On the 11^thhour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month I attended, for the third time as the mayor, the commemorations of Armistice Day at the Whakatāne Returned Services’ Association. Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day as it’s called in the UK, marks the day in 1918 that the guns of WWI (the Great War) fell silent.

At this Armistice Day, I acknowledged the passing on Thursday, November 7 of Sir Robert Gillies - known to many as ‘Bom’. Sir Robert was the last surviving member of the Māori Battalion. He served in B Company during World War II, between 1942 and 1945.

During WWI, 98,000 New Zealand service personnel were involved, of which 58,000 were injured, and nearly 17,000 were killed. Our district had around 650 service men and women. Their names are recorded at our museum, and on plaques and cenotaphs around the district.

By the end of WWI, 2227 Māori and 458 Pacific Islanders had served in what became known as the Māori (Pioneer) Battalion. Of these, 336 died on active service and 734 were wounded. Other Māori enlisted (and died) in other units.

Whilst we shall always remember all our service men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in conflicts this country has been involved in, I find it hard to get out of my head these days the fact that 200,000, mostly women and children, have so far been slaughtered in the Gaza Genocide and that 600,000 or so have now perished in the Ukraine proxy war. The figures vary, and of course there are deaths on both sides.

Many wars seem to be about resources and power, and maybe also religion.

I find it hard to reconcile our so-called civilisation with the need to fight wars when there are so many other things we should all be fighting for, such as maintaining a planet that humans can actually live on.

Regarding the ongoing Palestinian genocide, it is worth recalling that the state of Israel was formed in the aftermath of WWII by the allies ostensibly in compensation for the Holocaust (a genocide of European Jews) perpetrated during WWII by Adolf Hitler and his regime. During the Holocaust it is estimated that 6 million Jews were exterminated.

WWII losses remain staggering to me. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, including 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths. Other dead included 4.5 million Germans, about 557,600 French, 457,000 Italian, 450,700 British and 400,000 American service men and women. I won’t go through the entire list.

What I struggle to understand most is how a state formed from genocide could inflict genocide on the Palestinian people whose lands they colonised.

The phrase that is often used is, “A land without a people for a people without a land”, only it wasn’t a land without a people.

The images coming from Gaza these days are horrendous and heart-wrenching. How can anyone with an ounce of humanity and a sense of morality not be repulsed by what appears on the screens of our devices these days.

I was a young man during the Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, which occurred between April 7 and July 19, 1994.

I couldn’t believe it then, that the world watched and did nothing, and I can’t believe that this sort of thing can happen again.

In the present case, I struggle to understand how not only can the West do nothing but how it can aid and abet by supplying the arms and weapons used in an attempt to exterminate an entire people.

One lesson of history seems to be that we humans never learn the lessons of history.