A few days after the Hamas breakout from Gaza last October 7, I raised the question of how far Israel might be permitted to advance along the road to moral turpitude. After almost a year now, there is no doubt that the answer is: a very long way indeed. 

With few exceptions Western countries, led by the USA and vigorously supported by the Australian Government, rushed to bolster the brutal Israeli retaliation on Gaza from the very beginning, with an inexhaustible supply of both weapons and rhetorical diplomatic cover. By now well over 50,000 tons of war materiel have been delivered to Israel in the past 12 months. Of course the Palestinians have received nothing.

A signal result is that both the so-called “rules-based international order” and the hubristic Western assumption of a superior moral authority have now been shredded and lie in tatters.

Similarly, the two-state solution has been finally exposed as a hollow fiction. Netanyahu has explicitly stated there will be no Palestinian state, and has subsequently faced wide condemnation after showing a map of Israel that excluded the occupied West Bank in a televised news briefing on Monday September 2. He repeated this performance at the UN later in the month. His response to the ICJ ruling was that “the Jewish nation cannot be an occupier in its own land.”

The Knesset has passed a resolution confirming the same position on two states. As long ago as January, far-right finance minister Smotrich said, in comments reported by Haaretz, “My life’s mission is to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

The sham Western diplomatic cover for Israel’s monstrous retaliation has been shattered by both the World Court ruling of July 19 and the Zionists’ very own disavowals. There is no Israeli intention to even countenance a Palestinian state. Unlike their Western apologists, they don’t even offer a pretence. None of this has made any difference to the Australian Government’s position, which is to cling to the discredited two-state solution in order to avoid taking a clear stand against the ongoing horror.

The two-state solution was always a cynical deception by which Western governments, including Australia, have allowed themselves to be serially deceived by Zionist strategists, who have assumed the divine historical right to create one single Jewish state, a Greater Israel, “from the river to the sea”, at the expense of Palestinian lives, rights, freedoms, land, property, aspirations, and indeed the very existence of the Palestinian nation.

Western hypocrisy now stands unmasked through its venal complicity in the commission of a heinous genocide in Gaza. There is no atrocity the IDF can commit that will merit an unequivocal rebuke, or even a response beyond the feeble expression of “concern” from the US or its “partners”, who are now deeply mired in these egregious crimes against humanity, and flagrant transgressions of international law.

The Australian Government has deployed ab initio a pitiless and relentless presumption of guilt against the Palestinians and, conversely, one of innocence in favour of Israel. This was clearly demonstrated when Israel, without evidence, accused UNRWA workers of participating in the October 7 attacks. The Australian Government and over a dozen other Western donor countries immediately cut funding to that vital Palestinian refugee organisation. The funding was only restored almost two months later, well after it became clear that Israel was not going to provide any proof of UNRWA’s alleged complicity. It has become increasingly obvious that Israel habitually lies and deceives, as a matter of course, to conceal its crimes and advance its illegal colonial project.

When Israel assassinates its enemies in neighbouring states and indiscriminately kills and mutilates thousands of Lebanese citizens, the likes of Blinken and Wong bizarrely urge restraint on Iran and Hezbollah, while refusing to condemn the initial cause: Israel’s savage violations of international law. Again, the presumption is always in favour of Israel. After the synchronised explosions of the booby-trapped communications devices in Lebanon, killing scores and severely wounding thousands, the US cautioned Hezbollah and Lebanon against escalating the conflict. Israel, the prime suspect, wasn’t even mentioned.

Over this past year, and entirely consistent with its previous behaviour spanning decades, the Zionist state has indiscriminately murdered tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children, snubbed its nose at dozens of UN resolutions, defied the ICJ and international law, mocked the requirement of proportionality in its retaliation, and suborned compliant Western governments with powerful lobbying and deceitful propaganda, deploying both political donations and the dregs of a fast-diminishing stock of moral capital, into abetting the ruthless extermination of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Australian support remains undiminished, and our international reputation is becoming increasingly tarnished, including in our neighbouring Muslim majority states, particularly Indonesia, containing the fourth largest national population on earth.

As foreshadowed by several Israeli government ministers, the reprisals in response to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7 rapidly intensified into a full-blown genocide, as essential supplies of food and fuel were denied, schools and hospitals systematically obliterated, and large residential blocks intentionally and completely destroyed on the pretext of targeting Hamas fighters; medical supplies have been blocked, in defiance of international law, with diseases spreading unchecked throughout the defenceless population. The Lancet, not a publication given to much exaggeration, months ago estimated that upwards of 186,000 Palestinians may have perished in Israel’s ruthless and massively disproportionate response. That grim estimate can be extrapolated to well over 200,000 by now.

With few exceptions the governments, opposition parties, mainstream media and political elites in the West have acquiesced, or even openly celebrated, this relentless slaughter. Netanyahu received dozens of standing ovations, bringing both houses down when he addressed the US Congress.

