238 years ago, today
the 11 ships of the First Fleet
came towards Port Jackson cove.
Soldiers came ashore.
Day’s earlier, in Botany Bay,
shots had been fired
at Aboriginal men standing on the shore,
their shore,
just as 18 years earlier
Cook had fired at Gweagal men,
wounding one,
they perhaps proclaiming
as their Inuit brothers in Greenland do today
“Are they going to bring their violence here?”
And so, before a white foot had stepped
on Australian soil
violence was meted out
by colonisers
too proud and arrogant to acknowledge or admit
that Australia was not “terra nullius”
but occupied.
As Cook acknowledged when writing in his journal
that on passing the coast, campfires and “natives” could be seen.
Yet still the land was “claimed” for King George III
and the spot named for the “discoverer” Cook.
On 26 January 2026
such arrogance and prejudice
is repeated
over and over again.
They gather in small groups
to protest immigration
to chant their silly slogans
“oi oi oi”
as though they are more entitled to be
to be present
as though the desire they sprout
to protect “culture”
has value or can be achieved
when such utterances render valueless
the culture they profess to protect.
Across the seas
the modern-day SA descends
on peaceful streets
to arrest such heinous criminals as 5-year-old boys
in blue bunny hates
Liam’s only crime his
brown skin.
Others
even those with white skin
are beaten, arrested, murdered
not Juans or Mateos
but Nicoles and Alexes
murdered in plain sight
by brutal armed thugs
their faces covered.
Their actions defended
with illusory truth and big lies
the victims labelled “domestic terrorists”
a term thrown about like confetti at a wedding,
as though the term any longer has meaning
just as all who oppose their oppressor
are so named.
Just as the oppressor always
condones
justifies
conceals
their own actions,
if need be, by lies
repeated over and over until believed as truth
no matter how fallacious or repugnant.
Half a world away
the body of a dead man is recovered
to great rejoicing
though the recovery was not of such urgency
as to obviate against a delay of weeks in looking
followed supply of the body’s location.
The recovery of this corpse
worth the death of thousands of Palestinians
children frozen to death for want of shelter
children shot and killed while collecting firewood.
The recovery is the closure of a “dark chapter”
says Kushner, who opines
“For the first time since 2014 there are no Israeli hostages held in Gaza. All 20 live hostages and all 28 deceased hostages in Gaza have now been returned home”
Will such rejoicing follow the announcement that
for the first time since 1947
there are no Palestinian hostages in Israel
living or dead?
Will that day ever come?
Will equal respect for Palestinians be shown?
Mustafa Barghouti asks:
“The big question now that Israel got the last body … is who’s going to pressure Israel to release the 10,000 Palestinian captives in Israeli jails, who are subjected to torture, subjected to starvation, and of whom 122 already died because of bad treatment and Israeli presence,”
Barghouti goes on to ask:
“So much attention was paid to one body, and I’m happy that this body went back to his family,”
But who would care for “maybe thousands of people who are still under the rubble. The lack of equal treatment, the lack of respect to Palestinians as equal human beings, is really astonishing indeed”
In 2025 alone
37,000 West Bank Palestinians were displaced
their homes burnt and demolished.
Not even UN buildings exempt from destruction.
Nearly 1,000 killed and injured by violent, lawless thugs
their animals beaten and killed
their Olive trees uprooted.
Those performing such acts of patriotism and heroism
legitimised with the same term as those of the First Fleet
“Settlers”
a euphemism for those who violently dispossess, kill, destroy
with their army protecting them
their government supporting them,
supported and justified by Australian groups
who ironically, hypocritically and offensively
acknowledge the “traditional custodians of these lands”
while those they support repeat the same genocidal colonialism
in Gaza, the West Bank and Golan Heights
as those responsible for the genocide of Australia’s first peoples
first peoples in lands wherever those “settler” feet made landfall
all the while with an unshakeable belief
that they are entitled
that they are superior.
These colonisers advance plans for Gaza to be rebuilt
as the “Riviera of the Middle East”
as a paradise for investors and a vehicle for profit
proceeding with no regard for or consultation with
the 2 million displaced Palestinians
whose land Gaza is
they to be expelled
or sufficient to meet the occupier’s needs, corralled in camps
surveilled with facial recognition
as a subject workforce for investors,
to serve drinks to tourists
who lay on beaches where their fishing boats once lay
those boats now destroyed,
subject to the whim, the rule
of American and Israeli masters
like modern day slaves
to Biblical kings,
modern day Philistines
in an Old Testament wet dream of their masters.
And so, on this day
it is easy to remember the coloniser’s actions
as the barbarism is repeated
over and over again
before our eyes.
The same thinking as informed and motivated Cook and Phillip
aa informed Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex and Inter Caetera (papal law until 2023)
as informed and motivated the US Supreme Court in Johnson v McIntosh
as informed and motivated Columbus, Magellan, and da Gama
Believing that they are superior
that others are inferior, perhaps not even human.
This is the thinking that now informs
the modern-day colonisers, crusaders and conquistadors
as they assemble their armadas
make and use their bombs
kill and maim and
claim for themselves the resources and real estate they crave
with no regard for those they murder and dispossess
all for their advantage.
