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Writing in the time of Genocide

Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, June 2nd, 2025 - 29 comments
Categories: child welfare, disaster, gaza, genocide, israel, journalism, Long Read, Media, media abuse, news, Palestine, Peace, Zionism - Tags:

I want to share a writer’s journey – of living and writing through the Genocide.  Where I live and how I live could not be further from the horror playing out in Gaza and, increasingly, on the West Bank. Yet, because my country provides military, intelligence and diplomatic support to Israel and the US, I feel compelled to answer the call to support Palestine by doing the one thing I know best: writing.  

Photo: Robert Kitchen, Stuff.

I live in a paradise that supports genocide

I am one of the blessed of the earth. I’m surrounded by similarly fortunate people. I live in a heart-stoppingly beautiful bay. Even in winter I swim in the marine reserve across the road from our house.  Seals, Orca, all sorts of fish, octopus, penguins and countless other marine life so often draw me from my desk towards the rocky shore.  My home is on the Wild South Coast of Wellington. Every few days our local Whatsapp group fires a message, for example:  “Big pod of dolphins heading into the bay!”

I am surrounded by good friends and suffer no fears for my security. I am materially comfortable and well-fed. I love being a writer. Who could ask for more?

I write, on average, a 1200-word article per week. It’s a seven days a week task and most of my writing time is spent reading, scouring news sites from around the world, note-taking, fact-checking, fretting, talking to people and thinking about the story that will emerge, always so different from my starting concept. I’m in regular contact with historians, ex-diplomats, geopolitical analysts, writers and activists from around the world and count myself fortunate to know these exceptional people. 

This article is different, simpler; it is personal – one person’s experience of writing from the far periphery of the conflict. 

I don’t want to live in a country that turns a blind or a sleep-laden eye to one of the great crimes against humanity. I have come to the hurtful realization that I have a very different worldview from most people I know and from most people I thought I knew.  

Fortunately, I have old friends who share in this struggle and I have made many new friends here in New Zealand and across the world who follow their own burning hearts and work every day to challenge the role our governments play in supporting Israel to destroy the lives of millions of innocent people. To me, these people – and above all the Palestinian people in their steadfast resistance – are the heroes who fuel my life. 

Writing is fighting

Most of us have multiple demands on our time; three of my good writer friends are grappling with cancer, another lost his job for challenging the official line and now must work long hours in a menial day job to keep the family afloat. Despite these challenges they all head to the keyboard to continue the struggle.  Writing is fighting. 

There’s so little we can all do but, as Māori people say: “ahakoa he iti, he pounamu” – it may only be a little but every bit counts, every bit is as precious as jade. 

That sentiment is how movements for change have been built – anti-Vietnam war, anti-nuclear, anti-Apartheid – all of them pro-humanity, all of them about standing with the victims not with the oppressors, nor on the sideline muttering platitudes and excuses.  As another writer said: “Washing one’s hands of the struggle between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” (Paolo Freire.)  Back to the keyboard.

My life until October 7th was more focused on environmental issues, community organisation and water politics.  I had ceased being “a writer” years ago.  

One day in October 2023 I was in the kitchen, ranting about what was being done to the Palestinians and what was obviously about to be done to the Palestinians: genocide.  My emotions were high because I had had a deeply unpleasant exchange with a good friend of mine on the golf course (yes, I play golf). He told me that the people of Gaza deserved to be collectively punished for the Hamas attack of October 7th. I had angrily shot back at him, correctly but not diplomatically, that this put him shoulder-to-shoulder with the Nazis and all those who imposed collective punishment on civilian populations.  My wife, to her credit, had heard enough: “Get upstairs and write an article!  You have to start writing!”  It changed my life. She was right, of course.  Impotent rage and parlour-room speeches achieve nothing. Writing is fighting. 

“40 Beheaded Babies Survived the Hamas Attack” 

My first article “40 Beheaded Babies Survived the Hamas Attack” was a warning drawn from history about narratives and what the Americans and Israelis were really softening the ground for. Since then I have had about 70 articles published, all in Australia and New Zealand, some in China, the USA, throughout Asia Pacific, Europe and on all sorts of email databases, including those sent out by the exemplary Ambassador Chas Freeman in the US and another by my good friend and human rights lawyer J V Whitbeck in Paris.  All my articles are on my own site solidarity.co.nz.  

