It is a Sunday evening, and I am shopping online. But there is a difference.

I am looking for baby formula – in Gaza. I am willing to buy as much as we can find, I tell Abdullah. He is the partner of our Olive Kids charity in Gaza, trying to support 1000 children on the edge of life and death in a cage closed off from the outside world and international aid by the Israeli military, in what some people have decided to call a “war”.

On Tuesday morning, my Gaza shopper is back in touch. There is no formula to be had.

A $2 bag of flour now costs over US$500, if it can be found. Our partner’s warehouse is nearly empty, and yet it was raided, like many others, as starvation is fast-tracked in the chaos created by Israel’s offensive.

This is how delivering aid in Gaza works. Plans constantly change, chasing disappearing supplies before they are gone.

Yet it can be worse. Sometimes you have the supplies – and it is the children who are gone. 

Last month, four children from the Jundieh family were killed with their mother. Ahmed (7), Mohammed (9), Warda (11) and Firas (13) were part of our Olive Kids child sponsorship program. The young boys loved soccer and Warda loved drawing. Firas was devoted to supporting his widowed mother. 

Then there’s Ali Faraj, who was sitting on his father’s knee when he became fatherless, landing on the roof of the building next door. His sister was on the same roof, in two pieces. His five siblings were all killed in the Israeli air strike that sent him flying. Ali survived with his mother, but more than 200 people, their family and neighbours, did not. 

If the Israeli soldiers responsible for such wanton destruction of life are troubled, they have a funny way of showing it. “It’s a boy!” one group of soldiers shouted and laughed after they blew up a building in a cloud of blue smoke. The mass slaughter of Palestinian is compared to the “gender reveal” that accompanies a new birth. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to subject Gaza to indefinite “control” of this sort was swiftly approved by his cabinet. The plan envisions Palestinians being squeezed into the southern third of what was already among the most densely populated regions on earth, in zones mislabelled “safe”.

“Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, a few days after declaring Israel would extend its full sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, where destruction and bloodshed continues unabated. 

This slaughter and starvation have not prompted any significant international mobilisation. No calls for intervention to enforce a ceasefire or resumption of aid. No calls to sanction Israel or expel its diplomats. No military, financial or political consequences. Only words. The words “We will continue to call on all parties – ceasefire, hostage returns and humanitarian aid to be delivered” Penny Wong continues to parrot.

But at 77, Israel is ailing. The old tales that sustained their propaganda in the West stand exposed. The “land without a people" had people, the Palestinians, who never ceded their rights to freedom and sovereignty. People now grasp that it is international law which should be respected, not promises transferred from the scripture of one community among many in our modern world. 

As the “miracle called Israel” narrative wanes, as attempts to dress up a genocide in the clothes of “self-defence” fail, violence, racism and cruelty have become Israel’s only discourse. Even in the US, long a bastion of political and cultural support for Israel, Americans  are increasingly repelled by Zionism’s hideous face. The resurgence of university protests despite their repression is a testament to the depth of the change.

It is a change that seems to have passed our leaders by.

Palestine’s impact on the outcome of Australia’s federal election has been contested. The Greens — the most vocal party on Palestine — have improved their popular vote, but lost their seats in the lower house. Electoral redistributions and Liberal, Labor and One Nation coalescing against them on preferences are the reason for this outcome.

But penalising the Greens for taking a moral stance on Palestine won’t change the feelings of ordinary Australians sickened by Israeli war crimes.

The Liberals, the most militant supporters of Israel’s onslaught, were wiped out and their leader Peter Dutton’s anti-Palestinian racism rejected.

Palestinians and their supporters must not count on the government suddenly finding its conscience at the back of a drawer. We must continue pressing for our country, a middle power with a secure majority government, to use every lever at its disposal to advocate for the rights of Palestinians, as it does for Ukrainians.

Last month, Abdullah helped us get spectacles for 600 children, so they could resume their education. We were going to focus on dental health and education next, but our plans had to change. It is US$11 for a kilo of potatoes, Nidal – another partner of Olive Kids – tells me. Please move fast and secure all the vegetables you can get, I told him, hoping this won’t change tomorrow.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese once said: “We need a government that leaves no one behind." I wonder if his government believes the children of Gaza deserve to be left behind. If it can’t take a tangible step to save them, it is humanity we are leaving behind.