Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red Sea.

From the outset, the US-led coalition declared that it had two main goals in the Red Sea:

1. to stop the attacks being launched from Yemeni territory on international shipping, and thus restore security to a key international shipping route.
2. to prevent these attacks (and the response to them) from becoming part of a wider regional war.

The US-led coalition has failed to achieve either of these tasks. On Monday, the Loadstar – the world’s leading news source for the firms that manage containerised sea freight and air cargo supply chains – has reported that the Houthi attacks are expanding.

Concerns are mounting that the arena of operations for Houthi strikes against commercial shipping in the Red Sea has expanded, following a series of further attacks at the weekend. After the Iran-backed militia struck Tel Aviv on Friday, killing one person and wounding at least 10, the Israeli military responded with airstrikes against Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah that left three dead and more than 90 injured. This, in turn, prompted a failed retaliatory attack on Eilat that was intercepted. Vespucci Maritime CEO Lars Jensen warned that the actions may represent a change in Houthi capabilities and aims.

On LinkedIn, Mr Jensen said: “How the Houthis managed a successful drone hit on Tel Aviv is not known, but it underscores their previous threat to also target shipping in the Eastern Mediterranean. “And by extension, this means that not only the south, but also the full extent of the Red Sea could potentially be a risk area for shipping.”

In other words, the US bombing raids across Yemen over the past six months have failed to curb the Houthis, just like the Saudi/UAE bombing raids over the past eight years also failed to reduce the Houthis’capacity to launch attacks beyond their territory. If anything, the Houthi weaponry and ability to strike further afield (to Tel Aviv!) is increasing. The trend of expanding Houthi attacks has already raised the insurance cost of shipping goods along the Red Sea waterway, caused an uptick in shipping freight rates worldwide, and impelled more shipping lines to use the longer, costlier route around the Cape of Good Hope.

With respect to the second goal cited above… plainly, the conflict is spreading. Last week and for the first time, the Israeli/US response in Yemen has no longer restricted itself to military targets. The Israeli bombing of civilian infrastructure at the port of Hodeida (Yemen’s main entry point goods and humanitarian aid) marks a serious escalation of the conflict.

It also raises the risk of Israel opening up another front in the regional war (Gaza, Lebanon and now, Yemen) that the US-led coalition was formed to prevent. The Israeli attack on Hodeida also threatens to collapse the UN sponsored peace talks aimed at ending Yemen’s civil war, a conflict formerly described by the UN as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Has any of this done much damage to the Houthis? No. As others have pointed out, the air and naval strikes on Houthi targets within Yemen haven’t significantly degraded the group’s capabilities or altered their strategic calculus. Domestically and regionally, public support is rallying to the Houthi cause. That’s mainly because the Houthis have always said that their attacks on Red Sea shipping have been intended to make Western countries feel some economic pain for their support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Unsurprisingly, the sight of the little Houthi David taking on the twin Goliaths of the US and Israel has improved the Houthis’ regional standing, with much of this being at the expense of the Saudis. As Al Jazeera put it recently:

The attacks on Israel have broadened the Houthi appeal beyond their Zaidi Shia base and beyond Yemen, which is expanding their domestic and international legitimacy.

Here at home, the Luxon government has insisted on seeing positive “outcomes” for its spending. Well, New Zealand could cease this deployment at any time. (It will cease to be a participant no later than July 31, 2025.) In the meantime, what positive outcomes exactly, can Luxon claim to be achieving with this deployment of NZDF personnel to the Red Sea - beyond the camaraderie of standing shoulder to shoulder with our Western allies, on the losing team?

Two state checkmate

The Biden exit doesn’t change the ways that US foreign policy is a captive of Israel. No doubt, the visit by Israeli PM Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu to Washington this week will see that bondage on full display. At a policy level, Joe Biden and Netanyahu have been playing out a “good cop/bad cop” routine on Gaza, in which the US has feigned moral unease while maintaining the flow of weapons and ammunition to the perpetrators of the carnage.

There has always been a punitive psychological dimension to the Biden/Bibi bromance. Biden has also endured a series of personal snubs and humiliations from the Israeli PM. Repeatedly, Biden has drawn red lines – don’t enter Rafah, be more careful about killing civilians – that Netanyahu has repeatedly flouted. Netanyahu has also systematically torpedoed any hostage deal that involved Israeli concessions.