As with historians, part of a writer’s job is to spot patterns and recurrent themes in stories, to detect lies and expose deeper agendas in the official narratives.  The mainstream media is surprisingly bad at this.  Or chooses to be.

Just like the Incubator Babies story in Iraq, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in Vietnam, reaching right back to the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana in 1898, propaganda is often used as a prelude to atrocities.  The blizzard of lies after October 7th were designed to be-monster the Palestinians and prepare the ground for what would obviously follow.  The narrative of beheaded babies promoted by world leaders including President Biden was powerfully amplified by our mainstream media; journalists at the highest level of the trade spread the lies. I have to tell you, it was frightening in October 2023 to challenge these narratives.  Every day I pored through the Israeli news site Haaretz for updates. Eventually the narrative fell apart – but by then the damage was done. Thousands of real babies had been murdered by the Israelis. 

Never before have so many of my fellow writers been killed

Following events in Palestine closely, it still comes as a shock when a journalist I have read, seen, heard is suddenly killed by the Israelis. This has happened several times. When it does I take a coffee and walk up the ridiculously steep track behind my house and sit high above the bay on a bench seat I built (badly). That bench is my “top office” where I like to chew thoughts in my mind as I see the cold waves break on the brown rocks below.  High up there I feel detached and better able to ask and answer the questions I need to process in my writing. 

Why does our media pay little attention to the killing of so many fellow writers?  Why don’t they call out the Israelis for having killed more journalists than any military machine in history? Why the silence around Israel’s  “Where’s Daddy?” killing programme that has silenced so many Palestinian journalists and doctors by tracking their mobile phones and striking with a missile just when they arrive back home to their families?  Why does “the world’s most moral army” commit such ugly crimes? Where’s the solidarity with our fellow journalists? 

Is it because their skin is mainly dark?  Is that why, according to Radio New Zealand’s own report on its Gaza coverage, New Zealanders have more in common with Israelis than we do with Palestinians? RNZ refers to this as our “proximity” to Israelis. They’re right, of course: by failing to shoulder our positive duty to act decisively against Israel and the U.S. we show that we share values with people committing genocide. 

Is this why stories about our own region – Kanaky/New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands and so on, get so little coverage? I have heard many times the immense frustration of journalists I know who work on Pacific issues. The answer is simple: we have greater “proximity” to Benjamin Netanyahu than we do to the Polynesians or Melanesians in our own backyard. Really? Such questions need answers. Back to the keyboard. 

Solidarity

I try not to permit myself despair. It’s a privilege we shouldn’t allow ourselves while our government supports the genocide.  Sometimes that’s hard.  There’s a photo I’ve seen of a Palestinian mother holding her daughter that haunts me.  In traditional thobe, her head covered by her simple robe, she could easily be Mary, mother of Jesus. She stares straight at the camera. Her expression is hard to read. Shock? Disbelief? Wounded humanity?  Blood flows from below her eyes and stains her cheek and chin. Her forehead is blackened, probably from an explosive blast. She holds her child, a girl of perhaps 10, also damaged and blackened from the Israeli attack.  The child is asleep or unconscious; I can’t tell which.  The mother holds her as lovingly, as poignantly, as Mary did to Jesus when he came down from the cross.  La Pietà in Gaza. Why do some of us care less about this pair? Where is our humanity that we can let this happen day after day until the last syllable of our sickening rhetoric that somehow we in the West are morally superior has been vomited out. 

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I’ll give the last word to another writer:

“Verily I say unto you, in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Eugene Doyle

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.

29 comments on “Writing in the time of Genocide ”

  1. Champagne Socialist 1
    2 June 2025 at 11:24 am

    It is so hard to watch and be aware of and it's getting worse. The situation for people in Gaza is getting much worse and no-one appears slightly interested in stopping it.

