The failure of the international community – and the US in particular – to stop Israel’s horrific war crimes of mass starvation and genocide in Gaza is not inevitable and Israel can be stopped, but it means taking real action against the Israeli government.
In 1991 the US government pressured Israel into a peace process with the Palestinians. I reported with other foreign correspondents in Jerusalem while visiting Secretary of State, James Baker, held talks with the recalcitrant government of Ytzak Shamir.
The Bush / Baker era was the last US administration to put meaningful pressure on Israel by threatening to withhold $10 billion in loan guarantees.
Benjamin Netanyahu was not then PM but he had been the belligerent voice of Israel as ambassador to the United Nations and as a deputy foreign minister.
Both Netanyahu and Shamir were then hardline proponents of expanding illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and had to be dragged into the peace process – Shamir later supposedly admitted that he never wanted to make peace with the Palestinians.
There have been some hopeful times and realistic Israeli leaders since then such as Ytzak Rabin – who was tragically assassinated by an extremist Israeli – but Netanyahu’s approach to the Palestinians and his world view of Israel has only solidified. We have since seen decades of unstopped Israeli expansion of illegal settlements and an Israel approach to ‘manage’ the Palestinian ‘problem’ and leave Gaza in limbo – former UK PM David Cameron rightly called it an open-air prison, the largest in the world.
This isn’t easy, and it is complex, and Palestinian leadership and Hamas bear responsibility too – but what’s happening in Gaza now is different. It’s very clear, it’s a war crime and genocide, acknowledged by a growing consensus of experts and genocide scholars.
Our politicians don’t want to use these words but they know what it is. Meanwhile Israel moves from its usual tactic of charging its critics with antisemitism to accusing them of ‘blood libel’.
It is denial and distraction but it doesn’t work. The scenes of mass starvation in Gaza are too reminiscent of the photos from the concentration camps of WW2.
Albanese and Wong taking action against a Greens senator for protesting against our inaction over Gaza is similar denial and distraction.
James Baker was known as the man who said ‘no’ to Israel – now someone else has to say ‘no’.
The Trump administration is Israel’s complicit ally in the crimes in Gaza so it’s up to other countries including Australia to take action to sanction Israel.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
