PO Box 2 Blackball

Being pro-Palestinian on the Coast (and perhaps in other places) is a little like being a Communist Party member in the old days, existing on the margins of mainstream society, something akin to a nutter or a religious extremist believing in a narrative which challenges the mainstream narrative – or the lack of one.  In fact, the latter is the case, for there is no mainstream narrative other than the story of the accumulation of private capital (house, boat etc) and the personal dramas of relationship. There’s no idea of how the power structure works, of colonialism, imperialism, power blocs, racism, monetary system and controls, military alliances, media hegemony, the distraction of the spectacle, the resource battles, North versus South… None of this is known except as a form of fragmented gossip and the threats of local disasters, gangs, scams and bankruptcy – producing a generalised paranoia that it is the duty of government to alleviate.

Because genocide so thorough and blatant as what is happening in Gaza is so horrifying one is compelled to try to tell the story and in doing so, in the same way as the mask of the global system has been ripped off,  the local one is lowered: the horrified frozen stare of the bank teller when the Palestinian flag flutters and Gaza in the form of a petition, walks through the door; the neatly dressed petit bourgeois New World shoppers in the spacious car park which allows no gathering or intimacy; and then to the Warehouse where the lumpy working class are more welcoming and interested in our story of oppression, until the manager, a brisk, broad shouldered blonde who obviously tolerates no nonsense comes out and sends us on our way: This is private property and you guys don’t have permission.

How long would the seller of the People’s Voice last outside the Warehouse, a corporation which has taken over the colour red? The question is extraordinary. But actually, until the paper is being sold at the Warehouse entrance there is little hope. What I mean by this perhaps absurdly nostalgic thought, is that until a coherent version of the world order is being articulated to the working class, even if that coherence is largely ignored, ‘There is no alternative’ will rule the day.

Bertold Brecht wrote The Resistable Rise of Arturo Uri, a play which satirised Adolf Hitler as a Chicago mobster, in 1941. Hitler was easy meat, for he satirised himself with his narcissistic performances. But lurking in the wings is the human result of those performances.

The far right Israeli leadership, the Israeli Defence Force and its US backers (with applause from European leaders) – if their acts were not so appalling – are also great material for satire: Joe Biden with a walker and a shopping list pinned to his jacket; Netanyahu running a 10 pin bowling alley as a front for a cocaine dealership with a sideline in arms sales (provided by Joe), the Israeli president in skull cap selling sexy underwear to fundamentalist Arab leaders, radical evangelical Christians wearing angel wings waiting for the rapture in an Arizona desert; Sulla Braverman making a curry from drowned refugees; a frightened teenage Israeli soldier in all the gear entering a children’s hospital hysterically screaming, All men between sixteen and forty put your hands up and take off your clothes and the Palestinian surgeon saying, I am afraid the two acts are contradictory; meanwhile an Israeli actress is being filmed in her role of fake Palestinian nurse pleading with Hamas to stop using hospitals as command centres, the sound technician saying, we’ll dub in explosions later and the director shouting, Cry louder, we need something authentic, as the IDF colonel displays three rusty rifles; the IDF soldier standing in front of a mountain of rubble with a rainbow flag on which is written the word, Freedom – identity politics gone mad.

Unfortunately, while it might seem impossible to take these people seriously, satire does not destroy them. It should but doesn’t. For it won’t stop bombs falling and children dying. But then tragedy wouldn’t stop this horror either. Art is powerless. Even Bansky is silent. For the shopping list pinned to Biden’s jacket is for 15 billion dollars worth of arms for the fascists, to be forwarded without democratic scrutiny.

The horror of Gaza escalates and becomes an avalanche of suffering, according to a Norwegian doctor who regularly works there. The injuries, and remember many of the injured are children, are threefold. Firstly there are burns from explosions and there are hundreds with burns to more than forty per cent of the body area; then there are penetrative wounds from bullets or shrapnel; finally there are crush injuries from collapsing buildings.