    How does this happen? Is this why we have domestic violence within our societies – because we don't step in to protect a captive population – a family – from being severely damaged by indiscriminate cruelty.

    Are we too scared? Or do we enjoy it at some level – witnessing the unrelenting brutality against un-armed civilians? Is it a survival skill to be able to partition off one segment of our humanity to mitigate the trauma of what we can see?

    It's happening every day as we get up and go about our lives – figuratively, right there next to us children are starving to death. Never mind – no big deal – what's on Netflix?

    The photo's of WW2 soldiers finding concentration camps and the skeletal bodies and gaunt faces of the prisoners seem eerily prescient.

    Reply
    • Patricia Bremner 1.1
      2 June 2025 at 12:24 pm

      It is damning!! Shameful and confronting. Yes we are afraid because Mossad does not take prisoners, and their ruthless attitudes have poisoned any humane response from many in Israel and worldwide.

      Hamas have controlled and converted Palestinian people to hating Israel.

      Both groups are extremists, and the conflict was inevitable as Israel refused to agree to a two state situation, and Hamas the same. If ever we needed a UN peace keeping force it is now. imo.

      When the rich make money from any war fare and misery we should track the money imo.

      Reply
  2. Psycho Milt 2
    3 June 2025 at 9:55 am

    If you wanted to write about "genocide," there are multiples going on at any given moment. The major current one is in Sudan, for example. Instead, you choose to slap the label "genocide" on a war because your preferred side is losing it, and write about that.

    What you're doing here is called "stochastic terrorism," and it has real-world effects on the people it targets: Suspect charged with federal hate crime in attack on Colorado rally for Israeli hostages.

    Reply
    • Muttonbird 2.1
      3 June 2025 at 11:34 am

      Sudan is regularly being used by Zionists to distract from the genocide in Gaza. It's really worrying.

      If genocide is to be a vague, ill defined concept not to be applied, then stochastic terrorism (which is simply direct action) certainly is.

      Reply
      • Psycho Milt 2.1.1
        3 June 2025 at 1:00 pm

        I'm not referring to Sudan to "distract from the genocide in Gaza," I'm referring to it to demonstrate that people referring to a "genocide" in Gaza are liars who are participating in stochastic terrorism. Feel free to stop participating.

        Reply
        • weka 2.1.1.1
          3 June 2025 at 5:26 pm

          sorry if I missed it, but I've been meaning to ask for a while why you don't consider what is happening in Gaza to be genocide.

          Agree with the point about other genocides happening without us paying attention.

          Reply
          • Psycho Milt 2.1.1.1.1
            3 June 2025 at 7:47 pm

            I see it from the reverse perspective, in that I don't understand why some people do consider the Gaza war to be a genocide.

            In terms of genocide, Hamas fits the bill nicely. Has a charter that says Islam will eradicate Israel and the end times can only come when Muslims kill all the Jews, and when they get into Israel they go house to house or through a music festival executing people etc. They want the Jews dead or gone and they act on that to the extent possible.

            In the Gaza war, the Israelis have gone to some trouble to kill as few civilians as possible given the constraints of urban combat, they target only enemy combatants to the extent possible, they facilitate aid to the enemy population etc. How is any of that a genocide? There's a war happening, for sure, against an opponent whose entire strategy is the influencing of international public opinion via dead civilians, which it deliberately ensures. But a genocide? Not seeing it.

            Reply
            • SPC 2.1.1.1.1.1
              3 June 2025 at 7:52 pm

              Has a charter that says Islam will eradicate Israel and the end times can only come when Muslims kill all the Jews

              Link?

              There are Israeli political parties that want an eretz Israel and no Palestinian state, they support settler violence in the WB and the expulsion of Gaza Palestinians from the area.

              And so does their Prime Minister.

              And as for acts of violence and unarmed civilians, there was 1948.

              Reply
            • Muttonbird 2.1.1.1.1.2
              3 June 2025 at 8:13 pm

              It's probably a decent strategy to promote conspiratorial nonsense against your opponent while you steal their land settlement by settlement. Like the author of this post says,’propaganda precedes (and justifies) atrocities’.

