Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The deplorable actions of the government of Israel in Gaza cannot be understated, from the indiscriminate airstrikes on civilian areas to the ruthless destruction of homes and the shattering of countless innocent lives. The immediate and moral solution is a permanent enduring ceasefire, a halt to the bloodshed, a chance for dialogue and a chance for peace. Yet the narrative we hear from the media in Australia and from the major political parties in Australia is one of deliberate, bewildering complexity, a narrative that is designed to obscure the truth about the horrors that are unfolding in Gaza.

This is not a complicated geopolitical puzzle. The stark and clear reality is that innocent people are being slaughtered by the war crimes of the Israeli government. Our government's response should be equally stark and clear. Anything less than an absolute demand for a permanent and enduring ceasefire is playing straight into the hands of the government of Israel, who have lobbied for exactly the kind of equivocation that we are getting from the Australian government.

How many innocent people need to be slaughtered, how many babies need to be mutilated, how many children need to be buried alive before Labor will call for a permanent enduring ceasefire? The failure to demand that ceasefire is an act of complicity.

The acceptance of Zionist sponsored junkets to Israel by journalists and politicians from this country skews the narrative and compromises integrity. The Zionist lobby's playbook is to use the media to attack and undermine pro- Palestine figures here in Australia in a bid to cloud the real issue, which is the destruction of Gaza and the slaughter of the people who live there. The tactics of Zionist lobbies in stifling legitimate debate are egregious and deeply undemocratic.

Voices within Israel itself are raising concerns and criticisms that if they were echoed in Australia would lead to reprimand or targeting by elements of the pro-Israel lobby in this country. The deliberate conflation of any criticism of the state of Israel or the government of Israel's actions with anti-Semitism is grossly intellectually dishonest and deliberately designed to obscure the truth. By labelling legitimate critique and calls for accountability as anti-Semitic, the real and serious issue of anti-Semitism is trivialised.

We can do better, colleagues. We can do better in this place, we can do better in the media and we can do better in the national conversation about what is happening in Gaza. But, whatever we do, we should stand up with moral clarity and we should demand a permanent, enduring ceasefire. In the name of humanity: cease fire now.