Australians are joining the chorus of outrage at Israel’s escalating carnage in Gaza and the West Bank. They include Jewish Australians, but few of our political representatives.

Australians’ capacity for concern for individual strangers in faraway parts of the country was something Professor Wang Gungwu, then at ANU, used to marvel at. We grieve over lives lost in this month’s floods, over the death of a misdiagnosed child, and the disappearance of a little boy or a woman jogger.

That concern, to be real, cannot be selective. It should apply equally to Rohingya in Myanmar, and exiled Chagos islanders, as it does to people in Ukraine, Gaza, and the Palestinian territories. It applies to the two dozen surviving Israeli hostages held by Hamas just as it does to the 8000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.

It applies to all of us, including our politicians, as a group of concerned “Australians for Humanity” made clear on 22 May when a “Plea for Humanity: Break the Silence, Act Now” was hand delivered to the prime minister’s electoral office, past a police cordon.

Our message asked him, “Can you hear the children cry?” No response.

Australians’ concern for individuals should be reflected in our government’s policies and actions, particularly after the voters have spoken unambiguously about the Australia they want. Just because “don’t mention the war” was apparently what manipulators like Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin told Peter Dutton, and what Paul Erickson and Mark Liebler may have advised Anthony Albanese, that doesn’t mean Australians went to the polls without a care for the future of people in Ukraine or Gaza or the West Bank.

DFAT gave Albanese’s office some words about ethnic cleansing in February. They were not used, so he shared responsibility for the new Nakba getting worse in March. Israel is now bragging that the total destruction of Gaza and its people is not far off. All Palestinians, from babies to adults, Hamas or not, are “terrorists” according to Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. He wants to see Gaza “completely destroyed” and all its residents dead or displaced, in Israel’s final solution for the territory. Yet still Australia’s prime minister and foreign minister fail to mention the government’s intention, if it exists, to oppose the escalating process.

How much more horrific do the onslaughts have to get before Australia finds its voice and its principles, as the UK, Canada, and France have now begun to do? The worst has just happened. The IDF, ignoring any ceasefire or peace negotiations, has destroyed a house in Gaza, killing nine children under 12 and severely wounding their father and one little boy. The parents, both doctors, took turns working at the Nasser Hospital where the mother had to identify the incinerated bodies of her children. After such an experience, any living person must envy the dead.

In March last year, Australian doctors wrote to the Lancet expressing disgust at the humanitarian crisis and saying they could not believe the silence from many of Australia’s medical leaders. Yet it has just got worse. What if it was Hamas that targeted and destroyed a Jewish family in Israel, headed by two medical professionals? Western outrage would not cut it.

In the months preceding last week’s horror, Australian ministers said little and achieved nothing. Senator Wong has repeatedly deplored Israel’s aid embargo and has joined other countries in calling for a two-state solution. That tried and tired formula excuses them from taking real action. She and her ministerial colleague, Richard Marles, have repeatedly obfuscated about the weapons and components Australia continues to export to Israel, in defiance of the international courts.

On Friday, 23 May, diplomats in New York decided to hold an international conference in June, aimed at advancing global efforts towards achieving a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Worthy as their motives are, not much can be expected to change as a result, for three reasons:

• The two-state formula will not be accepted by Israel, which wants everything, not only from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean), including all of Gaza, as well as Syria;
• All such efforts in the past have failed, and cohabitation by Israelis and Palestinians has become impossible in the future;
• The US continues to arm and support Israel, and in the UN Security Council it will veto any initiative from the conference that seeks to end that; and
• The international courts, lacking the power, cannot enforce their decisions.

Once again, Australia has an opportunity to act independently of its US ally and “forever friend” Israel in support of international law and our common humanity. A re-elected Albanese Government now has no excuse, unless it admits to our collective shame that it lacks the intestinal fortitude. Those who know, but don’t act, are complicit. As our late lamented colleague Ali Kazak said, “Don’t say you didn’t know”.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.