire Jordan Valley to the Israeli state. Were he to be in a position, following the pending Israeli elections, to implement this promise, all hope of a “two state solution” peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority would evaporate completely.

For those readers of Bowalley Road who feel disposed to dismiss any prospect of Israeli destabilisation, the example of the United Kingdom repays close attention.

Ever since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party, the Israelis have sanctioned, funded and organised one of their most shameless interventions, ever, in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation.

Utilising every individual, group and institution responsive to Jerusalem’s guidance, the Israeli national security apparatus first redefined and then weaponised the concept of antisemitism, unleashing it upon Corbyn and his supporters with unprecedented political fury. Challenges to the foreign and domestic policies of the Israeli state – such as Corbyn has made for the past 30 years – are now routinely presented as incontrovertible proof of his antisemitic prejudice.

Such a self-serving redefinition of antisemitism would, almost certainly, have been laughed off the political stage had it not been for the extraordinary support it received from the mainstream British news media.

It is no accident that the two media organisations responsible for prosecuting Corbyn’s “antisemitism” most forcefully are the BBC and The Guardian. Had these two leaders of liberal opinion refused to buy into Jerusalem’s campaign, the attack would have had to be carried out by all the usual right-wing media suspects. That apparently “left-wing” journalists and columnists were willing to brand Corbyn an antisemite was crucial to the campaign’s impact.

So, how does the definition work? The proposition advanced is a very simple one.

The State of Israel represents the last, best hope of protecting the Jewish people from persecution and genocide. To suggest that the Jews can rely upon anybody but the State of Israel in this respect is to wilfully misread the lessons of history. To undermine in any way the strength and coherence of the Israeli state is, therefore, a hostile act. Those who do so represent a clear and present danger to the Jewish people’s sanctuary. Only those who seek to do the Jews harm could countenance such a policy. They are, ipso facto, antisemites.

That this simplistic formula actually works on well-educated and otherwise progressive individuals is explicable in no small measure by the identity of those who have, over the course of the last 70 years, made no secret of their wish to destroy the State of Israel. Journalists over 60 recall the Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and ask themselves what would have happened had the Israeli Defence Force not prevailed. Younger intellectuals remember the terrorist campaigns of the PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah, and ponder the ethics of “ proactive self-defence”.

“If you’re looking for a good reason to stand with the Jewish people,” say Israel’s defenders, “just take a look at who’s standing against them.”

The Israeli case is strengthened by the geopolitical considerations that have never ceased to drive the policies of both the United Kingdom and the United States – especially when it comes to oil. The repeated trashing of the Middle East by the UK and the USA, from the end of World War II to the present day, has, among many other effects, increased immeasurably the military and economic strength of Israel. All three states have a powerful vested interest in keeping the balance of power firmly tilted in Israel’s favour.

Such are the considerations that New Zealand’s diplomats must weigh before responding to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s incendiary promise. Our convalescing Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, will, therefore, be asking himself two vital questions.

Dare we remain silent in the face of a policy that can only lead to the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israeli-occupied territory?

And.

Will Jacinda thank me for adding the fearsome capabilities of the Israeli national security apparatus to a plate already piled high with troubles?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 13 September 2019.

When Monsters Fight: Benjamin Netanyahu Blames A Palestinian Cleric For The Holocaust.

A Monster Himself: Such is Benjamin Netanyahu's hatred of the Palestinian people that he is willing to absolve Adolf Hitler of responsibility for the Holocaust and shift it, instead, onto the shoulders of a Palestinian cleric, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini (1897-1974). This revisionist lie reveals the true extent of Zionism's moral collapse.

 

WRITING ABOUT ISRAEL is never easy. Always there is the shadow of the Shoah. The attempted genocide of the Jewish people by the Nazis interposes itself between the Israeli people and their critics. The Holocaust is a crime so vast in scope, so horrendous in execution, that the crimes of the Israeli state seem small and petty by comparison. Whatever Israel does risks being absorbed in, and absolved by, the Jewish people’s unique historical tragedy.

 

A cynic might even go so far as to suggest that the Shoah is Israel’s most precious possession. Those grainy black and white images, recorded by the liberators of the death camps at the end of World War II, are seared upon humanity’s collective memory. The mechanisation – no, the industrialisation – of mass murder marked a definitive break in the supposedly upward trajectory of civilisation. In Auschwitz and Treblinka humankind was presented with an abysmal mirror, into which most people did not care to look.

 

That the victims of the Holocaust were Jews contributed an inescapably religious dimension to the horror. God’s chosen people, reviled and persecuted across the centuries, had finally become the playthings of pure evil. Who dared object to the traumatised survivors being allowed to return to their ancient homeland? How could the West, who worshipped a crucified Jew, possibly say “No.” to the State of Israel? Hadn’t the Jews earned it?

 

The answer, of course, is “No. They had bought, borrowed and (in the end) stolen it from the people who had lived in the land the Romans called “Palestine” from the Second Century to the late Nineteenth Century, when Theodor Herzl and his Zionists began buying up Palestinian farms and businesses. The encroachment of these Jewish settlers, and their settlements, gathered pace through the early decades of the Twentieth Century, to the point where the Palestinians and their religious leaders rose in angry revolt. One of those leaders, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was to become an implacable enemy of the Zionist project.

 

Palestinian protests and uprisings against the unceasing encroachments of Israeli settlers and settlements continues to this very day. In its latest manifestation, the resistance takes the form of what amount to suicidal knife attacks on Israelis as they walk the streets of Old Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s belligerent Prime Minister, has demanded that these attacks be quelled – by any means necessary!

 

Few would have predicted, however, that in his determination to rouse the passions of his people, Netanyahu would have seized upon the single most important – and certainly the most sacred – talisman of the Israeli state: the Shoah.

 

So intense is the Israeli PM’s hatred of the Palestinians that, in a speech to the World Jewish Congress, he claimed that the responsibility for the mass murder of European Jewry lay not with Adolf Hitler and his Nazi co-conspirators, but with the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

 

Haj Amin al-Husseini meets with Adolf Hitler in Berlin, 28 November 1941.

 

“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time”, Netanyahu told the Congress, “he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here’. ‘So what should I do with them?’ he asked. He said. ‘Burn them’.”

 

Historians from all over the world, and many within Israel, responded to Netanyahu’s words with a mixture of fury and disbelief. The Nazi’s genocidal project was commenced long before al-Husseini met with Hitler on 28 November 1941. The infamous Wannsee Conference, held outside Berlin in January 1942, brought together for final approval plans and specifications demanded several months earlier, as the massive logistical implications of Hitler’s “final solution” to the Jewish Question became clear. The Mufti of Jerusalem was little more than a Nazi catspaw in the complex military and diplomatic equation that was the Middle East. For anyone to suggest that he, and, by some curious Zionist variant of the “blood libel”, the Palestinian people, were responsible for the Holocaust would be outrageous. But for the Prime Minister of Israel to make such a statement, in the midst of serious sectarian strife, is beyond outrageous – it is criminal.

 

It also marks an important, and quite possibly fatal, deterioration in the intellectual and moral condition of Zionism. That a Zionist leader is willing to publicly exonerate Adolf Hitler for the extermination of six million Jews, and place the blame, instead, upon a Palestinian cleric, indicates how abysmal are the depths into which the defenders of Israel have fallen.

 

The Nineteenth Century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, said: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

 

Have we not just seen the abyss swallow up the monster called Netanyahu?

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Saturday, 24 October 2015.