Two Extinction Rebellion activists joined the speakers today at an Auckland protest over Israel’s genocide and ecocide in Gaza and occupied Palestine, condemning the “apocalyptic” assault on both people and their living environment.

Caril Cowan, a de facto coordinator of Extinction Rebellion Tāmaki Makaurau, spoke of the climate crisis this month in Aotearoa New Zealand to provide an insight into the Gaza emergency.

“One of our climate scientists, says this is normal — get used to it. We are going to have killing storms over, and over, and over …

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“As we are saying, ‘We are all Palestine’, I just think of the people of South America, I think of the people of Africa, I think of Europe, where people are dying now because of the climate.

“They are dying of heat exhaustion, they are dying from floods, they are dying from landslides, like we have been having, not just a few. It’s happening. It is here now.”

After the rally, the protesters marched around the corner from Te Komititanga Square to the US Consulate in Auckland for a “Blood on your hands “ protest over the US role in funding and enabling Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

Cowan was among those protesters who symbolically raised blood on their hands over the “shameful” US role under President Donald Trump and previous presidents.

US pays part UN dues
This week in Washington, a UN spokesperson said the United States had paid about US$160 million (NZ$268 million) of the more than US$4 billion it owes to the UN, just as Trump hosted the first meeting of his so-called “Board of Peace” initiative over Gaza that critics say could undermine the United Nations.

The US is the biggest contributor to the UN budget, but under the Trump administration it has refused to make mandatory payments to regular and peacekeeping budgets, and slashed voluntary funding to UN agencies with their own budgets.

Washington has also withdrawn from dozens of UN agencies.

Another speaker at today’s rally, Adam Jordan, from both Extinction Rebellion and the Palestinian movement, talked about the “connection” between the Gaza genocide and anthropogenic climate breakdown.

“As is so often the case with colonialism, and the capitalist system more generally, ecological destruction has always been inherent to the Zionist, settler-colonial project,” Jordan said.

“From contaminated soil and groundwater to decimated farmland and burning down centuries old olive groves that had been lovingly tended by countless generations of Palestinians.

“Rather than ‘making the desert bloom’ as they often claim, the colonisers are engaged in a process of ‘desertification’ — transforming once fertile and active farmland into an area devoid of both vegetation and biodiversity.”

Damage visible from space
Jordan said that destruction of both people and the land itself in Gaza had reached such “apocalyptic proportions that the damage is visible from space”.

“The people who have not yet been killed by the bunker buster bombs, the forced starvation, disease, sniper fire and autonomous killer drones live in a wasteland of undrinkable water, unexploded munitions, overflowing landfills, contaminated soil and toxic debris, with orchards and fields reduced to dust in which life itself is being rendered impossible for the long term,” he said.

Gaza pollution environmental threats                Video: Al Jazeera

“Ecocide here fuses with genocide in a manner never seen before.”

But where was the real connection between Palestine and the climate crisis?

“Despite all the rhetoric from governments and corporations about how they’re taking climate change seriously, the 2020s have so far seen an accelerated expansion of fossil fuel production, just when it had to be reined in and inverted into a sustained dismantling — for the world to avoid a warming of more than 2°C, and ideally no more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial baseline.

“Currently we’re at 1.6°C above that baseline, and this is already proving to be absolutely catastrophic. In fact it’s proving again and again to be deadly,” Jordan said.

“The destruction of Gaza is of course executed by tanks and fighter jets, sending their projectiles that turn everything into rubble — but only after the explosive force of fossil fuel combustion has put them on the right path.

“All these military vehicles run on oil. As do the supply flights from the US, UK and Germany.”

Emissions burden
One study had estimated that from October 2023 to January 2025 the emission burden of the Gaza genocide by Israel and the West to be 32 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

“That’s more than the annual emissions of many countries,” Jordan said.

“It has generated more than 36 million metric tonnes of debris from buildings being either severely damaged or completely destroyed. It would take as long as four decades to remove and process all of this debris.”

Jordan said what was happening in Gaza was not just a transnational effort, but “a stain on the so called ‘international law’ that cannot be washed clean”.

“For over two years now we have watched as the corrupt corporate media has dehumanised the victims and attempted to humanise those committing this genocide,” he said.

“We have watched as academic institutions, politicians and governments all over the world have denied or justified the unspeakable horrors taking place in Gaza, just as they deny the severity and the consequences of the climate crisis and justify the continuation of business as usual, no matter how destructive it is to our environmental life support systems.

“But this is just business, this is just how the capitalist system works. Both people and the environment are seen as expendable, here only for the purposes of wealth extraction by the ultra wealthy ruling class — or as I prefer to call them, ‘The Epstein class’.”

New flotilla plans
Among other speakers, Rana Hamida spoke about the new Global Sumud Flotilla plans to break the military siege of Gaza in April.

The flotilla has announced plans to send more than 100 boats carrying up 1000 activists, including medics and war crimes investigators, to the besieged enclave.

Hamida appealed for more volunteers from New Zealand to join the fleet.

