The moral test for Labor has shifted on Gaza: Words are not enough
On the weekend, Israel announced it would take steps to restore aid. Sadly, by this stage it is difficult to know with what level of credulity to treat its government's assertions. Israel has long blamed Hamas for looting aid; on Sunday, The New York Times carried a report based on conversations with Israeli military officials: 'the Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations … In fact, the Israeli military officials said, the UN aid delivery system, which Israel derided and undermined, was largely effective in providing food to Gaza's desperate and hungry population.' This backed reports of a recent American analysis with similar findings.
The starvation of the people of Gaza, then, is not an accident; it is not a tragic byproduct of other actions. As de Waal wrote years ago, 'starve' should not be seen as a passive verb. It is something someone does to someone else. And, it follows, something that others permit to be done. Almost a year ago, one Israeli minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said: 'No one will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though that might be just and moral until they return the hostages.' He was wrong.
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Wong's early call for restraint in Gaza tells us several things. It shows it was possible, at the very beginning, to glimpse some of what was coming. At the same time, Wong's early defensiveness shows how easily participants in public debate – including leading politicians – are able to be knocked off course by efforts to make certain statements unsayable. The conservative press is significant in these efforts; but the rest of the political class, politicians and media, are the ones who allow themselves to be cowed.
Israel has achieved as much as it ever will from this war. In the doing, thousands more Palestinians have been killed. Together, these two facts mean that more things are now able to be said. But the moral and practical test for those with influence has shifted.
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Of course, it's true that Australia can't by itself end the fighting. And it is hard to know what will make Netanyahu listen – or make America behave differently. And it is true, too, that statements can have some effect. The last time famine threatened in Gaza, international pressure led to an increase in aid.
Obviously, though, this was only temporary. And that is why it is important to recognise that other options are available to Australia. The UK has now announced it is working with Jordan to deliver aid and will medically evacuate children. France has said it will recognise Palestine as a state, something former Labor ministers Gareth Evans, Bob Carr and Ed Husic are calling for here.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made clear that Israel has breached international law. This was a welcome injection of clarity. Still, the test at this late stage is no longer whether politicians can issue damning statements. The only meaningful test left is whether our leaders will do everything they can to stop Netanyahu's Israel from killing any more Palestinians.
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News.com.au
4 hours ago
- News.com.au
Israel wants world attention on hostages held in Gaza
Israel said Monday the plight of hostages held in Gaza should top the global agenda, after Palestinian militants released videos showing them looking emaciated, heightening fears for their lives after nearly 22 months in captivity. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, in a press briefing ahead of the UN Security Council session on the issue, said that "the world must put an end to the phenomenon of kidnapping civilians. It must be front and centre on the world stage". Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the ongoing Gaza war, 49 are still held in the Palestinian territory, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead. The UN session was called after Palestinian militant group Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad published last week three videos showing hostages Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David appearing weak and emaciated, causing deep shock and distress in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under mounting international pressure to halt the war, said on Sunday he was "shocked" by the "horror videos of our precious sons". Netanyahu said he had asked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which oversaw past hostage releases during short-lived truces, to provide food and medical treatment to the Israeli captives. Hamas' armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it was willing to allow Red Cross access to the hostages in exchange for permanent humanitarian access for food and medicine into all of Gaza, where UN-mandated experts have warned famine was unfolding. The ICRC said in a statement it was "appalled by the harrowing videos" and reiterated its "call to be granted access to the hostages". - 'Only through a deal' - Netanyahu's government has faced repeated accusations by relatives of hostages and other critics of not doing enough to rescue the captives. "Netanyahu is leading Israel and the hostages to ruin," said a campaign group representing families of the captives. In a statement, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said that "for 22 months, the public has been sold the illusion that military pressure and intense fighting will bring the hostages back." "The truth must be said: expanding the war endangers the lives of the hostages, who are already in immediate mortal danger." Mediation efforts led by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have failed to secure an elusive truce. On Saturday, tens of thousands of people had rallied in the coastal hub of Tel Aviv to call on the government to secure the release of the remaining hostages. Hundreds of retired Israeli security officials including former heads of intelligence agencies have urged US President Donald Trump to pressure their own government to end the war. "It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel," the former officials wrote in an open letter shared with the media on Monday. The war, nearing its 23rd month, "is leading the State of Israel to lose its security and identity," said Ami Ayalon, former director of the Shin Bet security service, in a video released to accompany the letter. The letter argued that the Israeli military "has long accomplished the two objectives that could be achieved by force: dismantling Hamas's military formations and governance." "The third, and most important, can only be achieved through a deal: bringing all the hostages home," it added. - 'We are starving' - Hamas's 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed at least 60,933 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which are deemed reliable by the UN. Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli fire on Monday killed at least 15 Palestinians, including eight who were waiting to collect food aid from a site in central Gaza. In Gaza City, Umm Osama Imad was mourning a relative she said was killed while trying to reach an aid distribution point. "We are starving... He went to bring flour for his family," she said. "The flour is stained with blood. We don't want the flour anymore. Enough!" Further south, in Deir el-Balah, Palestinian man Abdullah Abu Musa told AFP his daughter and her family were killed in an Israeli strike. Decyring the attack on "young children", he said that "perhaps the world will wake up -- but it never will".
