COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

When the bombs fell on Gaza, Australia was quiet.

When the hospitals were destroyed, when the aid was blocked, when children were pulled from rubble in pieces, when the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and humanitarian organisations with decades of credibility in conflict zones used words like genocide, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment, Australia was quiet.

Not uniformly. Not entirely. There were protests in every major city, sustained over months, of a size and seriousness this country has not seen since the Iraq War.

There were independent senators who stood in Parliament and said what needed to be said, in plain language, without diplomatic hedging. There were journalists, academics, former diplomats, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians who signed petitions, marched in the streets, and wrote letters that went largely unanswered.

Palestinian-Australian, Muslim-Australian, Arab-Australian communities, and many others with no personal connection to the conflict beyond a functioning conscience, screamed into a political void and were told, in effect, to calm down.

Or apprehended for wearing a t-shirt.

“I’m offended by crocs,” says man apprehended by many police & special ops for wearing “F… Israel” t-shirt

The footage #andrewbrown #legend #auspol pic.twitter.com/fc1p3f911d

— 💧Michael West (@MichaelWestBiz) April 6, 2026

The country, as a political entity, its government, its major institutions, its official voice to the world, was quiet.

The cost of silence
That silence had a cost. Not just a moral cost, though the moral cost is staggering and will take generations to fully reckon with.

A strategic cost. The cost of allowing a logic of unchecked military impunity to establish itself as the operating principle of the US-Israeli alliance. A logic that, once normalised in Gaza, did not stay in Gaza.

It never does.

More than 72,000 people killed so far. More than 171,000 injured. An entire civilian population, in one of the most densely populated places on earth, was systematically starved, displaced, and destroyed.

Journalists were killed in numbers that constitute, by any honest accounting, a deliberate campaign to eliminate witnesses. Paramedics were bombed. UN peacekeepers were struck.

Aid workers from Australia’s own partner organisations were killed in strikes so precise they could not have been accidental.

Australia expressed concern.

Calibrated, diplomatically worded, operationally meaningless concern.

And then, when the same alliance, emboldened by 18 months of zero meaningful consequence, turned its weapons on a sovereign nation-state, on Iran, on February 28 of this year, Australia expressed support. Called it constructive. Offered the American justification back to its own people as sovereign Australian policy.

Warnings ignored
The people warning loudest about Gaza were not merely warning about Palestinians. They were warning about a system. A system in which American military power and Israeli strategic ambition, freed from the constraints of international law and serious allied pushback, would expand. Would find new targets. Would come, eventually, for the stability of every country caught in its orbit.

They were right. And they were called antisemitic for saying so.

Iran did not come from nowhere. The assault on Iran is the direct and logical extension of the impunity normalised in Gaza. If you can destroy a civilian population with no meaningful consequence, you can bomb a sovereign nation.

If the ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu means nothing, then international law means nothing. And if international law means nothing, then the only operating principle is force.

And the consequences of force are distributed not just to the combatants but to every country whose government chose alignment over principle.

Australia chose alignment over the people of Gaza. It chose it again over Iran. And now it is discovering, at the bowser and the checkout and the business bank account, exactly what that choice costs.

The war came home
Here is what makes this moment different from every protest march and every unanswered letter that came before.

The pain is no longer abstract.

When Gaza burned, the average Australian, cocooned by geographic distance, insulated by a media that kept the most confronting images off prime time, reassured by politicians who described it as heartbreaking while doing nothing, could maintain the fiction that this was someone else’s tragedy.

Terrible, certainly. Distant. Manageable. Something that happened over there, to people over there, in a conflict that had been going on forever and would presumably continue

without any particular bearing on the school fees or the mortgage or the quarterly business figures.

That fiction is now dead.

The fuel price spike is not over there. The supply chain disruption is not over there. The investment uncertainty showing up in superannuation statements, in business loans that just got harder to service, in the job that exists today and may not exist in three months.

None of that is over there.

The war came home. Not in body bags. Not in the specific grief of a military family. It came home in the way that imperial adventurism always eventually comes home to the countries that enable it.

