DAMIEN GRANT'S latest column, in which he takes aim at Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick while simultaneously attempting to deny that Israel’s assault on Gaza constitutes genocide, is a textbook case of ideological sleight of hand. It is less an honest reckoning with the facts than an effort to delegitimise and discredit the opposition to Israel's barbarism. Grant merely reveals both his moral and intellectual bankruptcy in his ham-fisted attempt to smear Israel's critics than confront the reality of mass death and destruction in Gaza.
Grant's central claim is that Israel has not committed genocide. But this is not a matter of opinion and debate, but of international law and of mounting evidence. The International Court of Justice, in its January 2024 ruling, determined that there is a plausible case of genocide being committed in Gaza. That is not the language of activists or partisan politicians, but of the world’s highest judicial body. Since then, the death toll has climbed into the tens of thousands, overwhelmingly civilians, with children making up a horrifying proportion of the dead. Entire neighbourhoods have been levelled, hospitals bombed, and basic necessities like food, water, and electricity deliberately cut off.
These are not incidental tragedies of a 'conventional' war that Grant is suggesting; they are systematic acts designed to destroy a people’s ability to survive. To deny this is to deny the evidence of our own eyes and the testimony of international institutions, human rights organisations, and genocide scholars. Grant’s dismissal of this reality is simply complicity in its erasure. He describes himself as a 'libertarian' and perhaps his definition of 'libertarianism' also embraces Israel's 'right' to slaughter tens of thousands of innocent people and get away with it.
Chloe Swarbrick, by contrast, has been one of the few political leaders in New Zealand willing to speak plainly about what is happening. She has called it genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid, and she has demanded that New Zealand act accordingly by sanctioning Israel, just as it sanctioned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
This is not extremism; it is consistency. If international law is to mean anything, it cannot be selectively applied. Grant’s attempt to caricature Swarbrick as reckless or unserious is a way of avoiding the uncomfortable truth that she is articulating a moral clarity absent from much of the political establishment and the corporate media (the mainstream media, including our public broadcasters TVNZ and RNZ, still won't acknowledge that Israel has committed genocide.)
Equally pernicious is Grant’s Zionist insinuation that opposition to Israel’s actions is somehow tainted by antisemitism. This claim is cynical, and it is dangerous. Antisemitism is real and must be confronted wherever it appears. But to conflate criticism of Israel with hatred of a people is to weaponise that struggle against racism in order to shield a government from accountability.
Damien Grant needs to be reminded that many Jewish people have been at the forefront of condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza. That includes Holocaust scholars like Omar Bartov to activists like Naomi Klein and to organisations such as Jewish Voice for Peace. To suggest that Swarbrick or the mass movements demanding an end to the slaughter are motivated by antisemitism is not only false, but an insult to those Jewish activists who risk vilification to stand in solidarity with Palestinians.
Grant’s libertarian posture, which often prides itself on scepticism of state power, collapses entirely when confronted with the reality of Israeli militarism. Suddenly, Israel's overwhelming use of force against a civilian population is not tyranny but self-defence; the victims are not civilians but collateral; and those who call for accountability are not principled but prejudiced. This inversion of values exposes the hollowness of his argument and the 'flexibility' of his own so-called libertarian beliefs.
What Grant obviously cannot tolerate is that Swarbrick, and the movement she represents, refuse to play by the rules of polite silence that have long governed New Zealand’s foreign policy discourse. They are naming crimes as crimes, naming the perpetrators of those crimes, and that is intolerable to those invested in maintaining the illusion of neutrality.
The deeper issue here is not simply Grant’s attempt to smear Chloe Swarbrick's reputation or his denial of genocide. It is the broader attempt to delegitimise solidarity with Palestinians by painting it as fringe, dangerous, or bigoted. This is a strategy designed to isolate and intimidate, to make people second-guess their outrage in the face of atrocity. But it is failing. The sheer scale of destruction in Gaza, broadcast daily to the world, has galvanised a global movement that refuses to be silenced. Swarbrick’s voice is part of that chorus, and it resonates precisely because it cuts through the evasions and euphemisms of those like Grant.
In the end, Grant’s column tells us less about Swarbrick than it does about the defenders of the indefensible. To deny genocide in the face of overwhelming evidence is to abandon reason. To smear critics as antisemitic is to abandon integrity. And to attack those who demand justice is to abandon morality. Swarbrick’s courage lies in refusing to do any of these things. She has chosen to stand with the oppressed, to call things by their true names, and to demand that New Zealand live up to its obligations under international law. That is leadership. What Grant offers, by contrast, is little more than an attempt to excuse Israel's many horrific war crimes.
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