fun thing they’ve started doing in wellington is taking names off of floor listings. who has 3 floors of a building they share with the forestry and mining cartel that’s opposite the TPU and wellington club buildings, and wants to keep it secret? who knows
![New Zealand soldiers were, of course, particularly racist against local peoples. Milnes’ stellar 1999 thesis “Imperial Soldiers?” examined New Zealand and ANZAC troops’ views during the campaign, finding “virtually every letter, book, and diary contained some reference to the Arabs reflecting the New Zealanders’ racial views”. One wrote that “no wonder the old inhabitants of Palestine had to be destroyed... many a chap is disgusted with the people.” The Aide de Camp to the commander of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles wrote that “they [the Arab camel drivers] all want rounding up and shot”. Another wrote that one village was a “God forsaken place, and only fit for n****ers to live in”.
These racist views extended to their treatment of the local populace, including stealing crops and livestock, the “concentration” of nomadic Bedouin tribes into camps (or torture to find out if they were spies), trashing bazaars, and indifference to or active participation in their deaths. One soldier noted in his autobiography that the soldiers all laughed when the Arab spectators were shelled during a battle. Gaza City was actually bombed 3 separate times by British forces in 1917, including the use of chemical weapons during the Second Battle of Gaza. The below photo shows New Zealand soldiers donning gas masks, captioned “Gaza Beauty Show”. 4,000 gas shells were fired into the city. The day that British forces took Gaza was the same day that the Balfour Declaration was issued, creating Jewish Palestine.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ufy4ojzjxabtn5gqwosqgxe3/bafkreieb3w6iwcql2gwdm2efqwcvlkt6lko36ot5qvxtpxgxda6wj4it74)