              And what of inviting North Gazan's home in February only to resume bombing them in March? Sounds like genocide to me.

              Israel and its command are not sane people right now. I think they are using this false genocide meme as a shield and loads of people are climbing on board and pushing it.

              Reply
              • Psycho Milt …
                3 June 2025 at 9:29 pm

                "I think they are using this false genocide meme as a shield and loads of people are climbing on board and pushing it."

                Oh look, you've inadvertently said something true their, albeit not about the people you were referring to.

                Reply
        • Muttonbird 2.1.1.2
          3 June 2025 at 7:00 pm

          Can't see how a civil war in Sudan has anything whatsoever to do with Israeli aggression in Gaza. The only reason anyone would bring is up is to minimise and distract from Israeli aggression in Gaza.

          Same goes for calling people concerned about it, “liars”. It’s desperate.

          Reply
        • SPC 2.1.1.3
          3 June 2025 at 7:28 pm

          Sure it can be argued that incitement to ethnic cleansing and deliberate starvation and destruction of homes (after people returned to them) is not genocide. But war crimes and crimes against humanity terms do apply.

          Do you portray those on the ICC or ICJ who have concerns about what is happening in Gaza as also participating in "stochastic terrorism"?

          Do you think this is what President Herzog was saying here?

          Speaking at ceremony on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, president accuses ICC and ICJ of ‘manipulating the definition of genocide for the sole purpose of attacking Israel’

          https://www.timesofisrael.com/herzog-to-un-international-bodies-show-moral-bankruptcy-in-treatment-of-israel/

          January 2024.

          JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s president on Sunday accused the U.N. world court of misrepresenting his words in a ruling that ordered Israel to take steps to protect Palestinians and prevent a genocide in the Gaza Strip.

          The court’s ruling on Friday cited a series of statements made by Israeli leaders as evidence of incitement and dehumanizing language against Palestinians. They included comments by President Isaac Herzog made just days after the Oct. 7 Hamas cross-border attack that triggered Israel’s war against the Islamic militant group.

          Hamas militants killed around 1,200 people in that attack and took about 250 others hostage. The Israeli offensive has left more than 26,000 Palestinians dead, displaced more than 80% of Gaza’s inhabitants and led to a humanitarian crisis in the territory.

          Talking about Gaza’s Palestinians at an Oct. 12 news conference, Herzog said that “an entire nation” was responsible for the massacre, the report by the International Court of Justice noted.

          But Herzog said that it ignored other comments in the same news conference in which he said “there is no excuse” for killing innocent civilians, and that Israel would respect international laws of war.

          https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-gaza-genocide-icj-9b85d9be617ba38ef3047cd8f0aae26d

          Reply
          • Psycho Milt 2.1.1.3.1
            3 June 2025 at 9:33 pm

            "Do you portray those on the ICC or ICJ who have concerns about what is happening in Gaza as also participating in "stochastic terrorism"?"

            I assume some are just useful idiots, but it's likely some are participating in stochastic terrorism.

            Reply
    • Drowsy M. Kram 2.2
      3 June 2025 at 11:54 am

      Stochastic terrorism: critical reflections on an emerging concept
      [3 Feb 2024]
      While some of the most obvious examples of stochastic terrorism are ones that fit neatly into a schema which abstracts an influential speaker and a persuadable listener (think of the Williams case, e.g. or the “storm”), the term is increasingly used to discuss a broader array of incidents. Emily Bell applies the term to the 2019 massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which ******* ******* attacked a mosque, killing 51 people and injuring 40 more; he had livestreamed part of the incident and publicised it using social media accounts. Bell notes Tarrant’s “route to terrorism was close to the mainstream, and reflects a constant type of Islamophobia present on news websites with anti-Muslim agendas such as Breitbart and the Daily Mail”.

      What you're doing here is called "stochastic terrorism," and it has real-world effects on the people it targets…

      Gazans are experiencing "real-world effects" too. Bibi wants all the Palestinian pieces.

