Inconvenient Flags: Laurie & Les, Ageing Boomers, Talk Politics.

“What we used to call ‘war’ is now called ‘genocide’. By the UN definition, our fathers and grandfathers were vicious war criminals. The Allied blockade of Germany in World War I? The bombing of Dresden in World War II? Acts of genocide. Crimes against humanity. No question.”

HANNAH EYED THE FLAGS warily. Behind the bar a miniature Ukrainian flag had stood at attention since 2022. A few days earlier, however, a varsity student had asked her to position a miniature Palestinian flag alongside it. She’d stashed it under the bar. Now, one of her oldest patrons, Laurie, had presented her with an Israeli flag: “To keep the Ukrainians company”, he had said with a wink as she poured a pint of ale for him, and another for his best mate, Les.

“I’ll think about it”, she responded, passing him the brimming glasses on a tray.

“What did she say?” Les eyed the bar manager who was, he noticed, eyeing him back.

“She said she’d think about it.”

“Heh! I never had Hannah down as someone who’d try to have a bob both ways.”

“C’mon, Les, that’s not fair. This Israel/Palestine thing is so bloody polarising. If she puts up our little flag, then the pro-Palestine mob are certain to give her no end of grief.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve got a point there. I’ve participated in countless demonstrations over the years Laurie, but I’ve got to tell you, I’ve never encountered such passion.”

“I must confess, Les, I was surprised to see you marching alongside the keffiyeh-wearers.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have been. You should have known that my tolerance for Israel’s ‘collateral damage’ wasn’t likely to be limitless. There’s only so many images of mutilated women and children that I can look at without recalling the words of Mario Savio.”

“Which you’re about to quote me.”

Les straightened his back and jutted out his chin.

“‘There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, and upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.’”

“Except that, neither you, Les, nor your passionate mates, can make the Israeli war machine stop. Because, you know as well as I do that the only body big enough to stop that apparatus belongs to Uncle Sam. And Uncle Sam doesn’t want to. Hell, it’s Uncle Sam who’s supplying Israel with the gears, the wheels, and the levers!”

“Yeah, well, I thought I had to try.”

“So, what changed your mind, Les? Why did you ask me to ask Hannah to put Israel’s flag alongside Ukraine’s?”

“Genocide.”

“Genocide?”

“I did some research and discovered that the UN’s Genocide Convention is so broad that the Allied Powers of both World Wars would have fallen foul of it. What we used to call ‘war’ is now called ‘genocide’. By the UN definition, our fathers and grandfathers were vicious war criminals. The Allied blockade of Germany in World War I? The bombing of Dresden in World War II? Acts of genocide. Crimes against humanity. No question.”

Laurie nodded.

“And just consider the metrics. In nearly two years of bitter urban warfare, Palestine has lost nearly 70,000 people – at least a third of them Hamas fighters. But, in just 100 days, Rwandan Hutu butchered 800,000 Tutsi. Dammit, Les! If both events merit the description of genocide, then the term has lost all meaning.”

“But the world doesn’t care, Laurie, which means that Hamas is winning this war. It set out to goad Benjamin Netanyahu’s government into lashing out against Gaza with such fury that the world would turn away from Israel in disgust. And its working, Laurie, it’s working. The UK, Canada, Australia: they’ve all recognized Palestinian statehood. No wonder Hamas is claiming victory!”

“What do you think Winston’s going to do? Follow suit?”

“God, I hope not, Laurie! Because if Palestine is a state, then the term, like genocide, is meaningless. I hope he’s been able to convince Cabinet that this country’s got more to gain by standing alongside Donald Trump than Keir Starmer. Who knows, it might be enough to persuade the President to lower his 15 percent tariff.”

Hannah watched the two old Boomers leave the pub. She’d overheard quite a lot of their discussion, and she was glad. It made her decision much easier. She tossed both flags, Israel’s and Palestine’s, into the bin.

“There you are,” she muttered, “the perfect two-state solution.”

This short story was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 26 September 2025.

Making Deserts.

