- The Evil of Banality. Radio New Zealand 25.6.2025
Posted by Morrissey
on July 5, 2025, 11:53 pm
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Wednesday 25 June 2025, 1:50 p.m. RNZ National Jesse Mulligan interviews Julie Paterson, a New Zealander living in Dahab, on the Sinai Peninsula. They chat about various aspects of life in Dahab: the food, climate, etc. Then the host bravely raises the elephant in the room.... JESSE MULLIGAN: Just looking at the map, Julie, you are VERY close to Israel. JULIE PATERSON: We have Israelis escaping here. But I've seen the fireworks. We feel helpless to.... .... Silence for two or three seconds.... JESSE MULLIGAN: What about the nature there? Julie Paterson accepts the diversion and compliantly says something bland before Mulligan winds up the interview... JESSE MULLIGAN: Gosh, you are an AMAZING person, Julie! Thanks for talking to us today. After the 6 p.m. news, it's The Panel with Wallace Chapman. His guests today: journalist Richard Pamatatau, and Deborah Hart, chair of the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand. I tuned into the program just in time to catch Deborah Hart's contribution to a discussion about a highly critical report by Save Animals From Exploitation about cruelty in the dairy industry. As you read her cavalier dismissal, bear in mind that she is the Chair of the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand... DEBORAH HART: Oh I think SAFE has a problem with the dairy industry, full stop. WALLACE CHAPMAN: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! RICHARD PAMATATAU: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! 6:30 p.m. WALLACE CHAPMAN: Time for I've Been Thinking. Deborah Hart, take it away! DEBORAH HART: Hmmmm. Last week my son, who lives in Jerusalem, sent me a picture of my, uh, grandchildren and I look FORWARD to those photos, but this one was a bit different. There were my grandchildren, fast asleep with four of their COUSINS, um, in a bom shelter, in a safe room. And they spent a good part of the last two weeks either in that safe room or NEAR it, and I've spent the last two weeks struggling to sleep, like many relatives of those affected by the war in the Middle East. But today I woke up and I was able to sleep and I really had a glimmer of hope. And I'm hoping, um, for an outbreak of peace, um, and unlike all the doomsday analysts that we've heard recently, I think that it's maybe a little bit closer today. And I say that because there IS a ceasefire and it's holding, between Iran and Israel, and that's good. And more than that, in the last eighteen months the Abrahamic Accords have held and, um, the borders with Egypt and Jordan and Israel have held, and Israel's neighbours who could have taken the opportunity to widen the war, didn't, not even Qatar, whose sovereignty was breached, and the despotic Iranian regime has been severely weakened and so have their proxy groups Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis. Ahhhmm, and many nations, our own included, um, have experienced the last two weeks and, on top of, um, eighteen months and surely we'll all be doubling our efforts to TRY and support a peaceful solution, um, ahh, to the conflicts in the Middle East including that between, uh, the Palestinians and Israelis. So, I uh, I'm not a religious person but tonight I'll be saying a prayer for peace for ALL of the children in the Middle East, including my very precious grandchildren. [chokes with emotion] ... Awkward silence.... RICHARD PAMATATAU:Yeah it is--- we need to pray for peace, to use that metaphor. WALLACE CHAPMAN:Very good. Deborah Hart there. Richard Pamatatou I've Been Thinking. RICHARD PAMATATAU: So I've been thinking about Matariki.... |
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