Gravely concerned, inc.

Deep within the heart of a rotten Empire, sickening new depths or moral depravity were plumbed on Thursday as the architect of so much infanticide, a man presently waging a War on hospitals, schools, mosques, and refugee camps, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister, received a record 58 standing ovations while speaking to US Congress.

No one gets that sort of reception, in Congress or anywhere. I saw Bruce Springsteen play with Tom Morello for three and a half hours, including the Born in the USA album start to finish, and it fucking rocked, and he only got a half dozen.

Fifty eight standing ovations in spite of the headless children live streamed across the world, or the boy with Down’s Syndrome mauled by attack dogs and left to die, or the six year old girl shot 355 times as she cried for help trapped inside a car filled with her slaughtered family.

On the day a genocidal supremacist came to town, US Congress sounded like it always sounds when the drums of war are beating. A hootin’ and a hollerin’ for blood, clapping and cheering as Netanyahu asserted he would continue rejecting offers for peace, continue razing Gaza to the ground, continue arming the cowboys to fight the Injuns in the West Bank – no matter what the International Court of Justice has to say about it. The names on the graves change, but colonisation always follows the same patterns.

Netanyahu’s speech was bloodthirsty, dehumanising, antithetical to the truth, filled with lies designed to justify the slaughter of Gaza and the acceleration of the 75-years-and-counting colonisation of Palestine. It was simultaneously PR for genocide and a Shark Tank pitch to the military industrial complex.

“This is not a clash between civilizations, it is a clash between barbarism and civilization. It is a clash between those who glorify death, and those who sanctify life,” he asserted quite genocidally, the vagueness of his words giving them an unintended ring of truth. Either way, it’s a bold claim to make when you’re repeatedly and deliberately firing missiles into primary schools.

Congress stood in raptous applause for the umpteenth time as Netanyahu, paraphrasing Winston Churchill, requested a vamoosing of American cash to speed up his genocide of Palestine. “Give us the tools faster and we’ll finish the job faster.”

Wooooot, USA USA USA.

“I will not rest until their loved ones are home,” he said of the dozens of remaining hostages in Hamas captivity. At least 40,000 Gazans have been killed since the abhorrent Hamas attacks of October 7 – which I’m condemning, Miss Anti-Semitism envoy! – in which roughly 200 hostages were taken. Esteemed medical journal the Lancet last week estimated that the figure of 40,000 deaths in Gaza is likely a gross underestimate, and that based on patterns of destruction comparatively with other killing fields, the figure is closer 186,000 deaths over the last ten months of decimation.

Today, Netanyahu meets with Biden in the Oval Office. Tomorrow he will court with Donald Trump at Mar-a-lago. Despite significant protest abstentions from the Democrats yesterday – and Rashida Tlaib brandishing a “guilty of genocide” placard inside the chamber – both sides of American politics are captured by Zionist lobbies and money.

And this is what Australia is bound to. Seemingly no longer an independent actor able to exert freewill, any resistance, any “yeah, nah” to a conflict that has destroyed 80% of Gaza’s buildings, a slaughter in which most of the victims are children.

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In the face of International Court rulings and warrant requests, 10 months of massacre, Penny Wong, Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, is concerned. Deeply concerned, sometimes. Gravely concerned even, on occasion.

Admittedly, she’s concerned about lots of things (gravely): Russia, the cost of living crisis, local manufacturing, the climate, and, of course, the perennially unnamed country that keeps accidentally destroying everything in Gaza.

It is illuminating when saying so little says so much.

To make the obvious point: When Russia does something it should not, like, say, bomb a hospital or a school, Wong’s statements are clear and direct, typically variations on: “Russia must not commit these atrocities, hospitals and schools should never be targeted, it is evil, and we will stand up to tyrants who do so”.

In contrast, when Israel bombs every hospital and school across the length of Gaza, the statements are mealy mouthed and deliberately vague, variations on: “Australia is gravely concerned that Gazans are hurt. Schools should remain unbombed for as long as is feasible. Who’s to say how this is happening? #TwoStateSolution”

***

For a certain class of politician – particularly those ensconced inside the American Order – a sizeable portion of the day job involves expressing dismay at upsetting situations while ever so delicately doing fuck all about them.

Think of the polluted stream of Environment Ministers who signed off on new coal plants while crying about the climate at hug-a-koala photo ops. Or the Treasurers who pretend to be heartbroken that young people can’t afford anything while never adequately taxing our grotesque media, property and energy oligarchs.

This is more than just run-of-the-mill hypocrisy: it is a form of performative humanity when the alternative is to instead act on behalf of it. It is a craven lack of conviction posing as wisdom and grace. It is the belief that the job is performance art on behalf of the highest bidder, the true goal a cushy job with a bank or mining company on the way out, selling out while exuding warm, serious, besuited adultness. Whatever you want to call it, it is a tightrope that requires diplomatic nous to cross safely: lean too far in one direction and the politician risks the appearance of disingenuousness, even uselessness; lean too far in the other direction and they might accidentally help someone.

For this class of professional brow-furrowers and finger waggers, for the expressers of a state’s dismay and sympathy, Israel’s live-streamed infanticide must be such a fucking pain in the arse. Because there are only so many hospitals and schools and mosques that can be destroyed under the guise of Hamas having a tunnel network the size of the London Underground before empty words appear just that – empty – and the absence of any working hospitals, schools or mosques across all of Gaza starts to seem a little bit fucking suss.

There are only so many stories of the IDF siccing an attack dog on a man with Down’s Syndrome in front of his parents and then leaving him to die before expressing “concern”, or “deep concern”, or even “grave concern”, starts to sound a little bit pathetic.

There are only so many reports that Israeli soldiers have been authorised to fire at will at Palestinians without restraint; only so many warnings from the United Nations that if it looks and smells like a genocide it might just be a genocide; only so many times the same refugee tent camp can be bombed; only so many decrees from the International Court of Justice that the occupation of Palestine is unlawful and that Israel must withdraw and start paying reparations, before your “grave concerns” sound like cover for your support of the genocide.

I imagine in private Penny Wong might also be gravely concerned about how out of alignment the Labor caucus is on the issue of Palestine with (a) its own platform and (b) the rank and file branch members that are brewing revolt, horrified at the kowtowing to Zionist lobbies. As horrified as Fatima Payman was when she left the party but clung onto her humanity.

If Wong is smart, and she most certainly is, she might even be gravely concerned about the International Court of Justice’s ruling that Israel’s use of force to occupy Palestine is unlawful. More specifically, she might be gravely concerned about the section of the report that finds ALL countries have an “Obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

Any vaguely competent reading of this would have to include Australia selling raw materials, drones, and parts for F35 warplanes used in the flattening of Gaza. It could even include the political support Australia routinely bolsters Israel with.

Genocidal and apartheid states need to be sanctioned, not supported. South Africa was internationally boycotted across politics, sport, economics, and wide sections of the cultural world until the apartheid regime was toppled. Nelson Mandella, once branded a terrorist by the US and eventually the first president of South Africa, knew his cause would not succeed without the support of the global community. He also knew his struggle was Palestine’s struggle: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

To date, Israel is on the best of diplomatic relations with Australia. Zero sanctions have been applied to Israel over any of their actions in Gaza, ambassadors are chummy and huggy, and pathetic expressions of concern, or grave concern, are the sternest we’ve gone. If the West, Australia included, continues to support Israel’s countless crimes against humanity, international law will become meaningless, and the hypocrisy will come back to haunt us all. The blood of the Palestinian people is a stain Israel and all of its allies will never wash away.