Descriptions of the putative deal brokered between the vile gangsters of Hamas and Israel as a “ceasefire” are likely to prove inaccurate. Israel and Hezbollah have both violated the ceasefire agreed in November in Lebanon, though killing there has slowed significantly from the thousands of people killed in Israeli missile and air strikes in earlier months, including several alleged war crimes against civilians. Likely, the Gaza ceasefire will see military operations against Palestinians drop back to the steady tempo against West Bank civilians, where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed either by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) or Israeli colonist terrorism, while Hamas will continue to pursue its goal of murdering as many Jews as it can.
Nor is any “ceasefire” likely to bring to justice the perpetrators of the atrocities committed since October 7, 2023 — the surviving leadership and footsoldier thugs of Hamas, or the innumerable war criminals of the IDF and the Israeli government, right up to the corrupt Benjamin Netanyahu, who has fought tooth and nail against any ceasefire agreement. Nor, for that matter, the Biden administration, which despite a pretence of concern for civilian casualties, has funded, aided and abetted the mass slaughter of over 40,000 Palestinians.
And while it will, hopefully, bring to an end the ordeal of the surviving Israeli civilian hostages not murdered by Hamas (or killed by the IDF itself), and the hundreds of Palestinian hostages illegally held by Israel, it won’t change the fundamental dynamic in place in the region: the Netanyahu government, propped up by virulently racist right-wingers, desires the extinction of Palestinians, and Hamas desires the “annihilation” of Israel. The only differences lie in the fact that Israel has the capacity to achieve its goal and has been pursuing it for 15 months, and Hamas lacks the resources to achieve its goal, and Netanyahu would probably, for the sake of Israel’s international reputation, accept the mere ethnic cleansing and annexation of Gaza and the West Bank. But both senior Israeli and Hamas figures regard the other as sub-human.
But for most Western politicians and the media, a ceasefire will be a relief. Many right-wingers, including Peter Dutton and the Coalition here, have cheered on the Israeli government, demanded full-throated support for it by the West, and demonised anyone daring to hold the Netanyahu government and IDF to account. But for most, the 15 months of war since October 2023 have required a pro forma concern for Palestinian casualties and attempts to placate community concern about the unfolding slaughter, while the government maintains business-as-usual relations with Israel and its military machine — including continued handouts of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to companies fundamental to the IDF’s slaughter.
The commercial media, too, has had to pretend to occasionally care about the routine butchery of civilians, but has maintained the fiction that the Netanyahu government is a normal, legitimate state actor, and steadily downplayed the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians (along with Islamophobic attacks here, which receive a fraction of the coverage of antisemitic vandalism and arson attacks).
That studied indifference was shown up by the wall-to-wall coverage of the Los Angeles fires over the past fortnight, which transfixed the media for days on end here as fires killed 25 people and destroyed 12,000 structures — a huge tragedy, to be sure, but trivial compared to the 40,000 to possibly 64,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza and the three thousand killed in Lebanon, and the at-least 70,000 structures destroyed or severely damaged by the IDF in Gaza.
The reason why the loss to natural disaster (abetted by the climate emergency) of 25 American and 12,000 buildings received 24/7 coverage, acres of commentary and extensive analysis, while the IDF’s killing of 40-60,000 Palestinians and destruction of 70,000 buildings received token reporting, is simple: the racism of Australia’s media. Americans are like us, usually white, Anglophone and with some elements of a shared culture, while Palestinians are non-white, usually Muslim, definitely “Other”. An American death toll is a tragedy; a Palestinian death toll is a statistic.
A ceasefire will bring welcome relief from having to maintain the slightest pretence otherwise, including a respite from the incessant pressure maintained by Israel-backed lobby groups on Australian media to support the Netanyahu government — a form of foreign interference that goes strangely unremarked.
Just don’t expect Palestinians, both living under Israeli siege and those living in the West, to forget this indifference to their slaughter, or the monstrous double standard in the West that it betrayed. They know first-hand what it’s like to experience Western hypocrisy, no matter how much we in the West hate to be reminded of it.
Have something to say about this article? Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
