Lebanese and Palestinian lives mean nothing to Western politicians
By Stuart Rees
Oct 6, 2024
The deaths of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians killed by Israel can be ignored, so too the misery of millions. Small wonder that protesters want to register disgust and despair.
During twelve months of slaughter in Gaza and the deaths of one thousand Lebanese within a few days, Australian leaders’ have been silent or reluctant to condemn Israel’s indifference to international law and their taste for bombing and assassination.
In the wake of the slaughter of 41,000 Gazans, 78,000 wounded, 22,000 with life changing injuries and of settler/army pogroms on the West Bank plus torture in Israeli prisons, Lebanon faces the prospect of being bombed out of existence. To avoid being killed, or becoming another casualty among the existing 6000 injured, more than one million people, one fifth of the Lebanese population, have fled.
Small wonder that protesters want to register disgust and despair. Yet suddenly, when a small number of people are seen waving Lebanese flags and, albeit illegally, holding pictures of the murdered Hassan Nasrullah, certain politicians choose to speak, their previous cowardly silence replaced by a chest beating courage.
Awareness of death and destruction in Lebanon and of a year’s savagery in Gaza explains the motivation of protesters. Almost all of those waving Palestinian or Lebanese flags have made non-violent protests to end racism and incessant war. They are not justifying murder by groups identified as terrorists, though, as we’ll see later, they might ask, who are the terrorists?
Political response to murder in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon differs from the judgement of protesters. The deaths of thousands of civilians can be ignored, so too the misery of millions. Law and order must be the priority. Protesters are the problem.
Federal police had initially suggested that protests about the onslaught in Lebanon and the murder of Hassan Nasrullah did not meet the threshold for an investigation, but Labor and Coalition MPs united in a drive to prevent protests and punish protesters.
The Prime Minister judged current protests a threat to multiculturalism and social cohesion, though he might have judged opposition to genocide in Gaza a significant contribution to a sense of national civility and cohesion.
Jacinta Allan, Premier of Victoria, claimed that protests were driving grief and division on the streets of Melbourne. She expected police to pursue illegal protesters. Whose grief was she referring to? Not the despairing families in Gaza and Lebanon?
In backing NSW, police efforts to obtain a Court ruling to prevent pro-Palestine rallies, brave Premier Chris Minns argued that despite 51 weeks of responsible, peaceful rallies there is ‘a high prospect of conflict on the streets of Sydney.’ Conflict comparable to the living hell of Gaza?
Liberal Senator Dave Sharma did not see ‘how any Jewish person could feel safe in Sydney or Melbourne’s CBD.’ What safety did he have in mind? Did he think that one controversial Melbourne protest was the equivalent of Israel’s bombing of terrified citizens in Beirut?
Intent on punishment of alleged offenders, opposition leader Peter Dutton needed to show himself more determined than either the Prime Minister or State Premiers. Finding it impossible to think beyond his police rule book, he declared it ‘unacceptable that the government would not be arresting people already’, and should ‘immediately pass new laws that obligate all members of the community to use the phrase ‘I disavow Hezbollah and Hamas and recognise them as terrorist organisations.’
What 1984-like brave new world does Dutton live in?
Challenging media and politicians’ repeat of the label ‘terrorist’ does not involve justification of the actions of Hamas or Hezbollah, but it should raise questions about decades of state terrorism by successive Israeli governments. With gutsy exceptions, major political parties and their media backers have cowered behind a notion that Israel can do what it likes, despite the brutalities promoted by the most extreme government in Israeli history.
The stands taken by newly aware Australian leaders’ would seem to imply support for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s agenda for destroying and killing across Gaza and in Lebanon. For example, to show loyalty to Israel and his faith in military aggression, Dutton opposes a ceasefire in Lebanon.
In a war mongering speech to the UN, and with the aid of maps marked ‘Blessed’ and ‘Cursed’, Netanyahu explained his Manichean way of thinking. There were good, blessed people who supported Israel. His civilised world was opposed by evil, cursed people, any group questioning Israeli policies, which presumably includes protesters in Australia?
In his Orwellian diatribe, Netanyahu claimed he spoke truths. He sought peace, Israel yearns for peace. No mention of human rights or justice yet he boasted, ‘we are winning.’ Since when might peace be achieved by winning as illustrated by the deaths of thousands of women and children and by a promise to continue to kill and destroy anyone he considers uncivilised.
Lest anyone who supports this Israeli government still be unclear what they are representing, Netanyahu finished his speech by calling the UN ‘a house of darkness and a swamp of anti-Semitic bile’.
Current global turmoil is fuelled by decades of denying Palestinians’ human rights, by treating them as inferior and labelling as terrorists any groups who challenge this cruel and divisive way of thinking.
An alternative way of thinking has been discouraged by that western cultivated belief that Israeli aggression must be supported whatever the costs, witness the US constant use of its veto in motions before the UN Security Council that urged attention be paid to Palestinians’ lives.
Lest the nature of Israeli policies be forgotten, remember Israeli Defence Minister Gallant’s October 9 2023 promise to impose ‘a complete siege of Gaza: no food, water, fuel or electricity.’
In the light of such incivility and the human catastrophe that has followed, politicians have recently tried to appear courageous by preventing protests against Australia’s support for Israel’s siege of Gaza.
As a life enhancing, humanitarian alternative, they could operate according to the morality they usually claim to believe in: support international law, provide humanitarian aid, value dialogue, outlaw the endless killing.
But choosing that alternative would break a Western – US, Australian, European – ideology that Israel should not be unduly criticised, it has a ‘right to defend itself’ and must remain an exception to the rule of international law. Until that ideology is abandoned, western claims about a rule based order sound hypocritical, and prospects for peace look dim.
Stuart Rees AM is Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney & recipient of the Jerusalem (Al Quds) Peace Prize.
https://johnmenadue.com/lebanese-and-palestinian-lives-mean-nothing-to-western-politicians/