Presumably, some of this humiliation is payback for the years when Barack Obama was openly exasperated with Netanyahu’s penchant for lies and deception. It was only very, very belatedly that Netanyahu could bring himself to congratulate Biden after the 2020 election. Yet, lest he violate Trump’s fantasy that the election had been stolen, Netanyahu never said what he was congratulating Biden about. Even so, Trump reportedly responded with profanity at the news.

The rise of Kamala Harris now complicates the picture. She supports Israel – as all US politicians seem obliged to do – but not with the decades-long fervent devotion to Israel’s cause that Biden has shown. Pointedly this week, Harris has decided she has a prior engagement in Wisconsin and other swing states, and is not scheduled to meet and greet Netanyahu in Washington. The Republican Party is already attacking Harris for allegedly “snubbing” the Israeli leader.

One way that Harris could kill several birds with one stone would be if she picked Pennsylvania’s popular governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate. Shapiro has been a strong advocate of women’s reproductive rights. If elected, Shapiro would also be the first Jewish V-P in American history, a gesture that would outbid Trump as evidence of Democratic fidelity to Israel’s cause. The Shapiro gesture could potentially give Harris a bit of breathing space on Gaza, an issue that divides the Democratic Party. Even more to the point, picking Shapiro would raise the Democratic Party’s chances of winning a crucial swing state in November’s election.

Meanwhile, Israel’s slaughter of civilians in Gaza, and on the West Bank, continues at the same pace – which, recently, has seen the IDF killing between 50 to 100 Palestinian civilians every day, in refugee camps, UN schools, medical centres, and designated “ safe” areas. Men, women and children continue to be deliberately shot down in the street by IDF snipers, for the crime of being Palestinian.

Until last week, it was possible to blame all of this on Netanyahu and the extremists propping up his government. Not any more. Last week, the Israeli Parliament – the Knesset – voted by a huge majority to reject the “two state solution” to which politicians in the West have long clung to as a method of meaningless virtue signalling, and as an excuse for inaction.

The Knesset resolution — passed by 68-9 votes — rejects altogether the establishment of a Palestinian state, even as part of a negotiated settlement with Israel. Here’s how The Times of Israel reported the wording of the Knesset vote:

“The Knesset of Israel firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region,” the resolution stated.

“It will only be a matter of a short time until Hamas takes over the Palestinian state and turns it into a radical Islamic terror base, working in coordination with the Iranian-led axis to eliminate the State of Israel,” it continued. “Promoting the idea of a Palestinian state at this time will be a reward for terrorism and will only encourage Hamas and its supporters to see this as a victory, thanks to the massacre of October 7, 2023, and a prelude to the takeover of jihadist Islam in the Middle East.”

So far, New Zealand has tweeted only this brief comment about the Knesset vote. There has also been no official response by the Luxon government to the ICJ advisory opinion that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is illegal under international law.

The judges pointed to a wide list of policies – including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, use of the area’s natural resources, the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands and discriminatory policies against Palestinians – all of which it said violated international law. It said other nations were obliged not to “render aid or assistance in maintaining” Israel’s presence in the territory.

As a party to the ICJ, the Luxon government should be outlining the steps it will be taking to support the ICJ advisory opinion. It could be announcing a range of sanctions to induce Israel to cease its illegal occupation of the West Bank. But those are the kind of actions that New Zealand – as a dutiful team member of the Western alliance – appears to reserve only for the likes of Russia.

Second chances

Mr and Mrs Emerson financed this vinyl recording made by their two teenage sons back in 1979, but it took nearly 30 years for it to find an audience, via a record collector who found the Dreamin’ Wild album in an antique shop in 2008. He began championing the track called “Baby” to anyone who would listen.

The people who did listen included the musician Ariel Pink, the folks who run the Light in the Attic reissue label, and the makers of the Australian film Babyteeth. Recently, it blew up on Tiktok, and then the whole world started singing “Baby, you’re so baby...”

Here’s Joy Oladokun with a track about how self-medication can fail in the long run, to resolve one’s underlying personal problems.

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