politics | Mark Raines

The Australian Government has announced they will no longer fund state health department as they have heard that some employees may be antivaxxers.

An unlikely scenario but what is happening to Gazans dependent upon UNRWA just adds to their sense of collective punishment.

Since 1948, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions from UN Member States. UNRWA also receives some funding from the Regular Budget of the United Nations, which is used mostly for international staffing costs.

So Israel has alleged that 12 UNWRA staff may have aided Hamas. UNWRA employs 13,000 to provide vital aid to Gazans who have driven from their destroyed homes by Israeli bombs, leaving dead relatives behind.

Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General from Ammna, Jordan has said, “The Israeli Authorities have provided UNRWA with information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel on 7 October. To protect the Agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, I have taken the decision to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay. Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution. UNRWA reiterates its condemnation in the strongest possible terms of the abhorrent attacks of 7 October and calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all Israeli hostages and their safe return to their families. These shocking allegations come as more than 2 million people in Gaza depend on lifesaving assistance that the Agency has been providing since the war began. Anyone who betrays the fundamental values of the United Nations also betrays those whom we serve in Gaza, across the region and elsewhere around the world”.

Hamas has been the de facto authority in Gaza since shortly after Israel withdrew from the territory in 2005. It provides social services to Gazans, including health care, education and religious instruction. These roles gave forgotten about as it also has a military wing in conflict with Israel.

As many have said Palestine is not Hamas. Just as not all Israeli are engaged in the conflict in Gaza. For example, B’Tselem calls for a ceasefire. It calls out Israeli’s regime of apartheid and occupation and human rights violations. It strives future in which human rights, democracy, liberty and equality are ensured to all people, both Palestinian and Israeli

Netanyahu and his government has for year supported Hamas with a financial pipeline from Qatar, cynically to divide the Palestinian people. This has been highlighted in a number of articles such as these Times of Israel and NY Times.

Australia exported to Israel totaled $13m of “arms and ammunition”, over the past five years, including $2.3m in 2022. As Australia has announced a pause for UNWRA funding, why does the Australian Government continue to support Israel?

In the meantime Israel Defense Force has killed 26,000 Gazans and severely restricts any humanitarian aid into Gaza to the Rafah border crossing.

Update 17 March 2024

The Australian Government is reinstating funding to UNWRA.

https://www.afr.com/…/australia-ends-freeze-on-6m-for…

Meanwhile, the shadow home affairs minister wants Gazans to wait until the US builds its pier or scurry around hoping not to have aid dropped on their head. I also doubt Israeli school textbooks talk about any Palestinian ethnic cleansing and massacres in 1948. And, no Israelis are not taught to hate and dehumanise Palestians, no not at all. The death toll continues to climb – 31,490 as of 15 March.

Paterson repeats Israeli allegations about UNWRA

“My view is we shouldn’t tolerate a single Australian dollar going to a to potential terrorist. This is not the only accusation against them. There is a Hamas datacentre underneath their headquarters in Gaza, [getting] mains power from UNWRA, who admitted in the past their textbooks in UNWRA schools in Gaza had antisemitic [material] that promotes hatred against the Jewish people. Israel have been warning us for years about the behaviour of UNWRA and the warnings were ignored. And the employees participated then on the worst attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

UNRWA has 13,000 staff; there were 12 people alleged by the Israeli government to have been involved in the 7 October attacks. UNRWA has admitted it fired those accused without investigating the claims as a pre-emptive measure in an example of “reverse due process”. Israel has also claimed one-in-ten UNWRA employees are Hamas supporters and called for the organisation to be dismantled. The Israeli government has been repeatedly asked to supply evidence to support its claims but has so far failed or refused to do so.

Is Israel inflicting genocide upon the Palestinians of Gaza?

Using the diagram below from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, you can see parallels. Listen to Israeli government ministers if you doubt this.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in October “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,”

“We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” Avi Dichter, Israeli Agriculture Minister and member of the right-wing Likud party, said Saturday, in comments widely reported by Israeli media. “From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war — as the Israeli army seeks to do in Gaza — with masses between the tanks and the soldiers,” he said. Pressed on his use of the word “Nakba” to describe the situation in Gaza, he said again: “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

Israeli Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu sparked outcry after he suggested that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was “one of the possibilities” in the current conflict. He was asked “Your expectation is that tomorrow morning we’d drop what amounts to some kind a nuclear bomb on all of Gaza, flattening them, eliminating everybody there…,” In reply, Eliyahu responded, “That’s one way. The second way is to work out what’s important to them, what scares them, what deters them… They’re not scared of death.”

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a prominent settler activist, raised alarm himself earlier this month after calling for the creation of “sterile” zones in the West Bank in a letter he sent to Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that was shared with Israeli media. Such zones, he said, would block Palestinians from entering certain areas and bar them from harvesting olives close to Israeli settlements in the enclave.

Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza. The war presents an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza,” Ben Gvir told reporters and members of his far-right Otzma Yehudit party, calling such a policy “a correct, just, moral and humane solution.”

“We want to encourage willful emigration, and we need to find countries willing to take them in,” says Smotrich. He has gone on to be reported as saying “We need to encourage immigration from there. If there were 100,000-200,000 Arabs in the Strip and not two million, the whole conversation about the day after [the war] would be completely different,” he said. “They want to leave. They have been living in a ghetto for 75 years and are in need.”

So we have classification, discrimination, dehumanisation, the invasion of Gaza is certainly planned, and pro-Israeli media have certainly spread polarising propaganda, 22,000 out of 2 million Gazans have died, many more injured, and there are certainly lots of denial going on. Is this Genocide?

What follows are two commentaries which delve further into the case against Israel, including a case brought by South Africa against Israel to the International Court of Justice.