Uncomfortable conversations

I don’t have to ask myself, “What would I do during a genocide?” I don’t have to wonder because I’m doing it right now. The short answer is, “not enough to stop it.” Last Sunday, 18 May, anti-genocide protesters gathered outside the State Library in Melbourne as they have done every Sunday for a year and a half. This time we marched down Swanston Street, over Princes Bridge, down St Kilda Road all the way to St Kilda Beach. We’d gone from the River to the Sea, seven kilometres they told us. I wasn’t even tired.

The crowd was much bigger than at recent rallies, several thousand at least. On Princes Bridge a number of Zionist protesters were assembled. The leaders of the pro-Palestine protest had warned us about them, as they have on other rallies. “Do not engage!” is their message. And, for the most part, that’s what people on our rally did. Our numbers were so big and the march so long that even the ABC news covered it. The ABC said protesters “…were met by a smaller crowd carrying Australian and Israeli flags.” “Smaller” is a generous - all right, completely inaccurate - word. I tried to count this “small crowd” and I didn’t have to use all of my fingers. But I soon lost count of the signs held by pro-Palestine Jews who were marching with us and who have rallied with us every week.

I was gratified to see that the rally had actually made it into the news, but the fake objectivity of our national broadcaster is something to be ashamed of. After the election two weeks ago I watched Insiders for the first time in years. When the genocide in Palestine was mentioned, in passing, it was referred to as “the Gaza business.” That’s what starving children to death, blowing babies to pieces, torturing prisoners to death, has become to our national broadcaster - “the Gaza business.”

In yesterday’s news article, we are told that at least 52 thousand Palestinians have been killed by Israel, in Gaza, since October 2023, according to “Palestinian Health Authorities.” It does not say that, according to the Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, Gazan casualty figures underestimate the true figures by 40% or more. Nor does the ABC say that well over half of those killed in Gaza are women, children and the elderly. This is mass murder of the most vulnerable people.

And remember too that these figures describe those killed outright by bombs and bullets. They do not include the thousands who must be dying in a place where essential health services have been deliberately destroyed by the Israeli military and where essential supplies of all kinds have been stopped.

I don’t know if the figures include children who have died of hypothermia or starvation.

The ABC also ignores the openly genocidal statements from leading Israeli politicians which should frame all news stories about Gaza. To take one of countless examples, Yoav Gallant’s use of the term “human animals” to describe the people of Gaza when announcing a total siege of the Gaza strip on 9 October 2023. Gallant’s comment was not an isolated case, however. Dehumanising and murderously violent rhetoric is standard fare from the Israeli government. If you want to look into this you could Google “Genocidal rhetoric from Israeli politicians” and you’ll be on your computer for days. But this genocidal intent, so clearly expressed, doesn’t make it into legacy media coverage of the great crime of this century.

When faced with horror and hopelessness we have a choice - look away or do something. Looking away is what the perpetrators want you do to. They want you to feel helpless and intimidated. Doing something though, however small, is some kind of miracle. You immediately feel better. Taking to the streets with thousands or hundreds (or in the case of the Caltex protest in Preston yesterday, about a dozen) of the like-minded means you no longer feel alone.

Please get along to a Palestine rally. They start outside the State Library in Melbourne at 12 midday every Sunday. I’m not exactly sure how this works, but the one on 8 June is meant to be bigger than usual.

I look forward to seeing you there near the stature of Joan of Arc. Or, even better, I won’t see you because the crowd will be too big to find you.