Two years ago, Israel suffered what was perhaps the most jarring day in its modern history. The events of October 7, 2023, weren’t just a military failure or an intelligence lapse — they were a national humiliation. Police stations were stormed and overrun. Military posts were taken. Soldiers and officers, including from elite units, were killed or captured. The Gaza Division of the Israeli army, a symbol of Israel’s long-standing dominance over the Strip, fell into chaos.

Israel invoked the Hannibal Doctrine — a policy that allows military forces to prevent the capture of soldiers even at the cost of their lives, by opening fire on both Hamas and the kidnapped Israelis. That day, it wasn’t theory — it was execution.

In the fog of panic, Israeli fire turned on its own, and the thin line between protecting society and sacrificing civilians for strategic ends evaporated.

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But October 7 was just the opening act. What followed was a war unlike anything Israel had fought in fifty years — brutal, relentless, and devastating in scale and ambition. Gaza was not merely targeted; it was systematically dismantled. What began as retaliation became something else entirely: an erasure.

The illusion of military supremacy
Two years into the war, one fact is undeniable: Israel, backed by some of the most powerful military alliances in the world, has failed to conquer a territory smaller than half of New York City. 365 square kilometers — that’s all Gaza is. Yet despite overwhelming force, technological advantage, and political cover, the Israeli army has been unable to fully occupy it.

This failure is especially glaring given the scale of destruction. Over 200,000 tons of explosives have been dropped on Gaza — the equivalent of 20 nuclear bombs without radiation. That’s not metaphor. That’s the measure of how far Israel was willing to go and is not willing to stop yet: flattening entire towns, turning hospitals, schools, mosques, residential towers, universities, even cemeteries into rubble.

Gaza has endured more concentrated bombing than any territory since the Second World War.

Indeed, what Gaza has endured over the past two years dwarfs even some of the most infamous wartime bombardments of the twentieth century. In February 1945, Allied forces dropped roughly 3,900 tons of explosives on Dresden in a three-day firestorm that killed an estimated 25,000 to 35,000 people and obliterated much of the city. Where Dresden became a symbol of wartime excess, Gaza is witnessing destruction on a scale so vast it makes Dresden look like a prelude.

And unlike Dresden, Gaza’s devastation has been broadcast live, in real time, to a world that cannot claim it did not know.

But Israel was never alone and had every advantage and complicity: real-time intelligence from the United States and Britain, precision munitions from Germany, satellite targeting, drone supremacy, complete air dominance. And still, two years on, it cannot claim control over this tiny strip of land.

The problem was never firepower. It was urban warfare — a terrain where bombs are blunt tools and conquest requires something far more difficult: boots on the ground, close-quarters control, and the ability to hold territory without hemorrhaging soldiers or sparking endless insurgency.

The Israeli army, trained for dominance but not for urban occupation, found itself caught in a repetitive, grinding cycle: enter, level, retreat, repeat.

Neighborhoods were captured and declared “secured,” only to be abandoned and recontested days later. Troops rotated in and out of ruined zones, unable to maintain sustained presence. For every area leveled, resistance either moved underground or regrouped elsewhere. The war turned into a grim spectacle of destruction without achievement.

This revealed a contradiction at the heart of Israel’s military doctrine: it can destroy almost anything, but it cannot hold what it destroys. Air supremacy means nothing when the battlefield is a bombed-out maze. Gaza’s density, devastation, and defiance turned every advantage into a liability.

So while the Strip lies in ruins, it is not conquered. And that truth — buried under declarations of “strategic success” — is the defeat Israel cannot admit.

The real objective: Not security—territory
Israel’s war was not, as officially claimed, about eliminating Hamas or rescuing hostages. That narrative collapsed quickly under the weight of Israel’s own actions. From the beginning, hostage negotiations were treated as peripheral. Every time progress was made on potential ceasefires, it was Netanyahu’s office that pulled the plug — because every hostage released made the war harder to justify. Every ceasefire threatened to slow the campaign just enough for the world to ask uncomfortable questions.

This was never about hostages. It was about Gaza. More specifically: it was about removing Gaza as an obstacle to territorial ambition.

Netanyahu, cornered by political instability, corruption trials, and a fragile coalition held together by the far-right, saw in October 7 a chance to do what had always been unspoken: clear Gaza. Not of Hamas, but of Palestinians. Permanently. Not by announcement, but by attrition — bombing, starvation, siege, trauma.

Gaza’s civilian population wasn’t collateral damage. It was the target.

Destroying Gaza wasn’t a means to defeat an enemy. It was a means to reshape a demographic reality. This wasn’t defense. It was a conquest dressed up as security.

When the mask falls
In war, the first casualty is truth. But in this war, truth didn’t die quietly — it was dragged into the open, exposed by the very actors trying to hide it. Israeli soldiers live streamed brutality. Government officials made genocidal statements on public platforms. Civilian infrastructure was not accidentally struck — it was deliberately annihilated.

