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In two months, the genocide in Gaza will mark its two-year anniversary. Two years of schools, hospitals, shelters and breadlines being bombed. Two years of starvation and displacement. Two years of Gaza being razed. Israel has shown no signs of stopping, with Netanyahu intending to totally occupy the Gaza Strip. Thanks to the complicity of governments around the world, 1.8 million people in Gaza are now at risk of starvation. Israel’s blockade on Gaza is total – everything down to baby formula is blocked from entering. More Palestinians have died of malnutrition in the last two months than at any other point since the siege of Gaza began.
The true intent of Israel’s onslaught has been clear from the start. It was clear in 2023 when the then Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, said they were “fighting against human animals” as they imposed a total blockade on the Gaza Strip. It is even clearer today, with far right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently approving a controversial plan to rapidly expand settlements in the West Bank, explicitly stating it “definitively buries the idea of a Palestinian state, simply because there is nothing… and no-one to recognise”. It has always been about the ethnic cleansing and mass displacement of the Palestinian population.
Shamefully, only in the past few weeks has the Labor government begun to criticise Israel. This shift in rhetoric includes a plan for Australia to recognise a Palestinian state. This plan is a total diversion that aims to pacify the Palestine movement here. This gesture means absolutely nothing when Albanese and Labor refuse to do anything material to pressure Israel to stop their slaughter. For the past 22 months, Labor has approved weapon exports to Israel, including the supposedly “non-lethal” F-35 components produced here, and has slandered and attacked Australians demanding an end to the genocide.
The only reason why these atrocities haven’t passed us by silently is thanks to the furious resistance of ordinary people. Thousands of people have come out week after week for nearly two years to protest our government’s complicity. Students have protested, occupied, camped on university lawns and struck to oppose the genocide. It is our responsibility to continue the fight against the barbarity of Israel and the barbarity of the Albanese government who refuse to lift a finger to stop it.
Students for Palestine Australia and the National Union of Students (NUS) have launched a national campaign to condemn the government for their support of Israel. Mass student meetings will take place on major campuses across Australia to demand the government sanction Israel and cease all weapons trade, as well as demanding our universities cut their ties to weapons companies that help Israel commit their atrocities. This is a huge step forward for the student movement. We need to send a clear message to the government and to our universities: your words are worthless, we demand action. Students will not stand for the horrors in Gaza and the movement will not end until Palestine is free. That’s why we need every UQ student that supports Palestine to come to the student general meeting on 3 September to send a clear message that we will not be silent while our government supports a genocide.
Written by Jessica Abbo
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