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.

With Friends Like These ...

He's On Our Side? When Australia’s very own Minister of Defence, Peter Dutton, is telling anyone who will listen that "a war over Taiwan cannot be discounted" and that Australia was "already under attack" from Chinese cyber-warriors, it is probably time to think again about who New Zealand's "friends" and "enemies" truly are.

“REMEMBER WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE.” Most often this is said in a reassuring way: a reminder that in tough times your friends will always be there for you. Sometimes, however, it is said as a warning, with the word ‘friends’ placed between inverted commas. It would seem New Zealand is rapidly moving into one of those times. With ‘friends’ like our so-called “Five Eyes Partners” New Zealand doesn’t really need enemies.

Consider the view of Major-General Adam Findlay, described as one of Australia’s top military commanders, who warned an audience of Australian Special Forces personnel in April 2020 that Beijing was already engaged in “grey zone” warfare against their country, and that they should proceed on the strong assumption that this will escalate into actual conflict at some point in the [near?] future.

Now, just in case you were thinking of dismissing these daunting observations as the rantings of a bellicose Aussie boofhead, it might pay to consider the comments of “influential public servant”, Michael Pezzullo, who recently warned Australians that “the drums of war are beating”. Seriously? Yes, seriously. When the person saying such things is the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, it would be unwise to ignore them. Especially when Australia’s very own Minister of Defence, Peter Dutton, is telling anyone who will listen that “a war over Taiwan cannot be discounted” and that Australia was “already under attack” from Chinese cyber-warriors.

Remember, these are our ‘friends’ – the people who accused our Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of sucking-up to the Chinese and betraying the Five Eyes ‘alliance’.

Frankly, Beijing scares me a whole lot less than these loud-mouthed, Aussie sabre-rattlers! Because, behind all the Washington-sanctioned bombast, one detects the reckless militaristic mindset that allows wars to happen by accident. Because people very like these war-hawks delivered very similar diatribes in London, Paris and St Petersburg; Berlin and Vienna; in the early months of 1914. (And that ended well!)

Thank God our own political, diplomatic and military leadership show no signs of the anti-Beijing distemper currently afflicting Canberra. It is reassuring to know that New Zealand’s ability to discern its own national interest is not degraded by this mania for a new cold war.

Before we pat ourselves too enthusiastically on the back, however, we should turn our eyes from our leaders and focus, instead, on the political campaign to undermine this country’s relationship with China by asking Parliament to condemn Beijing’s alleged “genocide” of the Uighurs of Xinjiang.

Genocide is one of those words that should be used with extreme care. Attempts to define it are fraught with difficulty. Tragically, it is much easier to recognise its effects. When we gaze in horror at the Holocaust’s death camps; or see the swollen corpses of Rwanda; we know that we are looking at genocide. But, when we consider the fact that the Uighur population of Xinjiang has grown from around five million in the 1980s, to more than twelve million today, we can be sure that whatever it is we are looking at, it isn’t genocide.

It is also advisable to look very closely at those who are making these claims. Earlier this week a spokesperson for the Uighurs living in New Zealand, interviewed on RNZ, cited the research of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy as compelling evidence for their charge of genocide. But who stands behind New Lines? According to the Chinese newspaper, Global Times, New Lines has links to the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks the IIIT was raided by the FBI for suspected terrorist associations.

Given that the ongoing confrontation between Beijing and Xinjiang was originally sparked by the terrorist activities of Uighur Islamists and nationalists, the ultimate identity of those accusing the Chinese government of genocide is, surely, an important detail? So, too, I would have thought, is the fact that Beijing’s aggressive programme of de-radicalisation was inspired by the practices of Western powers engaged in the Global War On Terror.

Before our parliament votes on an Act Party motion, supported by the Greens, to condemn China’s “genocide”, it would, perhaps, be wise to ask itself two questions. In this exercise, are the Uighurs the end – or the means? And: Is this being done at the behest of our friends, or our enemies?

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 7 May 2021.

The Greatest Crime In Human History?

Humanity's Fate In Criminal Hands: How many years would it take, I wonder, before the greatest criminal act of human history – the deliberate release of a genocidal virus – came to be regarded as the singular, terrible, but absolutely necessary, act which prevented an incorrigibly rapacious human species from cooking itself, and just about every other living thing on Planet Earth, to death?

IT WOULD BE the greatest crime in human history. The ravages of Genghis Khan’s armies; the anguish of the slave trade; Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”; Stalin’s purges; Hitler’s Holocaust; the combined death tolls of World Wars One and Two: all of these nightmares would pale in comparison. The great pandemics of history: the Black Death especially, which carried-off between a third and a half of the human communities it infected; might come closer. But, only in the Western Hemisphere has humankind ever experienced anything remotely like the crime I’m about to describe.

It is estimated that the human population of the Americas in the years immediately prior to the arrival of Europeans in the late Fifteenth Century stood, conservatively, at 30 million. By the time the microbes unleashed upon the indigenous peoples of North and South America by their European carriers had done their work, that figure had plummeted to less than 5 million. Within a century, Europe’s viral exports had reduced the human population of the Americas by between 80 and 90 percent.

So overwhelming was this sudden depopulation of the Americas that it ended up affecting the global climate. Human communities across the Americas had relied upon wood for heating and construction. Forest clearance was also necessary for the cultivation of crops. The sudden elimination of millions of human beings, leading to the disappearance of entire communities, led to the rapid advancement of forests across thousands of square miles on both continents. The increased sequestration of carbon which resulted from this natural process of reforestation lowered the level of atmospheric CO2 and triggered what became known as the “Little Ice Age” of the Seventeenth Century. Some scientists are even arguing that the sudden depopulation of the Americas marks the true beginning of the Anthropocene – the current geological age, in which human-beings are themselves responsible for generating planet-wide ecological change.

To the worst criminal in human history, the terrible fate of the indigenous peoples of the Americas would likely prove cruelly instructive. A highly contagious viral infection, against which human-beings possess absolutely no defence, is clearly capable of wiping out close to 100 percent of any population it infects. Assuming the motive for the world’s worst criminal is a determination to save the biosphere’s other life forms, the catastrophic depopulation of the America’s during the Sixteenth Century offers another lesson. Eliminating 80-90 percent of humanity at speed may be the only means of sequestering sufficient carbon to arrest the effects of anthropogenic global warming. Combined with the sudden cessation of virtually all industrial pollution, the unchecked growth of forests might just be enough to save the planet.

Who could do such a thing? Well, the criminal would have to be extremely wealthy. Rich enough to hire microbiologists sufficiently skilful to develop not only a humanity-winnowing virus, but the vaccine required to ensure that the “right” people survived it.

Some Silicon Valley billionaire with a God complex, perhaps? He might even have bought a huge chunk of New Zealand’s South Island high-country to hide in when the bodies start falling. It’s even possible that this genocidal billionaire might decide to turn New Zealand into a human ark: the place where humanity’s seed-corn can be kept safe for the moment when a terribly chastened, but indubitably wiser, “Humanity 2.0” can begin again.

How many years would it take, I wonder, before the greatest criminal act of human history – the deliberate release of a genocidal virus – came to be regarded as the singular, terrible, but absolutely necessary, act which prevented an incorrigibly rapacious human species from cooking itself, and just about every other living thing on Planet Earth, to death?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 28 February 2019.