SAARI Editorial: Gaza, human rights & courage beyond abstaining

“An important lesson: the things you choose not to do matter as much as the things you choose to do. The real test of a person is the degree to which they are willing to nonconform to do the right thing.” Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking.

This article is about the current conflict in Gaza, which has gone on since 1400 Israelies were killed on 7 October and 200 hostages were taken by Hamas. Since then millions have been displaced and based on the latest numbers over 8,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, a third of them children. [Note: The Israeli military and US disputes these numbers. The Gaza's Health Ministry has provided a list of names of the dead, which has yet to be independently verified.]

120 countries voted in favour of the resolution, and 14 countries voted against including Israel and the United States. 45 others abstained, including Canada and Australia, who said the resolution did not go far enough to more explicitly condemn Hamas for its October 7 terrorist attack on Israel and demand the immediate release of hostages seized by the group.

Notably for South Asians Australians: Bangladesh, Pakistan, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka and New Zealand all voted in favour of the resolution. Fiji, Israel and the US voted against it.

India, Australia, the United Kingdom and Vanuatu all abstained.

If you’re South Asian and living in Australia or the UK, you live in a country that voted to do nothing. If you’re Indian, your country also voted to do nothing. If your roots are in another South Asian country they voted for a truce, while the country you live in didn’t.

So where does that leave us?

All over the news and social media, we are flooded with facts, activism, fake or biased news, emotional and empathic responses and virtue signalling.

But factually, what we are seeing is a perpetration of atrocities and alleged war crimes by the Israeli government,¹ which they deny, accusing Hamas of ‘crimes against humanity’ and barbarism:

• According to international law, Israel is an occupying force in the West Bank and Gaza.²

• 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced and cut off from essential food, fuel, water, electricity and medicine, with limited or no humanitarian aid.³

• UN experts have identified a “risk of genocide.” “The complete siege of Gaza coupled with unfeasible evacuation orders and forcible population transfers, is a violation of international humanitarian and criminal law. It is also unspeakably cruel,” they said.⁴

• Antisemitic and Islamophobic attacks and racism have both increased significantly since the war began.⁵

• India was one of the first countries to back Palestine decades ago, but has become strongly pro-Israel and has cracked down on pro-Palestinian support and shown an anti-Muslim bias.⁶ Indian fact-checking organisation Boom found that a significant amount of anti-Palestinian disinformation and fake news was coming from India.⁷

• Meta has apologised after inserting the word “terrorist” into the profile bios of some Palestinian Instagram users, in what the company says was a bug in auto-translation.⁸

• A recent Essential Report poll surveying over 1,200 people suggests 64% of Australians believe we should stay out of the Israel-Palestine conflict entirely.⁹ Former Australian Prime Ministers have penned a letter that offers a position of support for both Israeli and Palestinian victirms and acknowledges the impact of conflict on both sides;¹⁰ however this letter has been criticised in part because it was written in consultation with the Zionist Federation of Australia.¹¹

If we value human life and human rights, if we as a South Asian community – albeit with a tendency toward accommodation and the immigrant-notion of ‘not rocking the boat’ – remember the violent moments of our own history, from colonisation to Partition to terrorism and civil war, - then we need to ask ourselves this:

If we say nothing, if we do nothing, what does that say about who we are?

If we are all shaping the future for South Asians in Australia, shouldn’t we build a community here in line with the values that really matter? The values we’ve learned from our own history?

Values like life, courage, compassion, and human rights. Values that oppose violence and colonisation because generations of our families have lived through it.

Haven’t we all learned that oppressed and powerless people die first in conflict? That the powerful make choices in their own self-interest?

Haven’t we, as individuals, been called to petition, protest or journey towards better understanding of generational cycles of violence that perpetuate themselves?

Does the hate speech, the trolling, the fact we might take an opinion people disagree with make so many of us too afraid to speak, or to listen still with an open mind? Is that how we want to live?

Let’s not be swayed against calling out death and cruelty and suffering towards Palestinians because the politics require a more comfortable, more familiar neutrality or alignment with allied nation-states. Doing so does not excuse or validate the terrorist attacks by Hamas, and it is not antisemitic.¹² It is a recognition of large-scale human rights deprivation.

We should have the courage to say to Australia, to India, to the US and Israel’s government and to those who sit on the fence, in the equivalent of silence: they’ve got it wrong, and what we believe in is actively standing up for peace and human rights.