      Reality of Annexation [1 June 2025, in Haaretz]
      The eyes of the world are on Gaza [home to more than two million Palestinians], where the war between Israel and Hamas has now dragged on for over 600 days, with no end in sight.
      …
      Short of a formal annexation declaration, the government is doing everything possible to signal that it intends to absorb this territory [the West Bank] – home to more than two million Palestinians – into the State of Israel.
      …
      Until recently, Israeli governments saw the two-state façade as something that still serves Israeli interests, helping to deflect criticism of its permanent military presence in the West Bank. But not this government, where policy is shaped by the ambitions and fantasies of the most extreme and messianic elements in Israeli politics. This government is openly pushing for annexation, and is not interested in preserving diplomatic appearances to disguise it.

      Reply
      • Psycho Milt 2.2.1
        3 June 2025 at 12:57 pm

        Gazans are feeling the real-world effects of having a government that started a war against a far more powerful nation and would rather they all die than that the government 'dishonour' itself with surrender. That's nothing to do with any characteristic or politician of the nation they started the war by attacking, it's to do with their own society.

        And none of that has anything to do with the fact that this constant propaganda of genocide and baby-killing leads to exactly the same thing as the Chch mosques terrorist attack and for the same reason, only this time with Jews as the targets.

        Reply
        • Drowsy M. Kram 2.2.1.1
          3 June 2025 at 3:13 pm

          Re "real-world effects" and “Jews as targets“, the IDF is doing the lion's share of sub-human killing in Gaza. But yeah, I get how “this constant propaganda” could lead to poor outcomes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide

          Gaza doctor whose nine children were killed in Israeli strike dies from injuries [BBC, 2 June 2025]

          Gaza: Dozens are killed as they try to get food from distribution centres [BMJ, 2 June 2025]
          Alsaqa [MSF’s communications officer] added, “They looked shattered and distraught after trying to secure food for their children, returning instead injured and empty handed. Outside there was shouting, sirens, and a constant rush of new arrivals to the emergency room. Amid the chaos, we received confirmation that a colleague’s brother had been killed while attempting to collect aid from the distribution centre.”

          "Look, this, um, plan, um that's put in place, um, by the governments of Israel and the United States – is a distraction from the atrocities that are happening right now to the people of Gaza, to the women, to the children, to the older people." – Juliette Touma, UNRWA

          No place is safe for Palestinians in Gaza.

          Reply
        • Nic the NZer 2.2.1.2
          3 June 2025 at 7:37 pm

          Since you clearly agree with the punishment being dished out, why is this

          "Gazans are feeling the real-world effects of having a government that started a war against a far more powerful nation and would rather they all die than that the government 'dishonour' itself with surrender. That's nothing to do with any characteristic or politician of the nation they started the war by attacking, it's to do with their own society."

          not an endorsement of collective punishment.

          Reply
          • Psycho Milt 2.2.1.2.1
            3 June 2025 at 7:52 pm

            A war isn't "punishment," it's a war. The government of Gaza can end this war at any time simply by laying down its weapons and surrendering, and has been able to end it at any point over the last 19 months. What I don't get is how so many people suddenly don't seem to understand what a war is.

            Reply
            • Nic the NZer 2.2.1.2.1.1
              3 June 2025 at 8:19 pm

              That's an utterly pathetic and unconvincing attempt at sophistry.

              Benjamin Netanyahu recently undermined your lie by rejecting a Gaza withdrawal agreement, put by Hamas negotiators (via Steve Witkoff), which both stated Hamas would give up all participation in governance of Gaza and return all remaining POWs. His counter proposal removed the Hamas governance withdrawal proposal entirely. This is clearly not an objective of the Israeli government (on top of replacing the Palestinian political leadership by force, amounting to state terrorism).

              Reply
              • Psycho Milt …
                3 June 2025 at 9:24 pm

                Can you explain why Israel ought to be interested in accepting anything other than surrender from Hamas? I can see why Hamas would prefer alternatives but am not seeing what's in it for Israel.

