Since last Thursday, intensified Israeli air strikes on Gaza have killed over 500 Palestinians, and a prolonged Israeli aid blockade has led to widespread starvation among the territory’s two million residents. Belatedly, Israel is letting in a token amount of food aid that UN under-secretary Tom Fletcher has called a “a drop in the ocean.”

Meanwhile, the IDF is intensifying its air and ground attacks on the civilian population and on the few remaining health services. Al Jazeera is also reporting that the IDF has issued “a forward displacement order” for the entirety of Khan Younis, the second largest city in Gaza.

The escalation of the Israeli onslaught has been condemned by UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, who has likened the IDF campaign as an exercise in ethnic cleansing:

“This latest barrage of bombs … and the denial of humanitarian assistance underline that there appears to be a push for a permanent demographic shift in Gaza that is in defiance of international law and is tantamount to ethnic cleansing,” he said.

If the West so wished, it could be putting more economic pressure on Israel to cease committing its litany of atrocities. Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war has been sparking mass demonstrations across Europe. In the Netherlands on the weekend, a massive demonstration culminated in calls for the Netherlands government to formally ask the EU to suspend its free trade agreement with Israel.

Until now, the world’s relative difference to the genocide in Gaza has been mirrored by Palestine’s Arab neighbours. As Gaza burned yet again, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates were lavishly entertaining US President Donald Trump – Israel’s chief enabler – and showering him with gifts.

In the wake of these meetings, Trump and his hosts have signed arms deals and AI technology transfers that reportedly contain no guard rails to prevent these AI advances being passed on to China. In addition, Qatar has bought $96 billion worth of Boeing aircraft. Reportedly, this purchase has huge potential implications for the airline industry in our part of the world.

In all, economic joint ventures worth hundreds of billions of dollars were signed and sealed last week between the US and the Middle East region, despite the misery being inflicted right next door.

Footnote: Directly and indirectly, Big Tech firms such as Microsoft and Intel continue to enable and enhance the IDF war machine’s actions in Gaza. This is an extension of the long time support given to Israel by Silicon Valley firms via the supply of digital infrastructure, advanced chips, software and cloud computing facilities.

Yesterday, several Microsoft staff had the courage to interrupt a speech by their CEO to protest about how the company’s Azure cloud computing platform was being used to enable Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

The Extinction of Hope

As the Ha’aretz newspaper reported this week, “The three pillars of hope for the Palestinians have collapsed: armed struggle has lost legitimacy, state negotiations have stalled, and faith in the international community has faded. Now, they face one question: 'Where do we go from here?'

As Ha’arretz concluded, the Palestinians seem to have vanished into a diplomatic Bermuda Triangle. What would it take, one wonders, for the New Zealand government – and Foreign Minister Winston Peters – to wake up from their moral slumber?

Whenever the Luxon government does talk about this conflict, it still calls for a “two state solution” even though, as a leading Israeli journalist Gideon Levy says, this ceased to be a viable option over 25 years ago.

We crossed the point of no return a long time ago. We crossed the point at which there was any room for a Palestinian state, with seven hundred thousand settlers who will not be evacuated, because nobody will have the political power to do so. The West Bank is practically annexed for many, many years...Nobody can take this discourse seriously anymore. But, you know, those who want to believe in it, believe in it.

Conveniently, the two state waffle does provide Peters and Luxon with cover for their reluctance to – for example – call in, or expel the Israeli ambassador. Or impose a symbolic trade boycott. Or impose targeted sanctions on the extremists within the Netanyahu Cabinet who are driving Israeli policy.

Instead of those options, the “negotiated two state” fantasy has been encouraged to take on a life of its own. Yet do we really think that Israel would entertain for a moment the expulsion of the hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers illegally occupying the land on the West Bank required for a viable Palestinian state? The Netanyahu government has long had plans to double that number, with the settler influx growing at a reported rate of about 12,000 a year.

The Backlash

Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon is finally creating a backlash, in Europe at least. The public outrage being expressed in demonstrations in the UK, France and Germany finally seems to be making some governments feel a need to be seen to be doing more.

Not before time. At the drop of a hat, Western nations – New Zealand included – will bang on endlessly about the importance of upholding the norms of international law. So you have to ask...why have we/they chosen to remain all but mute about the repeated violations of human rights law and the Geneva Conventions being carried out by the IDF in Gaza on a daily basis?

