They Know What They Are Doing

I thought “Never again means never again for anyone, anywhere.” meant never again for anyone, anywhere.

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
— Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Nobel laureate

When Elie Wiesel was 15, the Nazis sent his family to Auschwitz. On their first night, his mother and younger sister were sent to the gas chamber. He and his father were later moved to Buchenwald, where his father died just before the camp was liberated in 1945.

So, when, in 1986, Wiesel urged us to take sides in his Nobel Peace Prize speech, it came from lived horror. His words became a rallying cry after the Holocaust — “Never again means never again for anyone, anywhere.”

Wiesel took a side. And it was uncritical support for the state of Israel, no matter how brutal the occupation of Gaza became. You can understand why — he was shaped by genocide. But empathy for his past doesn’t excuse his silence in the face of another people’s suffering. He made no public condemnation of the illegal occupation, apartheid policies, or military assaults that killed thousands of civilians. He was silent on the Nakba. He dismissed Palestinian suffering as irrelevant next to Jewish survival. Wiesel was a hypocrite.

In 2014, while over 2,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, Wiesel ran a full-page ad in The New York Times comparing Hamas to the biblical Amalek — calling for their annihilation — while framing Israel’s actions as self-defence.

That silence — that moral double standard — mirrors the world’s response to Gaza right now.

What’s happening in Gaza isn’t war. It’s not defence. It’s not complicated. It’s a campaign of annihilation — calculated, deliberate, and backed by countries that call themselves civilised.

Never again means never again for anyone, anywhere.

You’ll hear this started with Hamas on October 7, 2023. That is a lie.

Before that day, settler mobs burned Palestinian homes in the West Bank. Israel’s finance minister called for wiping out entire villages — and was rewarded with the green light to build more illegal settlements.

Gaza has been under a military siege since 2007 — starved of food, water, electricity, medicine. In 2022, Human Rights Watch found Israel guilty of apartheid and persecution. And when Hamas attacked in October, Israel responded with collective punishment — itself a war crime under international law. But in Gaza, it’s state policy.

Hospitals. Schools. Bakeries. Mosques. Ambulances. Journalists.
All bombed. Whole families were buried. Entire neighbourhoods erased.

This isn’t collateral damage. It’s a method. A pattern. A choice - “There is one and only (one) solution, which is to completely destroy Gaza before invading it. I mean destruction like what happened in Dresden and Hiroshima, without nuclear weapons,” Moshe Feiglin, founder of Israel's right-wing Zehut Party.

Since 1948, successive Israeli governments have treated Palestinian life as disposable.
In just the past 18 months, tens of thousands have been killed.
Most were women and children.

You’ll hear politicians say, “Israel has the right to defend itself” — under international law, a country cannot defend an illegal occupation. Occupied people have the right to resist. Israel does not have the right to defend its apartheid regime. Palestinians do have the right to fight for their freedom.

Israel isn’t hiding its crimes. It’s boasting about them.

"Every Baby In Gaza Is An Enemy." Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin.

“We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant,

These aren’t fringe lunatics. They’re government ministers and military advisors. This is the political culture of the Israeli state. And while these genocidal statements should provoke global outrage and intervention, they don’t. Because this genocide is happening with permission.

The bombs are stamped Made in America.
The UK approves the silence.

And Australia? Australia mouths peace while fuelling genocide. It sends aid with one hand and signs off weapons exports with the other. Condemns war crimes in press releases — but won’t impose sanctions, won’t cut ties, won’t stop the killing.

Our government’s “concern” is cowardice. Useless words while Gaza burns.

Never again means never again for anyone, anywhere.

Western leaders could stop this. They choose not to.
Instead, they block ceasefire votes. They smear human rights groups. They defund the UN.
They attack the messengers while backing the murderers.

Israel says it wants peace — but won’t allow aid, won’t allow reconstruction, won’t allow return.
It starves civilians and executes journalists, then accuses its critics of antisemitism for stating the obvious:
It is not self-defence.

This is ethnic cleansing - a holocaust.

And they know exactly what they are doing.

I thought “Never again means never again for anyone, anywhere” meant never again for anyone, anywhere.