                Reply
                • Nic the NZer …
                  3 June 2025 at 10:59 pm

                  Israel should be willing to agree to a settlement for a number of reasons, but several of these don't apply if the point is to genocide and ethnically cleanse the population from Gaza (and the West Bank). Those reasons are,

                  1) The IDF would there by stop (accidentally) killing the few remaining living POWs.

                  2) This is likely the only hope for the majority of remaining POWs being returned alive.

                  3) The IDF would stop losing soldiers.

                  4) This is the only means by which Israel can actually achieve its stated objective, of Gaza no longer being governed by Hamas.

                  5) The IDF would then be able to stop killing and maiming Palestinian civilians.

                  6) The IDF would then be able to stop psychologically damaging its personal by instructing them to commit moral atrocities.

                  7) The IDF would then stop creating additional personal who are unable to travel abroad without fearing arrest in most foreign countries.

                  8) Israel could then stop taking additional hostages from the West Bank and Gaza (to be later traded in a prisoner exchange).

                  Reply
    • Champagne Socialist 2.3
      3 June 2025 at 12:49 pm

      You are correct – words are not adequate. I also agree that using the word genocide creates a distraction. Agree, also, with your highlighting of Sudan.

      In the end, the feudal scale of civilian deaths in the sealed territory by an advanced, modern society and one of the most powerful militaries in the world is horrific.

      Its enough now – someone needs to step and get Israel out of Gaza and global humanitarian aid in.

      The damage to Israel itself – the moral fabric of its young generation of reservists – its air force pilots – can they not see their own history in the skeletal faces of the Palestinian children? This is like a mirror into their own souls and it is a dark and brutal place.

      Reply
    • SPC 2.4
      3 June 2025 at 6:39 pm

      Sudan involves a civil war (there was an earlier one in Ethiopia – a Tigray rebellion over federalism led by someone who had lost leadership in the national capital)(the continuing conflict in Somalia before that, then there is Chad and Yemen).

      There are war crimes and crimes against humanity (not surprising given the leaders of the two factions were both involved in the same in Darfur decades ago).

      Could you explain why this civil war is one that can be labelled "genocide".

      Yet not the deliberate starvation of Gaza civilians and destruction of their homes to realise an ethnic cleansing?

      PS. Are you unaware of a poll indicating 80% of Jews in Israel want the entire Palestinian population in Gaza expelled from the area (and 50% want the Israeli Arab citizens to go as well)?

      Reply
  3. Psycho Milt 3
    3 June 2025 at 1:21 pm

    D’oh – intended as reply to Champagne Socialist at 2.3.

    I believe the Israelis saw their own history in the way their unarmed civilians were helpless as death squads went through their villages casually executing them.

    Problem: if the IDF withdrew tomorrow and its government negotiated the return of the hostages and an end to the war, what would happen next? Based on what the UN, the Arab world and western countries are proposing, what happens next is that Hamas murders its way back to control of Gaza and proclaims victory. We, the long-suffering taxpayers of the western world, return to funding 'aid' that Hamas would use to repair its tunnel network and build missiles, the Egyptians return to profiting from smuggling weapons into Gaza via the tunnels, Qatar and Iran go back to handing over cash in pursuit of destroying the "Zionist Entity," and in a few years things would be ready to kick off again. I can see what would be in that for Hamas, but why would any Israeli government agree to it?

    Reply
  4. SPC 4
    3 June 2025 at 7:11 pm

    The general issue is a move away from moral (responsible) leadership.

    The age of uber nationalism lends to use of force domestically and across national borders (and also civil wars). It could be called a fascist tendency.

    Populism can lead to mob action, a form of assertion of majoritarian power resulting in a lack of regard for the civil liberties and human rights of others.

    Peter Fraser's criticism of there being a veto power in the UNSC is still valid, we can note that most of the veto powers on the UNSC are unfit for the role they are supposed to perform.

    All 5 are involved in an arms build-up and 3 are either either calling for others to join them, or acting in ways that encourage others to do so.

    Foreign aid is in decline and right wing factions in many nations are moving to abandon their support for their nations remaining in the Paris Accord.

    Reply

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