Western cheer squads for Israel occasionally express a muted “concern” when a particularly gruesome act of barbarism is perpetrated, especially if it involves Western humanitarian workers. In response, the Israeli military might announces a placatory investigation by the IDF, but the macabre carnival of death continues apace, unchallenged and unchecked by Israel’s febrile supporters.

As elsewhere, in Australia Albanese, Wong, Marles, Dutton, Birmingham, and indeed the vast majority of Labor and Coalition MPs have disingenuously parroted Israel’s “right to defend itself” for the past year, repeating their feckless lip service to the “two state solution” while studiously avoiding the crucial recognition of one of those states: Palestine. This brazen hypocrisy, breathtaking in its mendacity, reveals the Australian political establishment’s racist indifference to the plight of the Palestinians in their ongoing struggle for national liberation. It also clearly reveals Australia’s abrogation of its legal responsibilities under international law.

Israel’s “right to defend itself” is a “right” that Israel specifically does not have, as the ICJ declared on July 19 and the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly (124-14) confirmed on September 18, because Israel is permanently violating the rights of the Palestinians through its prolonged occupation, apartheid rule and ethnic cleansing. In a warning to all countries, including Australia, the ICJ found that each and every State and international organisation has a positive obligation not to render aid or assistance which would maintain Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Australia shamelessly abstained from the UNGA vote demanding an end to Israel’s illegal occupation. In her stale apologia for this reckless abstention FM Wong continues to use the purported two-state solution as cover for her Government’s abject refusal to condemn the massacres of the genocidal Zionist regime.

The Australian Government has done nothing to assist the implementation of the ICJ findings. It refuses to suspend trade in military equipment, sanction Israel, expel any diplomatic staff, or recall our own people from Tel Aviv. It is thus aiding and abetting the commission of the mass slaughter of a defenceless people. The majority of the victims, up to 70% it bears repeating, are unarmed innocents: women and children.

Off the battlefield and back in Israel, recently IDF military police arrested nine soldiers for allegedly “mistreating” a Palestinian prisoner by raping him with a baton at Sde Teiman Prison. The arrests provoked a riot by outraged Israeli citizens, who were joined by Knesset lawmakers, some of whom declared that the accused were heroes not criminals.

Far-right Israeli lawmaker Limor Son Har-Melech threatened at a subsequent rally that any prosecutors of Israeli soldiers for alleged crimes during its war against Gaza would be “charged and prosecuted as the lowest of traitors”.

According to a report released by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), between October 7, 2023 and July 31, at least 53 Palestinian prisoners died in Israeli custody. In June, a shocking investigation by the New York Times uncovered harrowing conditions endured by the approximately 10,000 Palestinians detained by Israel, approximately one third of whom are detained without having been charged. In other words they are hostages, though never described as such in the Western media.

Horrific accounts of rape were reported by the NYT investigation into the Sde Teiman detention facility. Khaled Mahajneh, the first lawyer who the military permitted to visit Sde Teiman, corroborated the NYT report uncovering rape, declaring, “The situation there is more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.”

Published originally in the Hebrew newspaper Mekomit, the accounts paint a grim picture of systematic abuse, savage beatings, torture, sexual assault and other inhumane treatment of Palestinian detainees.

The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem concluded in an August report that Israeli prisons and detention facilities, “in which every inmate is intentionally condemned to severe, relentless pain and suffering, operate as de-facto torture camps.”

None of these atrocities have dented the popular enthusiasm within Israel for the prosecution of the genocide. The Israeli military operates not only with full impunity, but also the backing of a large segment of Israeli society when carrying out abuses against Palestinians held under their detention.

According to an Israeli Institute for National Security Studies poll, 65% of Jewish Israelis oppose criminal prosecution for the gang rape suspects, and 47% of Jewish Israelis answered that “Israel does not need to abide by international law and maintain moral values in the war.” Polling consistently demonstrates that less than five per cent of Jewish Israelis think the IDF has “gone too far” or “used excessive force” since October 7.

Excessive violence, a hallmark of Israeli policy for decades, has been further “refined” using AI targeting systems. According to Israeli military sources, the IDF initially decided that for every junior Hamas member, 15 or 20 civilians could be permissibly targeted and killed. If the Hamas member was a senior commander, the IDF on several occasions reportedly authorised the killing of over 100 civilians to fulfil its objective. In June this year the Israeli military killed at least 276 people and injured over 698, according to Palestinian health officials, during a mission to rescue hostages in the Nuseirat refugee camp inside Gaza. American officials confirmed that US intelligence assisted the IDF in this especially brutal massacre.

These facts and figures should be deeply disturbing for all Australians, but particularly those politicians who have allowed themselves to be duped by the Israeli propaganda machine to run an unrelenting rhetorical cover for the apocalyptic vengeance being wrought by Israel.

