United States President Donald Trump’s adulatory reception at Israel’s Knesset revealed a basic truth about the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people: This is a joint operation of US imperialism and the Zionist colonial-settler, racist and apartheid ethnostate.
A lasting ceasefire could have taken place more than a year ago.
As far back as July last year, Hamas agreed to release the remaining Israeli hostages. However, the Trump administration chose to arm the Benjamin Netanyahu regime to continue the mass slaughter and destruction in Gaza.
Australia and other imperialist governments also helped to arm Israel’s genocide.
Over the last two years, Israel’s occupation forces dropped 200,000 tonnes of bombs on Gaza — the equivalent of — slaughtered between 70,000 and 200,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and injured and maimed many more. A leaked secret Israeli military intelligence report estimated that of these casualties were civilians.
These killings have continued even after the latest ceasefire agreement and Israel is still restricting desperately needed aid trucks from entering Gaza. Israel’s excuse is that Hamas has not returned the remains of some Israeli hostages buried under the rubble of Israeli’s bombing within their time frame of 72 hours.
This demonstrates what should now be obvious: Israel can break this ceasefire agreement and the US and its imperialist allies are prepared to allow this — until the political cost becomes too great.
Even after the start of this latest ceasefire, Declassified Australia that Australia is continuing to send F-35 components to Israel.
“Despite national coverage and questioning of Defence officials about Australia’s covert F-35 parts pipeline to Israel, exports continue. Yet another flight containing an ‘Aircraft Part’ left Sydney for Israel this week in the cargo of a regular passenger plane,” it said in a social media post on October 14.
Australia’s Department of Defence that “Australia has not supplied weapons or ammunition to Israel since the Israel-Gaza conflict began and not for at least the past five years”.
It says: “The F-35 relies on a global supply chain — one that is centrally coordinated by Lockheed Martin and the US Government. As a part of the global F-35 supply chain, Australian industry contributes components and parts, but the Australian Government does not have a direct bilateral arrangement with the Government of Israel in relation to the F-35 program.”
Michelle Fahy, a veteran arms export researcher, that while Labor uses such word games to try to persuade an increasingly skeptical public that its hands are clean, this has been shown to be a lie over and over again.
Former US State Department official Joshua Paul bluntly described the F-35 component supply in an August 8 ABC Radio : “It’s directly a facilitation of war crimes. There’s no question about it, to my mind.”
However, facilitating Israel’s genocide is good business for the arms industries in Australia and other Western countries.
The global arms industry has enjoyed a from the genocide and Australia, under Labor and the Coalition, has been trying to become one of the world’s top ten arms exporters since 2018.
The Department of Defence in April that the arms industry had reached “a significant milestone in the global F-35 Program with Australian industry reaching more than $5 billion in contract value”.
More than 75 Australian companies are involved in the F-35 program through advanced manufacturing, supply chain solutions and sustainment services, the department confirmed.
Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, named Lockheed Martin and members of its F-35 supply chain as enhancing Israel’s ability to sustain its genocide of Palestinian people her report .
In June last year, a UN expert panel that “States and companies must end arms transfers to Israel immediately or risk responsibility for human rights violations”. It named 11 multinationals, including Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems which were sending weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces.
“Arms initiate, sustain, exacerbate, and prolong armed conflicts, as well as other forms of oppression, hence the availability of arms is an essential precondition for the commission of war crimes and violations of human rights, including by private armament companies,” said the UN experts.
They also condemned the ongoing Israeli military assault for “indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on the civilian population and infrastructure”.
All this frames what should be the goal of the global Palestine solidarity movement, especially in the imperialist West.
We have to force our governments to respect the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court orders to stop arming the genocide and bring its chief perpetrators to account under international law. We have to force them to sanction and isolate Israel, as had to be done to end apartheid in South Africa.
[Peter Boyle is a member of the National Executive.]