Predators Protected: From Epstein to Gaza

From Gaza’s mass killing to Epstein’s crimes, impunity thrives where power is protected and truth is denied.

Before I begin critiquing the ongoing stupidity of the media and commentators being rolled out to further propagate the lies of October 7 - and to continue denying the genocide in Gaza - I’d like to think everyone had a peaceful Christmas and reflected on how the global community has helped foster the rise of evil now dominating the world. Inaction, apathy, and the malaise of naivety have driven the world’s descent into hell.

I spent Christmas Eve through to December 30 nursing a foot injury - entirely self-inflicted. Don’t ever wear thongs with arches if you’ve never worn them before and walk for hours on end. My left foot paid a heavy price for my stupidity.

I’ve now come good. Through forced, imposed rest - the care of my brilliant doctor Viv, and a corticosteroid injection into my foot as a last resort to reduce severe tendon swelling (normal anti-inflammatory medications weren’t working), my foot has returned to normal. Add to that contracting RSV and Influenza A just four days after returning from Vietnam, and life has been challenging.

Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and reading Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s Nobody’s Girl (a must-read) have only reinforced how sick the world is. For a confronting dose of depravity and the corrosive effects of power - what it does to men and women allowed to behave without accountability, believing themselves untouchable - Giuffre’s book exposes the illness consuming us, and why decency must rise to counter humanity’s failings.

Complicity in genocide, Gaza and its horrors, Giuffre’s explicit account of Epstein’s depravity, and the rich and powerful who enabled him all intersect - marrying together to reveal the same figures and names, political leaders and the wealthy elite. The cowards of evil who traffic and rape young girls are among the same named and unnamed figures who have led the world to where it now finds itself.

This morning, back at my desk, I was sent an article The Australian’s Joshua Dablestein wrote on October 13 last year. Surprisingly, I had missed it. Dablestein’s piece demonstrates a shameless lust for fantasy, couched in an authoritarian posture of false knowledge, insight, and reason – it’s disturbingly sad.

It was in this context I revisited commentary written by Joshua Dablestein for The Australian on October 13, entitled “Peace deal irrelevant for Hamas hipsters.” The piece is not a serious examination of diplomacy or ceasefire compliance. It is a cultural broadside aimed at discrediting protest rather than interrogating power.

Dablestein’s core claim is that the continuation of pro-Palestinian protests after a Gaza peace deal demonstrates that activists aren’t interested in peace. He characterises the movement as aesthetic, fashion-driven, and ideologically hollow - a subculture rather than a political response to ongoing violence. In his framing, protest itself becomes evidence of bad faith.

But this argument collapses immediately under scrutiny, because Dablestein never examines the substance of the peace deal, nor whether it’s been honoured.

He doesn’t ask who’s complying with the ceasefire, examine whether hostilities have genuinely ceased or acknowledge the continuation of Israeli military operations in Gaza following the agreement. Instead, he treats the mere existence of a deal as dispositive, and any ongoing protest as proof of extremism.

This is a category error. Protest doesn’t end when a deal is announced; it ends when violence stops.

Since the ceasefire was agreed to, Israel has continued military operations in Gaza - including airstrikes, sniper fire, raids, and the restriction of humanitarian aid. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed during what is described as a “pause.” A ceasefire breached by one party isn’t peace; it’s unilateral impunity. Dablestein’s article doesn’t engage with this reality at all.

Instead, Dablestein advances a second claim: that the protest movement is ultimately predicated on the elimination of Israel rather than the pursuit of justice or peace. This assertion is presented as self-evident, supported primarily by selective imagery, graffiti, and extreme rhetoric at the margins of protest.

Dablestein isn’t analysing; he’s generalisating.

Large-scale protest movements aren’t defined by their most provocative signs or slogans. They’re defined by their central demands. In Australia and globally, those demands have consistently included an end to the siege of Gaza, an end to civilian killing, and accountability for violations of international law. Dablestein doesn’t seriously engage with those demands - he dismisses them as camouflage.

His third major move is to collapse all protest into October 7. He repeatedly invokes the narrative of lies of that day and the projection of evil that Israel has continually enacted - implying contemporary protest glorifies or excuses them. But again, he avoids the harder question: whether invoking October 7 absolves a state of responsibility for what follows.

October 7 doesn’t suspend international law. It doesn’t license collective punishment or justify indefinite siege or the killing of civilians under a ceasefire. Yet Dablestein treats outrage at Israel’s actions as morally illegitimate unless it’s preceded by ritual denunciation - a standard he doesn’t apply in reverse.

Finally, Dablestein directs his ire at cultural institutions, universities, artists, and media figures, accusing them of producing and normalising radicalism. This critique might merit discussion - if it were grounded in an honest assessment of why people are mobilising.

People aren’t protesting because activism is fashionable. They’re protesting because Gaza continues to be destroyed, civilians continue to die, and political leaders continue to deny reality. Reducing this to “hipster politics” isn’t insight; it’s evasion.

The connection to Giuffre’s story is not metaphorical. The same logic underpins both cases: powerful actors are shielded, critics are pathologised, and institutions close ranks to protect authority. Abuse persists not because it’s hidden, but because it’s excused.

Dablestein’s article doesn’t interrogate power. It defends it - by shifting the focus away from state violence and onto those who object to it. It’s not commentary in the public interest but narrative management.

Ignorance is no longer plausible. The facts are visible. The casualties are counted. The violations are documented. To continue writing as though protest is the problem - rather than the violence that provokes it - is a choice.

And it is precisely that choice that defines the moral failure of this commentary.

Happy 2026 everyone.