Australia repeatedly fights as the deputy sheriff in our ally’s wars. Afterwards, our contributions are forgotten and we continue to dodge blame for the disastrous results, including war crimes. Can we get away with this over Gaza?

Australia is hardly mentioned ‒ four times in fact ‒ among dozens of other countries accountable for the genocide in Gaza. They are listed by Francesca Albanese in her latest report to the UN. But we are often there among the un-named also-rans, the complicit states.

In a typically powerful statement, Albanese argues that the blame for ongoing genocide in Gaza does not rest with Israel and the US alone, but that it is an internationally enabled crime committed by complicit states. She lists nations that extend direct support, material aid, diplomatic protection and, in some cases, active participation to Israel.

She particularly mentions countries whose own colonial past makes them familiar with narratives about displacing and violently dominating indigenous or coloured people in countries they have invaded.

States that support Israel diplomatically, she finds, have normalised the Israeli occupation and failed to achieve a permanent ceasefire. Military support from the US and Europe has enabled Israel to impose conditions on the Palestinian people that are calculated to destroy all of them. Such countries’ economic co-operation has fuelled Israel’s profits from the illegal occupation and genocide. In all these ways, and legally, Israel and its supporters are complicit. And, in all of them, Australia is an unmentioned participant.

Albanese specifically cites Australia as having, in July 2024, imposed sanctions on some extremist (Israeli) settlers and organisations, along with similar action by the UK and EU, Canada and New Zealand. She also notes that Australia, the UK, Canada and Norway sanctioned Israeli Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich (in case they might visit any of our countries).

She recalls that from late 2023, Australia, New Zealand and Canada began to press Israel for a “sustained ceasefire” that — as they must have expected — was blocked in the UN Security Council by the US, one of seven such vetoes. In February 2024, the three allies criticised the planned invasion of Rafah even while they withdrew funding from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Australia later backed down.

Australia, Canada and the UK are again mentioned by Albanese as having continued to grant export licences for weapons to Israel and having failed to review partially retained licences despite acknowledged concerns. They have permitted the transfer of weapons through other ports and airports. They are among 19 states that supply components for arms used by Israel, particularly the F-35 stealth strike fighter, key to the Israeli military assault in Gaza. Seventeen of those nations, including Australia, have ratified the Arms Trade Treaty, which they seem to have forgotten.

While Albanese’s report and its four mentions of Australia have been all but ignored by the mainstream media, some government MPs and human rights experts have called for Israel’s largest weapons companies not to be allowed to attend a military conference in Sydney next week, which is sponsored by the NSW Government. An Australian subsidiary of Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, and the state-owned company, Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, are exhibitors at the Indo Pacific International Maritime Exposition, that promotes weapons sales.

These companies have been criticised by Chris Sidoti, a former member of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, for being “key enablers of the Israel Defence Force in its commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza over the last two years”. In a webinar on 31 October, organised by Australians for Humanity, he echoed Albanese in pointing to the obligations of third states, not just Israel and Palestine, to prevent genocide, to apply the Fourth Geneva Convention (on humanitarian protections for civilians in times of war and occupation), and not to assist other stares’ unlawful acts.

Australia, he said, is flouting these obligations by continuing to trade with Israel and providing it with weapons, including for dual use and enabling communications and surveillance to support Israel’s assault on the Palestinians. Australia maintains a trade and defence office in Jerusalem for such purposes. Australians go to Israel to serve in the Defence Force with impunity and without the “interviews” that those who went to fight in Iraq and Syria faced on return.

Meanwhile, silence reigns in the major Australian parties and in the legacy media about the importance of Albanese’s latest report, and of its predecessors. International law, openly derided by successive Australian governments’ American and Israeli allies and close friends, seems to have been consigned to the too-hard basket, to academia, or to the memory hole. Organisers of a peaceful protest against the Sydney maritime military expo event on 4 November are contesting their right to express their views with the NSW Government. They could be arrested in the UK for supporting a proscribed organisation: at least, we’re not there yet.

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