The Australian
5 hours ago
- The Australian
US envoy meets Israeli hostage families in Tel Aviv
US envoy Steve Witkoff met anguished relatives of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza on Saturday, as fears for the captives' survival mounted almost 22 months into the war sparked by Hamas's October 2023 attack. Witkoff was greeted with some applause and pleas for assistance from hundreds of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv, before going into a closed meeting with the families. Videos shared online showed him arriving to meet the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, as families chanted "Bring them home!" and "We need your help." The meeting came one day after Witkoff visited a US-backed aid station in Gaza to inspect efforts to get food into the devastated Palestinian territory. "The war needs to end," Yotam Cohen, brother of 21-year-old hostage Nimrod Cohen, told AFP. "The Israeli government will not end it willingly. It has refused to do so," he added. "The Israeli government must be stopped. For our sakes, for our soldiers' sakes, for our hostages' sakes, for our sons and for the future generations of everybody in the Middle East." Of the 251 hostages taken during the Hamas attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead. After the meeting, the Forum released a statement saying Witkoff had given them a personal commitment that he and US President Donald Trump would work to return the remaining hostages. - 'Horrifying acts' - Hamas attempted to maintain pressure on the families, on Friday releasing a video of one of the hostages -- 24-year-old Evyatar David -- for the second time in two days, showing him looking emaciated in a tunnel. The video called for a ceasefire and warned that time was running out for the hostages. David's family said their son was the victim of a "vile" propaganda campaign and accused Hamas of deliberately starving their son. "The deliberate starvation of our son as part of a propaganda campaign is one of the most horrifying acts the world has seen. He is being starved purely to serve Hamas's propaganda," the family said. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Saturday also denounced the video, and one released a day earlier by another Palestinian Islamist group, as "despicable". "They must be freed, without conditions," he posted on X. "Hamas must be disarmed and excluded from ruling Gaza." The United States, along with Egypt and Qatar, had been mediating ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel that would allow the hostages to be released and humanitarian aid to flow more freely. But talks broke down last month and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is under domestic pressure to come up with another way to secure the missing hostages, alive and dead. He is also facing international calls to open Gaza's borders to more food aid, after UN and humanitarian agencies warned that more than two million Palestinian civilians are facing starvation. - 'Without rest' - Israel's top general warned that there would be no respite in fighting if the hostages were not released. "I estimate that in the coming days we will know whether we can reach an agreement for the release of our hostages," armed forces chief of staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said in a statement. "If not, the combat will continue without rest." Zamir denied that there was widespread starvation in Gaza. "The current campaign of false accusations of intentional starvation is a deliberate, timed, and deceitful attempt to accuse the IDF (Israeli military), a moral army, of war crimes," he said. Alongside reports from UN-mandated experts warning a "famine is unfolding" in Gaza, more and more evidence is emerging of serious malnutrition and deaths among the most vulnerable Palestinian civilians. Modallala Dawwas, 33, living in a displacement camp in Gaza City told AFP her daughter Mariam had no known illnesses before the war but had now dropped from 25 kilograms (four stone) to 10 (around one and half stone) and was seriously malnourished. Hamas's 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official figures. Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed at least 60,332 people, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, deemed reliable by the UN. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a post on X early Sunday that one of its staff members was killed and three others wounded in an Israeli attack on its Khan Yunis headquarters in Gaza. Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli fire killed 34 people in the territory on Saturday. Five people were killed in an Israeli strike on an area of central Gaza where Palestinians were awaiting food distribution by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said. The GHF has largely sidelined the longstanding UN-led aid distribution system in Gaza, just as Israel in late May began easing a more than two-month aid blockade that exacerbated existing shortages. The UN human rights office in the Palestinian territories said at least 1,373 Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza were killed since May 27, adding that most of them were killed near GHF sites, and by the Israeli military. burs-gv/jj/tc/sco
Sky News AU
5 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister slams countries for ‘rewarding' Hamas
Israel Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel says Israel will not settle for a two-state solution because it is like 'selling your moral compass'. 'This is a declaration that is giving Hamas, a terrorist organisation, a reward for the worst massacre of Jews since the holocaust,' Ms Haskel told Sky News host Sharri Markson. 'That will only give them incentives to continue and terrorise people all around the world.'
