The Australian Government must condemn Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza and its plans to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homelands. It is also the responsibility of the national broadcaster to hold Canberra to account, by demanding this condemnation of our ally Israel for its gross and indisputable violations of international law.

A placard often seen at rallies for Palestine presents a favourite quote from Archbishop Dennis Tutu, that, “if you remain neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”. The quote is particularly apposite to Gaza, where the situation facing the trapped and starved population has long gone from “injustice” to “inhumanity”, and as a direct result of Israel’s remorseless and merciless bombardment.

Few sane and humane people would consider that what Israel has done to the 2.3 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip constitutes a just punishment for what they are alleged to have done to Israelis during the prison break-out of 7 October 2023. Neither would they accept any of Israel’s excuses or pretexts for its massive and indiscriminate slaughter of innocent non-combatants. Initially, Israeli leaders and their spokesmen made excuses for “collateral damage” to civilians, blaming Hamas for using the population as human shields, but more recently they have denied culpability, even saying that they make every effort to avoid civilian casualties.

Neither of these pathetic lies was criticised and exposed by our “official media” — the ABC and SBS — who “remained neutral” in this situation of extreme “injustice”. In the first case, they consistently failed to condemn the blatant war crime of killing and injuring hundreds of people who were “in the way” of an alleged “terrorist” target; in the second case, they simply reported the monstrous claim without comment. Neither did these media point out that the Israeli killing machine was quite capable of — and expert at — picking off chosen and named individuals using surveillance drones and quadcopters, often targeting and killing journalists or their family members, aid workers and community leaders.

It didn’t take much for fair observers to conclude that the Israeli Government and military’s objective was actually simply to kill Palestinians in Gaza, whether Hamas militants or women and children. Both the Hamas or Islamic Jihad militants and the Israeli hostages they held created the pretext Israel needed to pursue its real agenda, which was always the ethnic cleansing or extermination of the indigenous........

© Pearls and Irritations