The Zionist regime has recently assassinated several leaders of the Palestinian resistance in Beirut and Tehran, as well as Iranian military personnel in Damascus, an egregious violation of both international law and the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the targeted countries. What’s more, Ismail Haniyeh, killed in Tehran, was Hamas’ lead negotiator in the ongoing talks on a hostage release and ceasefire. It’s clear that if one is seriously trying to reach an agreement one shouldn’t murder the other side’s top negotiator.

It has now become obvious that Netanyahu, under political siege, has no interest in ending the slaughter, and may even consider the hostages expendable, consistent with the ruthless implementation of the Hannibal Protocol on October 7, still underreported in the Western media.

The other military protocol never mentioned in the Western media is the Dahiya Doctrine, named after the suburb in Beirut levelled by the IDF in the Lebanese civil war in 2006, a policy which was explained by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel as a form of “asymmetrical combat against an enemy that is not a regular army and is embedded within a civilian population; its objective is to avoid a protracted guerilla war. According to this approach Israel has to employ tremendous force disproportionate to the magnitude of the enemy’s actions.”

Israeli security analyst Gabi Siboni further explains that in an outbreak of hostilities with Hezbollah, “the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy’s actions and the threat it poses. Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes. In such cases, Israel again will not be able to limit its response to actions whose severity is seemingly proportionate. It will have to respond disproportionately.”

In short, Israeli military doctrine unequivocally promotes a shameless violation of international law. The disproportionate responses are not accidental or mistaken, nor due to a breakdown in communication, or the actions of rogue officers or soldiers. It is a standard, routine, evil practice.

In other words, the doctrine of proportionality inherent in the laws of armed conflict simply does not exist for Israel. Like its US armourer, Israel considers itself an exceptional state which is not bound by the rules which apply to the rest of the international community.

The same impetus has propelled the assassinations in sovereign states and the recent indiscriminate booby-trapped pager terrorist attacks by Israel, which have served as a prelude to the opening of a front in Lebanon and significantly increased the possibility of a wider conflict, not only between Israel and Hezbollah, but also involving Iran and the United States. Some analysts have even suggested that Russia and China may become involved. Of course, Israel possesses nuclear weapons. It’s widely believed that Iran could make a small number at short notice. The region stands on a knife edge.

To return to the question posed above, Israel’s progressive decline over decades into a form of barbarism acceptable to the West has been enabled by the kind of blanket, uncritical support typified by the US and Australia. Many hope for a Harris presidency next year. While maybe preferable to the alternative, either way there will be no lessening of US support for Israel and its ongoing ruthless program of Palestinian expropriation and extermination.

Israel knows it can commit war crimes with impunity. In late August it launched its largest assault on the West Bank since 2002, some 800 Palestinians now having been killed there since October 7 by the IDF and illegal Zionist settlers armed by the state. Since that time more than 3,000 Palestinians have been displaced due to IDF demolitions of their homes. During the same period, the United Nations recorded 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians.

Fatuous declarations that Israel has a “right to defend itself”, and that “we will always stand by Israel”, are thus shamelessly inadequate responses to a legally declared “plausible genocide”. Israel’s “right to defend itself” has now become a right to commit genocide.

These contrived Zionist fictions have always deserved to be flung into the dustbin of history; now they have been, by the International Court of Justice, by the disavowals of the Israeli parliament and ministers, and by the pitiless savagery of the armed forces of the Zionist regime.

The lessons for Australia from the Gaza conflict could not be more clear. Increasingly bound to the USA militarily, economically and culturally, on the international stage we are hamstrung, unable to formulate and express an independent and principled stance in our foreign affairs. We constantly conform to American expectations and requirements in our foreign policy and defence ‘posturing’, a ludicrously apt term under the circumstances. Marles and Wong have even recently made “undisclosed political commitments” to the Americans. Such is the current state of our slavish obedience to the USA.

Australian sovereignty is now in calamitous decline, as we encourage the rapid growth of US military bases on our soil. It is crucially important to understand that we have absolutely zero control over what happens on those bases, or indeed what is fired off from them. These innovations, including the transit and possibly storage of nuclear weapons, create a profusion of targets for any foreign military attacks, including nuclear attacks, as we transform our country into a willing “partner” for an unprovoked US aggression against China.

Cheerfully relinquishing our sovereignty, disingenuous and hypocritical in our foreign policy, and obsequious in our vassalage, we are bereft of an authentically independent voice by which we might assert a principled position on the world stage, advocating for the peaceful resolution of conflict, in favour of demilitarisation, and against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The Gazan conflict has thrown our uncritical support of Israel and disregard for international law into stark relief. Through our subservience to the US we have become increasingly vulnerable to the uncertainties inherent in the erratic, irresponsible and reckless behaviour of a great power in decline.

It’s way past time we came of age and stood on our own two feet. Our future as an independent nation will most certainly depend on it.

 https://johnmenadue.com/gaza-one-year-on-lessons-for-australia/

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.