Burn treatment requires sterile conditions, temperature control, plastic surgery and pain relief.  The penetrative wounds require the immediate stopping of internal haemorrhaging and subsequent repair of internal damage. With shrapnel there are usually multiple entry sites. Once again infection is a constant danger. Crush injuries result in broken bones and possible brain and soft organ damage. As well as repair of the damaged parts, treatment requires flushing of the kidneys to prevent a build-up of toxins. All these treatments require sterile water for hygiene, anaesthetics, pain relief, and electricity to power intensive care units and operating theatres. Under a state of siege none of them are available.

And then there are the more general environmental health issues. Gaza is dependent on water filtering systems which have either been bombed or lack electricity to run, so there is no potable water to drink or wash in. There is massive overcrowding and a bombed sewage system. Infectious diseases like dysentery, measles, typhoid and pneumonia spread. Then there are normal health issues: women giving birth, heart conditions, asthma, the need for dialysis – none of them able to be catered for. There are the mental health issues of a people who have been under siege for years, of families now without homes and children living in constant terror. There is slow starvation, a continuing bombardment and the stench of the rotting corpses under the rubble. Add the fantasies of the perpetrators – of expelling the whole population into the Sinai desert or nuking them and you have the reality of genocide.

It is a truly obscene historical moment (as were the death camps) and the culmination of European colonialism. The hypocrisy of politicians is staggering and it feels like the death of humanity, that species with consciousness, which can and should lead to empathy – the ability to identify with the other. Instead a deliberate obscuring of truth and an obscene accounting takes place. Yes, after years of oppression and humiliation, Hamas started – wrong word, it started a century ago- triggered this ‘final solution’ and there are Israeli families in mourning and desperately anxious for the hostages, but they have water to drink, food to eat, homes to go to and an intact health and communications system. The numbers and the situations are not comparable. Biden reveals himself as a cynical old man, the team serving him morally despicable, the UK and European leaders smiling villains. It is a cesspit of cowardice and Islamophobia. As usual, New Zealand politicians hesitate on the cusp of commitment.

What does one do, living in a rural community where activists are few and often reclusive ‘keyboard warriors’? Put up a poster or two, write letters to the paper, think about a rally which would be sparsely attended, if at all? The tourists pass through, on holiday and avoiding the world’s ills. What act of solidarity is possible? For solitary despair is not good.

In the possibility that there are people out there who feel something of what I’ve described, who are unable to ignore what is happening, I would ask them to meet in the town square for a vigil this Sunday at 6.30pm.Bring a candle and perhaps something for a shrine. We can say a few gentle words and at least collectively pay witness to this horror.

This spring morning,

after a midnight storm,

I walk the country road

under a volatile sky

grieving for Gaza’s children.

Passing the golden broom,

the hustling creek,

the mound of rocks

in the council’s paddock

awaiting the disaster,

I grieve for Gaza’s children,

reduced to rubble.

Primo Levi was an obsessive

witness to the evil of Auschwitz,

taking notes with the diligence

of the chemist.

Would he have considered

the destruction of Gaza to be

the ultimate testimony?

I hurry back to shelter,

before the storm returns.

Acts of terror are conducted by those with limited power, against those with great power (usually the state or sometimes a large business conglomerate). The aim is to rip off the mask of the powerful and reveal the violence behind their power. The problem with terrorism as a political strategy is that the state is better at terror than the terrorist. Accordingly, the attack by Hamas fighters against Israel, as well as ripping off the respectable democratic mask (which didn’t need much ripping, it already being in tatters), has resulted in Israel moving from being a proto-apartheid state into it becoming a proto-genocidal state, laying siege to Gaza, bombing its infrastructure including hospitals, schools and residential areas, denying food, water, fuel and medical supplies, and their defence minister wanting to eradicate the ‘animals’ who live there.

Both sides have committed war crimes: targeting civilians and collectively punishing a people, with Israel well practised in operating outside of international law. It is regularly sanctioned by the UN for creating illegal settlements, violently invading Palestinian territorial waters, operating humiliating checkpoints, denying medical attention, bulldozing houses, oppressing its Arab citizens, undertaking illegal surveillance, its snipers killing people as they go about their lawful business, carrying out drone strikes and denying Palestinians access to the outside world. It is no secret that the Israelis train the increasingly militarised Western police forces in how to control a populace; for they are the experts. But now, the normal day to day violence of the proto-apartheid state escalates into the radical violence of a proto-genocidal state.