Berlin 1945/Gaza 2025
“They make a desert, and they call it peace.”
 - Tacitus 56-117CE

UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER doesn’t leave those demanding it very much in the way of wiggle-room. When President Franklin Roosevelt announced to the world that the Allied Powers would accept nothing less than the Axis Powers’ (Germany, Italy, Japan) unconditional surrender, he took the man sitting next to him, Winston Churchill, by surprise. Though the official history of the Casablanca Conference of January 1943 insists otherwise, the journalists present were pretty sure that Roosevelt had caught Churchill on the hop. Ever the wily imperial politician, Great Britain’s wartime prime-minister was a great believer in wiggle-room. Now there was none.

Roosevelt had very good reasons for his decision to eliminate the possibility of compromise. The most important of these was the absolute necessity of convincing the Soviets, then fighting for their lives, that there was no possibility of the USA and/or Great Britain negotiating a separate peace with the Nazis.

The Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, whose paranoia was legendary, was fearful that Churchill, a convinced imperialist and passionate anti-communist, might prevail upon Roosevelt to transform the war into an anti-Soviet crusade. There can be little doubt that the thought, at least, had crossed Churchill’s mind.

No Wiggle Room: Franklin Roosevelt tells Winston Churchill, and the world, that the Allies’ war aim is Unconditional Surrender. 

Unconditional Surrender was Roosevelt’s way of reassuring Stalin that his fears were groundless. It was also intended to prevent his Soviet allies, whose backs had been against the wall since June 1941, from themselves negotiating a separate peace with Nazi Germany.

Beneath all this calculation, however, Roosevelt’s demand for Unconditional Surrender reflected his bedrock conviction that the evils of Nazism were too dreadful to be seated at any negotiating table. They could not be set aside in the interests of peace, because Nazism was the antithesis of peace. To end the war, Adolf Hitler and his creed had to be extirpated entirely. Nazi Germany’s surrender to the forces of civilisation had to be unconditional.

But, evil has a way of corrupting even the most noble of intentions – and the demand that it surrender unconditionally to the forces of righteousness is no exception.

When your enemy realises that there is no wiggle-room, the temptation to go on fighting to the bitter end is very hard to resist.

Equally hard to resist, on your own side, is the temptation to increase dramatically the level of punishment inflicted upon the enemy. If their stubborn refusal to acknowledge defeat persists, and the conflict is needlessly prolonged, then a steady escalation in the violence and destruction unleashed upon them is not only deemed morally justifiable, but also morally necessary.

Suddenly, the civilised distinction between combatants and non-combatants: soldiers and civilians; begins to blur. The commitment to waging Total War pronounced by one side, inevitably calls forth an answering commitment from the other.

Everybody and everything is to be considered a target. The sooner the enemy’s critical infrastructure, now deemed to include the houses – and the bodies – of their citizens, is reduced to rubble and torn flesh, the sooner peace will come.

This terrifying, though hardly novel, mode of thought was well understood by the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote of his own great city-state: “They make a desert, and they call it peace.” In Hamburg and Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Allies’ quest for unconditional surrender would create deserts of its own.

And the making of deserts, if not peace, continues.

In response to the evil of 7 October 2023, Israel demanded the unconditional surrender of Hamas, and the release of all the hostages taken on that dreadful day by its pitiless foe. Hamas was defiant. God loves martyrs, and Hamas has plenty to give him.

Eighty years after the end of the Second World War in Europe, the world watches in despair as those who set forth in righteous wrath to secure the unconditional surrender of evil, have ensnared themselves in the same remorseless escalation of violence and destruction that captured our fathers and grandfathers.

The focus over recent days has been on the grainy images of universal celebration. [The 80th anniversary of VE Day. - C.T.] More difficult to watch are the images of ruined German cities, and how closely they resemble the images of ruined Gaza. Like the Romans and the Allied Powers, the Israelis are determined to bring forth the flower of peace from the desert they are making.

But, surely, the evil whose unconditional surrender Israel should be seeking, is the evil of not knowing when to stop.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 9 May 2025.