Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to questions without notice asked by Senator Shoebridge today relating to the Middle East.

Israel deliberately bombed a hospital. Then they murdered the rescue workers and journalists who rushed to help. It doesn't get any worse than that. They are hunting down journalists, the truth-tellers, because they are the last defence against lies and propaganda. Five more were murdered yesterday. That makes 189 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza—journalists, camera operators, photographers and fixers, people who risked everything just to show the world the truth. Israel kills them to silence the truth.

Yet here we are—here you are!—repeating the same tired lines—'outrage', 'condemn'. Hollow words—that is all you can offer, and it is pathetic. They are words with no courage behind them, empty gestures from a government that has decided it will not take any meaningful action. How many more Palestinians will Israel murder before you act? How many children will they blow up? How many babies will they starve for you to sanction Israel?

Their own figures admit to killing 53,000 Palestinians, 83 per cent of them civilians. They are starving people by cutting off food, water and medicine. The famine in Gaza is not a natural disaster. It is Israeli-made starvation. They brag about their plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza. They announce their cruelty openly and without shame, and they put their grotesque words into action because they know that governments like this one will do absolutely nothing.

There are over 1,400 sanctions on Russia but barely a handful on Israel. You boast about crippling Russia's ability to wage an illegal war. You've just expelled the Iranian ambassador. Where is that same energy to stop Israel's genocide? Why is there one rule for Israel and another for the rest of the world? Explain that, Minister Wong. You have been dragged, kicking and screaming, to support Palestinian statehood, but is that it? Will you take no action to stop the genocide being livestreamed? Is your heart made of stone? We know you have no intention of holding Israel to account, but we will keep exposing your inhumanity and cowardice. We will not stop saying what must be said, even when it makes you uncomfortable.

The truth is that the Labor Party has spent more time attacking and gaslighting people for standing up against the genocide than holding Israel to account. You attack us at every turn for having the moral clarity to oppose this genocide from day one, when you were backing Israel's right to kill. There have been no consequences for members of your own party who stain the reputation of this parliament by rushing to Israel to pose with the genocidal Israeli army and have the gall to describe themselves as 'friends of Israel'.

Hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets. The people of this country can see right through you. They are not fooled by your excuses and your spin. They are marching because they refuse to be complicit. These people are the conscience of this country. They are fighting for humanity and justice. You hate us. You hate us because we hold up a mirror to you. We show you what moral clarity looks like, and you don't like it, because deep down I'm sure you know that you're on the wrong side of history. We remind you that principles matter, that Palestinian lives matter, that courage matters—and you just cannot stand it.

You want apathy. You want us to give up. You tell us, 'It is complicated,' and that condemnation is the best we can do—what utter rubbish! You cannot wash your hands of genocide. If you're not with the targets of genocide and starvation, then you are with the war criminals. It is time to call Israel what it is: a rogue, genocidal state.

No more fence-sitting. No more hiding. Anyone who excuses Israel, who refuses real action, is pro-genocide. Let me be perfectly clear: the blood of Gaza is on the hands of every politician who defended, enabled and stayed silent in the face of Israel's crimes. (Time expired.)

Question agreed to.