To sanction Israel the West must confront itself
Starve a concentration camp, and it is likely that any hostages in that concentration camp will also be starving.
It is not an issue of who is starving.
It is an issue of deliberate starvation as a weapon.
And the shocking belief that it is OK to starve those people, but not ours.
When history shows that colluding with evil eventually consumes the colluder.
In Nazi Germany, it was the esteemed Jewish Council that sanctioned armband wearing, followed by ghetto living, followed by getting on trains. In the wild and delusional hope that they would avoid the same fate. They did not avoid this fate.
Between 90 and 200 thousand people gathered in nasty weather yesterday in Sydney to protest Israel. Yet the leading news on the public broadcast station, the ABC, focuses not on the size of the protest and its implications, but on the police’s claim that they managed to avert a crush situation. Something that didn’t happen is not news.
The news is the size of the protest. One of the largest, if not the largest, in the history of Sydney protests. The government response: send more aid.
Which begs the question – who controls the government? Certainly not the will of the people. (Yet.)
When we step over a Little Atrocity, that very first violation, the one that seeds the next violation, not only have we agreed to the path of evil, but we also become caught in its snare. We must work hard to defend it until it becomes impossible to defend. Which takes time and comes at a great human and life cost. At some stage in the future, we will be thrown into the scrap heap that we, in our complicity, said was ok when it looked innocuous. We will cry for help, and no one will hear it.
The story of Israel is the story of colonisation. The governments of the West have been hell-bent on defending it, because if they do not, they expose their own cruel history. Yet the seeds of collusion were sown long, long before October 7th.
Our entire Western capitalist ‘success’ is built on the backs of humans exploited, exterminated, and cultures erased.
To confront this truth is exponentially greater than to confront the truth of the West’s stepping over genocide in Nazi Germany, which was painful enough and still runs with rivers of guilt. The hands of Empire and colonisation make the horror of the holocaust look small. I am not interested in a comparison of horror. Horror and cruelty to one is as significant as to millions. I am interested in speaking to all horrors without making one an exception that erases the history of many, many more, including ones happening in live streaming images every day.
To sanction Israel the West must confront itself, the creators of what has become Israel. The blood is on our hands.
Photo August 4th 2025, Article published August 4th 2025