In [Khan Younis’] Nasser Hospital, Safaa Al-Najjar, her face stained with blood, wept as the shroud-wrapped bodies of two of her children were brought to her: [18 month old] nMotaz Al-Bayyok and [six weeks old] Moaz Al-Bayyok.

The family was caught in the overnight airstrikes. All five of Al-Najjar’s other children, ranging in ages from 3 to 12, were injured, while her husband was in intensive care.One of her sons, 11-year-old Yusuf, his head heavily bandaged, screamed in grief as the shroud of his younger sibling was parted to show his face.

Ultimately, Israel’s moral decline will be for its own citizens to reckon with, in future. For now, New Zealand is standing around watching in silence, while a blood-soaked campaign of ethnic cleansing unmatched in recent history is being carried out.

Money for a Mirage

Two of the pre-Budget announcements in Health - $164.5 million spread over 5 years for a digital health service, and $164 million spread over four years for after-hours care – are supposedly going to reduce pressure on the emergency departments (ED) at our public hospitals.

Fat chance. As Northland emergency doctor Gary Payinder told Checkpoint last night in an interview that deserves to go viral, these token measures will make no significant difference, and will simply mean that more taxpayer money is being funnelled into the pockets of for -profit health providers. This outsourced money would be better spent, Payinder says, on making after hours services available ( and affordable) within the public health system.

In essence, the money is being wasted on a mirage. Where for example, will the trained staff be found to provide these extra services, given how stretched the current public health system is - at every point from GP primary care to the ED wings of our hospitals, to our understaffed hospital wards?

As things stand, there will be significant cost barriers with both of Brown’s pet measures. Many patients are already unable to pay the tab for face-to-face GP visits. The same cost hurdles will restrict access to digital consultations and to after hours care– even if those in need happen to have a community card that qualifies them for concession rates.

Currently, some patients in Palmerston North are facing a charge in exceess of $200 for access to after hours care. In the main, such “services” will be affordable only to those least in need and/or to the minority of relatively wealthy New Zealanders with private health insurance.

Footnote: The shortage of NZ-qualified doctors and nurse practitioners seems to be delaying the rollout of the digital health service. Health Minister Simeon Brown announced the funding for digital healthcare on 3 March, and the “test phase” was due to happen by the end of April, with a wider launch by mid-year. Yet as NZ Doctor reported last week, there is a dearth of information on progress to date.

In the meantime, patients continue to be caught between the understaffing/underfunding of public health, and the cost of GP access. A creeping process of privatisation is being enacted, with the apparent blessing of the coalition government.

What should be being done to turn this trend around? The glaring shortfalls in core funding for public health would have to be treated as an urgent priority. Remedial action would also require making more than a token boost this year to the government’s “capitation fee” contribution to meeting the costs that are now threatening the very survival of many GP practices.

For now though, Simeon Brown seems to be more than happy to fiddle away, while the public health system burns.

New Threats From The Soul

There are so many traditional folk/country/blues signifiers in Americana music that it can be hard to get past the historical clutter and find something innovative.

For several years, Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band have been releasing competent versions of classic neo-country stories of hard luck on the heart-worn highway... but this time around, they’re aiming at a more ambitious target.

Their nine minute single “New Threats From The Soul” justifies its running time, even if it is – from one angle – just another tale of love lost in El Segundo and Lafayette and other points west of nowhere. By a whisker, Davis avoids the traps of self-parody, and that’s a victory in itself:

OK. And now... here’s a unique performer in this genre. Last year, Willi Carlisle’s Critterland album was a below-the-radar treasure. These live versions of “The Arrangements “ and of the stark, Faulkneresque “ Two Headed Lamb” are performances that I can’t recommend too highly.

His song “I Want No Children” is pretty great, too. It may sound like a singalong, but the lyrics are something else:

The truth is that I want no children
Mamma says there’s still time yet
I want no kith no kine no future
When I don't love what I am..

I want to tower over no one
Grind no bones to make my bread
There is no real love that you've control of
I want to free all that I can

The truth is that I want no children
No earthly kin to call my own
I feel the ghost of my creation
Kill my name, call me home
Kill my name, call me home

More recently, Carlisle has been knocking some cover versions out of the park. A few months ago, he released a fine version of John Prine’s “That’s How Every Empire Falls.” This week, he’s delivered his own idiosyncratic take on the classic Richard Thompson song “Beeswing”:

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