Can you sleep at night knowing that your fascist Israeli mates have killed 3,000 children over the last three weeks? That is one child killed every 13 minutes in Gaza. And that doesn’t include the estimated 1,000 little souls laying dead under rubble that distraught fathers can’t rescue. Can you hear the screams of the mothers and babies trapped under the bombs from America that you supported? By your silence, and maybe with your voice, in closed rooms, with that unfeeling geriatric friend of yours, Joe.
Can you hear the cries of children as they are operated on with no anaesthetic, using vinegar to clean wounds by doctors using only torches, on the floor as there is no empty operating rooms, no fuel for the generators and no electricity or water that your mates have thoughtfully cut off.
Can you imagine being a doctor or nurse trying to save thousands of people needing medicine, patients needing operations, and others on life support systems, being told by your Israeli mates that you are about to be bombed. Move out of that hospital or we will bomb you all. And that is a war crime among the many so far.
Can you for one moment think of the nurses, doctors, and ambulance drivers who have been killed attending to the wounded. Your Israeli mates are good at that. They have been doing it for years. Bombing hospitals, destroying UNRWA health clinics, and more.
Can you think what you will do as hundreds of children will now die of diarrhoea, respiratory illnesses, or indeed thousands might die of cholera which the WHO is now warning of.
Can you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning and smile at the thought that at last you are PM as the dead keep mounting in one of the most horrific, barbaric, brutal massacres on a trapped population to occur since the Rwandan genocide.
Can you put your nice, no doubt now expensive suit on, knowing that people in Gaza can’t wash and women with their periods are using washed out pad. Using sanitation must be horrific without water because the pumps have no fuel. While your mate Richard so gleefully agrees with his fascist mates that fuel should not be sent into a population of 2.2 million.
Can you sit in your comfortable chair in your PM’s office and block out the news that the fascist Israeli government that you, Penny and Richard continue to remind us like a broken record “Has A Right to Defend itself”, the “most moral army in the world”, commits a massacre, a genocide in Gaza. Blowing its women and children to bits and pieces in unrelenting bombing. Women and children that no one can rescue as there is no fuel, no electricity and now all communications are cut.
Can you cuddle your lovely dog while your fascist mates in Israel call Palestinians animals and give guns to religious zealot Settlers in the OPT (nice of Penny to be forced to call it that when the ALP policy is to recognise Palestine) set on vicious revenge.
Can you look in the mirror and see that ageing face and greying hair of yours and remember the young man I knew with moral courage who stood with us against Apartheid South Africa, but now refuses to call Israel an Apartheid state.
Where is that young man now?
Can you comfortably put your feet up at night and lament the undermining of the United Nations by your Israeli mates. They, who with the help of our own Doc Evatt were generously given a seat at its table and who now hurl disgraceful and abusive language at the Secretary General who is only calling for a ceasefire, for humanitarian aid to be given to Gaza, for peace and justice for Palestinians and actually telling the truth about the long term subjugation of Palestinians.
Can you sit in Cabinet and reassure them that your government will not be sued for war crimes? Even if that does not happen, you are complicit by your support for Israel’s leaders, who most certainly will be charged with multiple war crimes.
Can you sleep soundly at night Antony. Knowing that you are party to a massacre. Party to an horrific war crime that many, many others, myself included, will never forgive you for.
It will be a stain on your otherwise good record, as it already is a stain on the collective consciousness of the world, as described as such by UNICEF today.
Dr Helen McCue has previously worked as a consultant with the United Nations in the Middle East working with refugees and displaced. Dr McCue has been a strong advocate for Palestinian human rights including the rights of Palestinian refugees for over 40 years.
Co-Founder of Union Aid Abroad APHEDA.
Former United Nations Consultant.