For months, genocide law scholars, international legal experts and human rights groups have agreed that the Netanyahu regime is engaged in genocide in Gaza. Despite criticisms of Israel’s actions, threats of country-level sanctions and sanctions against some Israeli individuals, most Western countries — including Australia — have steadfastly refused to use the word.
The result of that silence appears to have been to encourage Netanyahu to accelerate his genocide — and make it still more blatant.
For weeks now, the IDF has routinely slaughtered hundreds of Gazans waiting for food aid distributed not by a recognised aid agency but by a body backed by Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump: the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
GHF staff have told American media of their concerns that their colleagues are also shooting at innocent Palestinians and have had “an open license to do whatever they wished”. Actual aid groups have called for an end to GHF’s role.
According to The Times of Israelnearly 500 Palestinians had been killed waiting for food aid up to June 26. Since then, scores more have been butchered: 45 people were killed waiting for food last Friday.
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According to another Israeli media outlet, Haaretzthese hundreds of deaths are intentional — the IDF has instructed soldiers to deliberately fire on unarmed Palestinians waiting for food.
The butchery has transformed aid distribution into just another cog in Netanyahu’s killing machine, turning the desperation of Palestinians to feed their families into the very lure that leads them to their deaths — all in plain view of the West.
This slaughter is in addition to routine IDF bombings of Palestinian civilians living in tents, which have inflicted massive casualties and killed entire families.
Earlier this week, the IDF used a colossal 230kg bomb to obliterate a beachside cafe in Gaza, killing dozens of Palestinians, including a child. The cafe was frequented by journalists and activists because it still provided internet access. The IDF has killed at least 171 journalists and media workers since the “conflict” began.
Meanwhile in the West Bank, Israel’s colonisation and ethnic cleansing have accelerated. The latest UN report for May revealed 633 Palestinian deaths in the West Bank since the start of 2024, including 118 children, as a result of more than 2,000 assaults by Israeli settlers. Nearly 36,000 Palestinians have been displaced in that period.
The UN’s latest Humanitarian Update for the West Bank reports that, beyond the death toll, “some 740 settler attacks in the first half of 2025 affected over 200 Palestinian communities across the West Bank, resulting in property damage and the injury of 340 Palestinians by Israeli settlers. The month of June recorded the highest monthly number of Palestinians injured by Israeli settlers (95) in the past two decades — an average of three Palestinians injured per day.”
Israeli forces have also stepped up their illegal mass demolition of Palestinian homes and the “requisition” of thousands of acres of Palestinian land.
In May, the Netanyahu regime approved the biggest expansion of West Bank settlements in decades, including approving many illegal settlements, with the explicit goal of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. This week, cabinet ministers in Netanyahu’s own party called for him to immediately annex the entire West Bank.
The IDF shoots Palestinians who attempt to defend their communities against settlers. The only criticism levelled by the Netanyahu government at settlers is when they attack the IDF if it intervenes to halt the brazen killing by settlers of Palestinians.
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The pattern is clear: Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank are becoming ever more open and explicit.
Why? His enabling by Trump is surely an important factor. But what of the rest of the West? Take the Albanese government. It has voted more consistently with most of the world in United Nations votes regarding Israel, criticised Netanyahu’s withholding of food aid from Gaza and joined other countries in sanctioning some of Netanyahu’s more fanatical ministers — and endured criticism from the pro-genocide Coalition, pro-Israel lobbyists and News Corp for doing so.
However, it has steadfastly refused to describe Netanyahu’s actions as genocide or ethnic cleansing. Australia’s major non-US allies, which have to a greater or lesser degree indicated their displeasure with Israel, have also refused to describe the reality of Netanyahu’s actions.
During its last term in office, the Albanese government made great play with sympathetic (and often anti-Palestinian) press gallery journalists by claiming it was the victim of vilification by the Greens, who described the government as “complicit in genocide”. Such language, Albanese and co — and their journalist amplifiers — insisted incited violence and damaged Australia’s social cohesion. The prime minister pointed out that Australia is a minor player in the Middle East and has little influence there.
While the claim to Australian “complicity” in genocide was overstated by the Greens, it is now clear that Australia’s silence, along with that of other Western countries, has most assuredly had an influence on Netanyahu’s actions. He and his supporters may have systematically pursued genocide and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians anyway, but they have increasingly done so in open and indeed blatant ways.
They have done so because they can, knowing that Western countries will not even describe their actions as genocide or ethnic cleansing, no matter how brazen — let alone take actions that would materially damage Israel’s interests.
Albanese is thus too humble in his estimation of Australia’s influence in the Middle East: our deafening silence, along with that of other countries, has led to ever more Palestinians being slaughtered, attacked and dispossessed in a program of extermination and forcible displacement that is open for the world to watch. And watch is all we do.