The actions of Hamas are also illegal and an outrage, but let us remember that they were elected to replace a corrupt, collaborating government and were at their inception, a group practised in community development in Gaza. When elected, their governance was immediately sabotaged and attacked by Israel and the West. If they are now a terrorist grouping they have been made so by Israel and its US backer. And when you make life intolerable for the citizens of the most densely populated area on the planet, for year after year, these people, constantly experiencing grief, hopelessness, hatred and anger, ultimately have nothing to lose and will explode.

Watching this tragedy with the emotions of pity and fear, it is interesting to witness the local reaction, to see the Government’s call for the upholding of international law and for restraint, immediately attacked as too soft by the local Jewish lobby, with its propaganda that Israel is a country upholding the values of freedom and democracy in the midst of a sea of Arab vindictiveness. By some mysterious process those values don’t translate into the governance of the country or into tolerance of international debate. The propaganda is so successful, that if I were in Scotland this piece could possibly lead to a visit from the police. Meanwhile, Western leaders condemn the war crimes of Hamas without equally condemning the war crimes of Israel. Why? Because Israel remains a beacon of colonialism.

Locally, there is either indifference or ignorance, of, if the matter is brought up, a new age response that if we keep putting out bright-eyed positive energy, the problems of the world will go away. When that naivety is in turn challenged, then the response is, It’s not the Jewish people wanting an apartheid state (despite voting for it and continuing to serve in the army and yes, protesting when their own civil rights are threatened), or that it is the fault of bad leaders (all leaders being suspect, but someone votes them in). It’s like Christians existing in a sinful world and praying for the enlightenment of the sinners (and meanwhile Ukraine worries that it will slip from the radar as the chief recipient of the products of the arms industry, with its accompanying profiteering).

Of course there is a sort of street wisdom in this, and a memory of the values at the core of Pacifism, and the willingness to go to jail for those values: that all working people want is a peaceful and just society and therefore we refuse to slaughter one another because of the quarrels of the masters and the profiteers they hang out with.

Let me suggest that it is once again time for a genuine and widely supported peace movement.

Gaza blows, surprise, surprise…

You put people in a crowded prison,

humiliate them daily, kill their youth,

call them animals, half starve them,

imprison them, pull down their homes,

desecrate their religion, deny them an

economy, flaunt your wealth and privilege,

and then,

when they explode in hopeless anger

and grief, you increase the terror…

It used to be called sadism.

It is interesting to view the election as a debate within te ao Māori. The simple definition of being Māori is having whakapapa, so we have a broad spectrum: David Seymour of ACT, a right wing party wanting to re-situate the tiriti, Marama Davidson of the Greens who are environmentally austere and socially left (capital gains tax, free dental care, guaranteed minimum income); Te Pāti Māori who as well as advocating for tino rangatiratanga are anti royal, anti US imperialism and want NZ out of Five Eyes – they also are socially left, into capital gains and wealth taxes; Winston Peters and Shane Jones of NZ First who are populist and opportunist, playing an anti-Māori card – it was once anti-Asian but Winston goes with the flow of grumpiness – and also focusing on Northland; conspiracy ‘Christian’ oddities like Brian Tāmaki; and then Māori in the mainstream parties, with a Labour Māori caucus probably responsible for the Labour Government’s co-governance strategies and other cultural pushes; and with National Māori members seemingly happy with the National trajectory.

This spectrum is pretty much reproduced within the general electorate, although I would suspect the PI electorate is more Labour oriented and the Asian electorate more to the right and, interestingly, there is no anti-imperialist voice within the general electorate. In fact there is virtually no debate on foreign policy. But generally, I might assume, that if tauiwi were to disappear, a post- colonial election would not be radically different in terms of policy stances. Of course it might be argued that this is the result of colonisation but the infrastructure of colonisation can’t just disappear – it’s a lengthy walk through the alps with a sack of milk powder in the pack.

In which case I am left with the tiriti and an indigenous past which can become romanticisms, but which, instead, could become catalysts for the emergence of a post-capitalist culture of revolutionary change.