Break ties with apartheid Israel
A Gazan medic strained to his limits is exhausted beyond comprehension. His clothes are soaked in the blood of victims of Israel’s latest war on the Palestinians. He looks at the dying boy lying on the stretcher in front of him. Time stops. He recognises the face. It is his son.
A tiny baby, chubby like babies are, is writhing in agony on an operating table. A gaggle of nurses and doctors surround her, trying to calm her as they operate to extract metal shard, remnants of an Israeli shell, from her back.
A young man, a father of six, is lying hysterical on the hospital floor. He screams to the camera that he has just seen his children blown away “like paper in the wind”. The Israeli army has just shelled a UN school that was meant to be a safe haven. Of course, nowhere in Gaza is safe.
One man described online the anxiety, grief and tension of living in the densely populated coastal strip:
“Just imagine that moment when the Israeli army calls and orders you to evacuate your home to shell and destroy it within ten minutes. Imagine that!
“Just ten minutes and your little history will be wiped off the earth, your gifts and photos of your brothers and sons, the stuff you like: your chair, books … a letter from a migrant sister, memories of moments with whom you love, your habits of petting a gardenia on your window, your old clothes, your wife’s gold and the money you saved over your life.
“Oh! Everything comes to your mind and astonishes you! And then, you took only your identification papers inside a candy tray and go out to die a thousand times or, instead, you stay and die for once.”
As we go to print more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and another 4,500 are injured. Fifty-six mosques, seven hospitals and 46 schools are damaged or destroyed.
The Palestinians are enduring the largest coordinated offensive by Israel since 2009. Not only is Gaza under siege; repression has increased in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and against Palestinians living in the Zionist state.
Using the pretext of the murder of three Israeli settlers, the army has raided over 2,000 buildings, arrested over 550 people and demolished homes. Racist right wing gangs are attacking both Palestinians and Israeli leftists. Palestinian political activists of all stripes are being detained. Many are being disappeared.
Racism and violence are bred by Israeli apartheid and occupation. Israel is a state based on racial exclusivity. It carries out ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The cultural, physical and economic destruction of the Palestinians has long been the project of Israel. The current round of violence is just the latest expression.
The Australian ruling class is familiar with genocide. Australia is built on the slaughter and dispossession of Indigenous people.
It is therefore hardly surprising that it is bipartisan policy to back Israel. Both the Labor and the Liberal parties have rushed to proclaim “Israel’s right to self defence” – a classic euphemism for “Israel’s right to kill and maim”.
Abbott contacted Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu immediately after the killing of three Israeli settlers. “Dear Bibi,” he wrote. “On behalf of the Australian government and people, I write to extend my condolences … The thoughts and prayers of all Australians are with [you] at this difficult time.”
There have been no similar letters of sympathy to the Palestinian families who have lost loved ones. Gazan lives are dispensable in the eyes of the Australian ruling class. It is more important to maintain the close military, political and trade links between the two countries.
Israel is supported by the big capitalist powers the world over – but the Australian government plays a special role as one of its unflinching backers. Australians therefore have an important duty to try to break this relationship – and to mobilise against the horrors being inflicted on the Palestinians.
