What happens in Australia if Israel gets away with genocide?

Yes, the first response to that question is rightly, who cares? It is Palestine and Palestinians who should be the focus of any such question. When it comes to Israel getting away with murder, it is Palestinians that have paid the price.

That is increasingly self-evident as will be explored further, but the world has witnessed this genocide nightly live-streamed into our homes. We have seen the starvation, the families mowed down while trying to get food, the more than 300 journalists murdered, the hospitals bombed, schools razed to the ground, we have seen the footage of the extraordinary violence of settlers terrorising communities in the West Bank. We heard the voice of Hind Rajab as an Israeli tank unit fired 355 bullets into her and her family.

Whether we have had our faces pressed up against the screen, caught it all out the corner of our eye, or resolutely, belligerently, looked the other way, there is no way to not know what we all now know. Israel committed, and continues to commit, genocide in broad daylight and we have all watched, sometimes in horror, as they did so. We are in relationship with this state-sanctioned violence and we must pick our way through its implications for us or suffer the consequences.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel has found Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Regarding the detention of Palestinians in Israeli military camps and detention facilities, the report found that thousands of child and adult detainees, many of whom were arbitrarily detained, have been subjected to widespread and systematic abuse, physical and psychological violence, and sexual and gender-based violence amounting to the war crime and crime against humanity of torture and the war crime of rape and other forms of sexual violence.

This finding matters for Australia because Australia ratified the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) in 1949. The Convention declares genocide a crime under international law which contracting parties undertake “to prevent and to punish”. It is the “prevent and punish” aspect that draws Australia into the hellscape of Gaza in a meaningful and political way. But that is not the only impact this genocide has, and will continue to have, on Australia.

So, what happens to us if there are no consequences for Israel?

Politically, it appears the Albanese Government will hope the ceasefire holds and the Arab states agree to rebuild Gaza. Certainly, Albanese’s statement on the ceasefire announcement reflects an attitude of the less said the better. There is no admonishing of Israel and its genocidal intent, and certainly nothing to suggest the nation that made the genocide possible, the US, is anything less than a peacemaker. This announcement does not bode well for the hope that Australia may reflect on our own complicity in the supply of weapons parts, and the refusal to sanction, boycott or expel the Israeli ambassador.

Indeed, The Guardian reported on the 25 October, that the Australian defence department signed a contract with Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, on 1 September, two weeks before a UN commission of inquiry found Israel was  committing genocide in Gaza. Details of the contract were not published on the Australian Government’s contract database until last week.

Does this apparently relaxed and comfortable approach to genocide matter? As we are constantly reminded, Australia is a middle power and a long way from Palestine. And as Foreign Minister Penny Wong said at the time of the genocide finding, Australia had been clear, before the inquiry report, that the situation in Gaza had “gone beyond the world’s worst fears”, adding, “Together with partners, we have condemned Israel’s denial of aid and the killing of civilians seeking to access water and food.” Sadly the statement carefully avoids the use of the term, genocide.

But does this matter for you and me, for the broader Australia community?

Imagine this. The countries of the world are houses, families living in a large suburban cul-de-sac. We are all vaguely aware of the noises, the comings and goings of the occupants when suddenly we begin to hear screams coming from the house of Palestine, we see the neighbour has attacked the house with unimaginable ferocity. The screams of the children and women echo through the cul-de-sac. As time passes, the scream become more desperate, we know there is no food in the house, the smell of bodies grows, but the neighbour reassures everyone the house of Palestine is fine but poses a threat so they need to be contained.

The howling and horror continues unabated. And we wait for the police to come, we wait for someone to turn up and stop the attacks, we tell ourselves and each other that any day now someone will stop the slaughter and we get about our business hoping it stops.

It doesn’t stop. The house is razed to the ground, the children and families are dead. The neighbour is joined by other big houses and they agree it is time to stop killing everyone. The whole cul-de-sac erupts in applause – how great to have the fighting end.

But the smell of death wafts through the neighbourhood and, though we all avert our gaze, we now get about our business knowing two new central facts of life.

When the bully comes for us and ours, no one will fight for us, no one will turn up to protect us. We are on our own. The community will avert their gaze and there will be no police to impose safety. And secondly, we know that somehow, we have played a vital role as a bystander who watched on and did nothing.

There will be a fine layer of shame that settles on all of us, even as our fear and vulnerability grows. If there is no consequence for Israel and all the nations that facilitated this genocide, there is every reason to believe that genocide will become the form of war for this century.

This is what happens to us if Israel gets away with murder.

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