Through the economy. Through the slow, grinding, distributed punishment of a population that was never consulted, never warned, and never honestly told what their government’s choices would cost them.

Australia’s complicity
Australia was a participant in Gaza’s destruction. Not with weapons. Not with soldiers. With silence. With diplomatic cover. With the specific, material legitimacy that flows from a liberal democracy declining to formally object. And with the arms adjacent, intelligence and security cooperation that flows through Five Eyes and has never been seriously interrogated in the Australian public domain.

Complicity is not passive.

When you have the power to intervene, to sanction, to condemn, to withdraw diplomatic cover, and you choose not to, you are not a bystander. You are a participant. And participants, eventually, share in the consequences.

The Palestinian people could not make Australia listen with their suffering alone.

Not because Australians are cruel. They are not. But because the suffering was made distant. The media made it complex. The politicians made it delicate. The lobby groups made it professionally dangerous to say in plain language what was plainly happening.

The whole architecture of managed consent did its job with brutal efficiency for 18 months.

But a 40 percent fuel price increase cuts through managed consent, as does a wave of small business closures. And young Australians told to absorb the economic consequences of a war their government endorsed without their knowledge or consent. That cuts through everything.

The people who protested over Gaza, who were dismissed and belittled and accused of antisemitism and told they were being naive about geopolitical complexity, understood something that the political class is only now beginning to grasp: That the world does not offer permanent non-involvement. That the wars you enable reach you. That the impunity you excuse comes back denominated in currencies you understand personally.

Fuel. Food. Jobs. Mortgages. Businesses. Futures.
This is that reckoning. The genocide in Gaza did not wake Australia up, the bill for enabling it will.

And when Australia wakes, fully, clearly, with the focused fury of people who now understand exactly what was done to them, the politicians who called it constructive and the media that told them to blame the Energy Minister are going to find that managed consent has a shelf life.

That shelf life has expired.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Unlike the Palestinian message, the Israeli message is not global, but very much a localised cry for help — get us out of Gaza.

This is not your typical video. The event itself might be similar to numerous other events in Gaza — a fighter emerging from a tunnel, placing a bomb under an Israeli Merkava tank, and returning to his tunnel before a massive explosion takes place.

This is what is called an operation from zero distance. But the video, this time, is different, as it was not released by the Al-Qassam Brigades or any other group.

There is no foreboding music in the background, no slick edits, no red triangles. The reason? The video was released by the Israeli army itself.

This raises many questions, including why the Israeli army would report the bravery of a Palestinian fighter and the successful blowing up of the pride and joy of the Israeli military  — the Merkava.

The answer might lie in the sense of despair in the Israeli military, an army that knows well that it has lost the war or, at best, is unable to clinch victory, even after it laid Gaza to waste and exterminated nearly 10 percent of its 2.3 million population (between the killed, wounded, and missing).

This sentiment is now very well-known among Israelis, as Israeli media, which initially touted the idea of “total victory”, is now the one promoting a version of Israel’s own total defeat.

On verge of ‘collective suicide’
Writing in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, retired Major-General Itzhak Brik said that Israel was on the verge of “collective suicide” and that the army has effectively been defeated by Hamas in Gaza.

“With a political and military echelon of this type, there is no need for external enemies; they will bring disaster upon us in their stupidity,” he warned, adding:

“We may soon reach a point of no return, and the only thing left for us to do is pray to our God to come to our aid, and then we will all become messiahs who pray for miracles.”

General Brik can no longer be accused of being the detached former soldier who is horribly misreading the situation on the ground. Even those on the ground are expressing the exact same sentiment.

مقاوم فلسطيني خرج فجأة من بين الأنقاض، وثبّت عبوة ناسفة على دبابة إسرائيلية من مسافة صفر، ثم عاد إلى مخبئه قبل أن تنفجر .

في غزة للصفر قيمة. pic.twitter.com/OvNwKZwago

— Tamer | تامر (@tamerqdh) June 10, 2025

On Tuesday, June 4, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted an Israeli infantry soldier who expressed a feeling of brokenness after returning to fighting in Gaza, stating that “everyone is exhausted and uncertain”.

