Life on the West Island - Who’s right?

As in many nations, West Island opinions about the conflict between Israel and Palestine are sharply divided. Zealots on both sides damage their credibility and influence by taking extreme positions. Is this a “holy war” or a “genocidal invasion”? Are thousands of Palestinian civilian women and children being slaughtered or are they just “collateral damage” because they are sheltering terrorists?

Our major news outlets have mostly come down on one side, labelling any criticism of the extreme violence by Israel as “antisemitic.” The coalition has taken a similar stance, promoting an all-out Israeli victory and the complete destruction of Hamas, never mind how many women and children might also perish. Meanwhile, the Labor government has tried to avoid taking sides, deploring both terrorism and the heavy loss of civilian lives as “deplorable,” calling on all sides to end the fighting and to agree to a ceasefire. This has earned them the ire of extremists on both sides, and scathing rebukes from both the left and right for failing to stop the fighting by standing up for capitulation by one side or other of the conflict.

But last week, the major parties united to deplore local protests and to end the “violence” on West Island streets and university campuses. Senior Crikey journalist Bernard Keane summed up the climate in Canberra:

There’s plenty of high dudgeon, long bows and confected outrage flying around in and out of Parliament, with the major parties lining up to denounce the Greens: “the party of antisemitism”, according to the Coalition; exploiting Palestinians to “harvest votes” according to Labor. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus went further and suggested Adam Bandt had “something to answer for” in encouraging violence directed at MPs.

This “violence” has largely taken the form of ongoing protests outside parliamentarians’ electorate offices, calling for an end to the killing in Gaza and the West Bank. There has been some concerning minor damage or graffiti and shouted slogans – but this has been exaggerated in the popular media as somehow posing as big a threat to life as are tanks, bombs and missiles fired in many cases at helpless civilians in hospitals, schools and refugee camps. Is this the “equivalence” which caused so much media scorn when the International Court of Justice sought to institute proceedings against those on both sides in Israel and Gaza accused of war crimes against innocent civilians? Somehow, we have fallen into the moral error of accepting that the deaths of 270 citizens are justified as long as four hostages are freed. Or that the total destruction of a major public hospital and killing of its patients is both necessary and sanctioned if some Hamas fighters were believed to be taking shelter there.

The Greens have made exaggerated claims that the Labor government is aiding Israeli genocide by supporting manufacturers who produce small parts of weapons systems for other countries, some of which might eventually finish up with Israel. And they contend that some government contracts indirectly contribute to the finances of an Israeli company that is “complicit in Israel’s atrocities.”

But as Bernard Keane points out:

Labor has its own long bows and confected outrage — indeed, much more so than the Greens. The charge that the Greens are inciting violence is without foundation. More offensive is the argument that the Greens are attempting to harvest votes at the expense of Palestinians. Decrying the mass slaughter of Palestinians is somehow, under that logic, harmful to Palestinians, whereas Labor’s approach of quietly expressing “concern” about each atrocity and calling for a ceasefire is beneficial to them.

What Labor is evidently concerned about is that the Greens are on the other side of a generational divide which sees younger Australians more sympathetic to Palestinians and more critical of Israel than the governing class, which has been duchessed by Israel and pro-Israeli lobby groups and friendly media outlets for decades and which reflexively supports Israel. The deliberate conflation of criticism of Israeli atrocities with antisemitism isn’t merely a tactic of Israeli apologists, but of establishment political figures unnerved by the tide of public anger at the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Reinforcing this is Labor’s treatment of its own Israel critics. Western Australian Senator Fatima Payman has been rebuked by the prime minister and left isolated for her support for Palestinians; pro-Israel NSW Labor leader Chris Minns sacked a frontbencher for entirely justified criticism of the role of NSW police in response to pro-Palestine protests. Federal Labor sided with pro-Israel online activists campaigning to destroy the careers of pro-Palestinian activists and, like Minns, has spoken about hardening “hate speech” laws in response to what is described as a surge in antisemitism (and with no substantial mention of the increase in Islamophobia). You can’t seek to curb the voices of critics of Israel, stay quiet about an Australian murdered by the IDF, isolate and punish pro-Palestinian MPs, and then complain about the Greens attacking you.

For their part, the coalition has continued to cheer on the Israeli invasion of Gaza, its illegal occupation of the West Bank and the huge death toll of women and children it is inflicting on both occupied territories.

So who is right on the West Island about the motivations and actions of the two warring sides in Gaza and the West Bank? The answer is simple – killing of innocent people is never justified. So, both sides are wrong in seeking to whitewash and explain away how the armed forces of Israel and Hamas are each murdering civilians in clear breach of international humanitarian law and even the religious principles which they claim to be promoting. War is bad; mass murder in cold blood is an unforgiveable crime against all humanity. Anyone committing it is decidedly wrong.