At first, the world made excuses. Israel had been attacked and was “entitled to defend itself”. But over time, the scale, duration, and clarity of its actions stripped away any remaining ambiguity. When every hospital (38 in total) becomes a target, when entire neighborhoods are turned to rubble, when starvation is used as a weapon — it becomes impossible to speak of “defence” without insulting reason.

And so the global tide turned. Governments hesitated, but people didn’t. From Berlin to Boston, from Sydney to Cape Town, millions marched — not for Hamas, but for the principle that no state, however victimised, has the right to massacre an entire population in response.

Israel didn’t just lose global support. It lost the moral framing that had shielded, or it had hid behind, it for decades.

It had positioned itself as a democracy surrounded by enemies. But democracies don’t bomb refugee camps, don’t livestream the deaths of children, don’t cut off water to two million people and don’t hold hostages’ lives hostage to political calculus.

Israel’s loss over the last two years hasn’t been military — it’s been existential. The myth of invincibility is broken. The image of moral exceptionalism, cultivated so carefully for decades, has shattered. Netanyahu, once a master manipulator of global opinion, now finds himself isolated, distrusted, even among allies.

What October 7 exposed was the weakness of Israel in the one arena it believed itself untouchable: control. It wasn’t just a border breach. It was a rupture of the entire apparatus that had kept Gaza contained for years. Fences, drones, AI, intelligence, surveillance — all of it failed.

And when the mask of control slipped, the response wasn’t strategic — it was criminally vengeful. It was rage mixed with blood thirst. But rage isn’t a strategy, rage destroys. And over two years, rage has destroyed Gaza — and with it, Israel’s future.

Netanyahu’s calculus: Eternal war
The war served Netanyahu well—at least at first. It silenced his critics. It unified a fractured public. It postponed trials. It gave him relevance again. But the deeper logic was more disturbing: war is the only environment where his political survival is guaranteed.

Peace, by contrast, is a threat. Peace requires compromise. Peace requires vision. Netanyahu offers neither.

Each time a ceasefire neared, his government collapsed it. Each time hostages were close to freedom, the process was torpedoed. To free the hostages would be to end the war. To end the war would be to lose power. This is the twisted loop that has defined Israel’s leadership for two years. Hostages weren’t bargaining chips — they were leverage. They were the excuse for ongoing brutality.

And the world saw it. Every broken deal, every last-minute sabotage, made it harder to pretend this was about security. By the end of the second year, no serious government believed Netanyahu was acting in good faith. Even allies began to distance themselves, not out of principle — but out of shame. What’s remarkable isn’t that Israel committed war crimes — it’s that it did so while assuming the world would look away.

For decades, that assumption held. But this time was different.

Technology turned every phone into a witness. Every child pulled from rubble was broadcast in real time. Every lie was challenged within seconds. The world saw the crimes as they happened — and watched as Israel confirmed them with its own footage.

No state can withstand that level of exposure and retain legitimacy.

Even in the US, the last bastion of unconditional support, the consensus cracked. Young people rejected the old narratives. Jewish voices joined Palestinian ones. The streets filled with dissent, not just from the fringe but from the center. Israel’s status as a protected partner is no longer guaranteed.

In Europe, traditional guilt-driven loyalty gave way to disgust. Governments clung to old alliances, but the public broke ranks. Supporting Israel was no longer an expression of Western solidarity — it became a political liability.

Ceasefire, but not peace
Now, with pressure mounting, ceasefire talks are back — this time in Egypt, under the bizarre influence of Donald Trump, whose re-entry into international politics has added a surreal dimension to an already surreal conflict. But few believe the talks will produce anything lasting. Netanyahu has built his power on conflict. He has no incentive to end it.

Even if a deal is signed, it’s unlikely to hold. The machinery of occupation, the logic of dispossession, the appetite for dominance — it remains intact. This war may pause. But the ideology that fueled it still governs Israel.

And that’s the real crisis: not the bombs, not the destruction, not even the deaths — but the belief that this can go on forever.

Israel may declare victory over Hamas. It may claim strategic success in degrading enemy capabilities. But that’s not what the world sees.

What the world sees is a nation that responded to horror with horror. A nation that lost its soul in pursuit of a war it could never truly win. A nation that allowed vengeance to become policy, and policy to become annihilation.

Two years later, Gaza lies in ruins. But so does Israel’s credibility. So does the illusion of a “moral army.” So does the narrative of self-defence that once made its case persuasive to the world.

Hamas lit the match. But Israel poured the fuel, struck the steel, and claimed the fire was purification.

In the end, what remains isn’t security. It’s ash.

Elijah J Magnier is a veteran war zone correspondent and political analyst with over 35 years of experience covering the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). He specialises in real-time reporting of politics, strategic and military planning, terrorism and counter-terrorism; his strong analytical skills complement his reporting. His in-depth experience, extensive contacts and thorough political knowledge of complex political situations in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Syria provide his writings with insights balancing the routine misreporting and propaganda in the Western press. He also comments on Al Jazeera.