The Israeli soldier reportedly added that he feelt there was no appreciation for the lives of soldiers fighting in Gaza and that they had moved from offence to defence, noting that the soldiers “doubt the objectives of the war”.

‘Hamas has Defeated Us’ – Ret. Israeli Maj. Gen. Brik Speaks of ‘Collective Suicide’

Dominant global narrative
Many in the pro-Palestine circle, which now represents the dominant global narrative on the war, are celebrating the bravery of the young men in the video and, by extension, the bravery of Gaza, deeply wounded but still fighting — in fact, winning.

But there is more to the story than this. The fact that a tank belonging to the 401st Brigade would be blown up in such a way, under the watchful eye of Israeli drones, which could only report the event without being able to change it, is telling us something.

But unlike the Palestinian message, the Israeli message is not global, but very much a localised cry for help — get us out of Gaza.

Whether Israeli politicians, lead among them the master of political survival, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will listen or not, that is a completely different question.

Republished with permission from The Palestine Chronicle.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Helen Musa in Canberra

Former Palestinian diplomat and long-time Canberra identity Ali Kazak died on Saturday en route to Palestine.

Sources at the Canberra Islamic Centre report that he was recovering from heart surgery and died during a stopover in Thailand.

Kazak was born in Haifa in 1947 and grew up in Syria as a Palestinian refugee. He and his mother were separated from his father when Israel was created in 1948 and Kazak was only reunited with his father in 1993.

In 1968, while at Damascus University, Kazak had been invited to join the Palestine National Liberation Movement (Fateh) and joined its political wing.

He migrated to Australia in 1970 where he became the founder, publisher and co-editor of the Australian newspaper, Free Palestine, also authoring among many books, The Jerusalem Question and Australia and the Arabs.

Kazak was the driving force behind the establishment in 1981 of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign and was appointed by the PLO executive committee as the PLO’s representative to Australia, NZ and the Pacific region.

In 1982, he established the Palestine Information Office, which was recognised by the Australian government in 1989 as the office of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and then further recognised in 1994 as the General Palestinian Delegation.

As Palestinian Ambassador, Kazak initiated the establishment of the NSW State and Australian Federal Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, as well as the Victorian, South Australian and NZ Parliamentary Friends of Palestine.

Always a passionate advocate, in 1986 he became the first person to call for adjudication by the Australian Press Council of stereotyped reporting of Palestinians.

After retiring from diplomacy, he became the managing director of the consultancy company Southern Link International, but continued to comment on Palestinian affairs and Gaza.

His most recent article was published in the Pearls and Irritations: John Menadue’s Public Policy journal on May 16, titled The third Nakba in Israel’s war of genocide: Why does the Albanese government shirk its responsibility?

Arrangements are being made to return his body from Thailand to Australia for internment.

Helen Musa is the Canberra City News arts editor. This article was first published by City News.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A Fiji-based Pacific solidarity group supporting the indigenous Palestine struggle for survival against the Israeli settler colonial state has today issued a statement condemning Fiji backing for Israel.

In an open letter to the “people of Fiji”, the Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network (F4P) has warned “your government openly supports Israel despite its genocidal campaign against Palestinians”.

“It is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and history will not forgive their inaction.”

The group said the struggle resonated with all who believed in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.

Fijians for Palestine has condemned Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition government plans to open a Fijian embassy in Jerusalem with Israeli backing and has launched a “No embassy on occupied land” campaign.

The group likened the Palestine liberation struggle to Pacific self-determination campaigns in Bougainville, “French” Polynesia, Kanaky and West Papua.

Global voices for end to violence
The open letter on social media said:

“Our solidarity with the Palestinian people is a testament to our shared humanity. We believe in a world where diversity, is treated with dignity and respect.

“We dream of a future where children in Gaza can play without fear, where families can live without the shadow of war, and where the Palestinian people can finally enjoy the peace and freedom they so rightly deserve.

“We join the global voices demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end to the violence. We express our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people.

“The Palestinian struggle is not just a regional issue; it is a testament to the resilience of a people who, despite facing impossible odds, continue to fight for their right to exist, freedom, and dignity. Their struggle resonates with all who believe in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.

“The images of destruction, the stories of families torn apart, and the cries of children caught in the crossfire are heart-wrenching. These are not mere statistics or distant news stories; these are real people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, much like us.

“As Fijians, we have always prided ourselves on our commitment to peace, unity, and humanity. Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.

“We call on you to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people this Thursday with us, not out of political allegiance but out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.

“There can be no peace without justice, and we stand in unity with all people and territories struggling for self-determination and freedom from occupation. The Pacific cannot be an Ocean of Peace without freedom and self determination in Palestine, West Papua, Kanaky and all oppressed territories.

“To the Fijian people, please know that your government openly supports Israel despite its genocidal campaign against Palestinians. It is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and history will not forgive their inaction.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A Fiji-based Pacific solidarity group supporting the indigenous Palestine struggle for survival against the Israeli settler colonial state has today issued a statement condemning Fiji backing for Israel.

In an open letter to the “people of Fiji”, the Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network (F4P) has warned “your government openly supports Israel despite its genocidal campaign against Palestinians”.

“It is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and history will not forgive their inaction.”

The group said the struggle resonated with all who believed in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.

Fijians for Palestine has condemned Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition government plans to open a Fijian embassy in Jerusalem with Israeli backing and has launched a “No embassy on occupied land” campaign.

The group likened the Palestine liberation struggle to Pacific self-determination campaigns in Bougainville, “French” Polynesia, Kanaky and West Papua.

Global voices for end to violence
The open letter on social media said:

“Our solidarity with the Palestinian people is a testament to our shared humanity. We believe in a world where diversity, is treated with dignity and respect.

“We dream of a future where children in Gaza can play without fear, where families can live without the shadow of war, and where the Palestinian people can finally enjoy the peace and freedom they so rightly deserve.

“We join the global voices demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end to the violence. We express our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people.

“The Palestinian struggle is not just a regional issue; it is a testament to the resilience of a people who, despite facing impossible odds, continue to fight for their right to exist, freedom, and dignity. Their struggle resonates with all who believe in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.

“The images of destruction, the stories of families torn apart, and the cries of children caught in the crossfire are heart-wrenching. These are not mere statistics or distant news stories; these are real people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, much like us.

“As Fijians, we have always prided ourselves on our commitment to peace, unity, and humanity. Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.

“We call on you to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people this Thursday with us, not out of political allegiance but out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.

“There can be no peace without justice, and we stand in unity with all people and territories struggling for self-determination and freedom from occupation. The Pacific cannot be an Ocean of Peace without freedom and self determination in Palestine, West Papua, Kanaky and all oppressed territories.

“To the Fijian people, please know that your government openly supports Israel despite its genocidal campaign against Palestinians. It is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and history will not forgive their inaction.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

More than 2000 people — mostly women and union members — marked International Women’s Day two days early last week on March 6 with a lively rally and march in Melbourne, capital of the Australian state of Victoria.

Chants of “Women united will never be defeated”, “Tell me what a feminist looks like? This is what a feminist looks like” and “When women’s rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up! Fight back!” rang through the streets.

Speakers addressed the inequality women still faced at work and in society, the leading roles women play in many struggles for justice, including for First Nations rights, against the junta in Myanmar, against Israel’s genocide in Gaza/Palestine, and against oppressive regimes like that in Iran.

“Palestine is not for sale.”  Video: Green Left

When Michelle O’Neill, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) spoke, some women chanted “CFMEU” to demonstrate their displeasure at the ACTU’s complicity in attacks against that union.

The rally also marched to Victoria’s Parliament House.

Republished from Green Left.

in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, activists marked International Women’s Day on Saturday and the start of Ramadan this week with solidarity rallies across the country, calling for justice and peace for Palestinian women and the territories occupied illegally by Israel.

The theme this year for IWD was “For all women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment” and this was the 74th week of Palestinian solidarity protests.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz