I used to think his ineptness (in my opinion)
on human rights issues was a combination of his personal/life
experience limitations plus receiving bad advice, but I now think it is - at least - partly his unflattering, but likely correct, view of the Australian electorate.
From that article:
“Anthony
Albanese has long grounded his approach to the fraught issues of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the belief that the principal desire of
the overwhelming number of Australian voters is that those tensions
should not be brought here.”
The article continues to describe how the terrible events of 7th October, 2023 (see https://www.britannica.com/event/October-7-attack, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=October_7_attacks&oldid=1335951055, https://www.timesofisrael.com/human-rights-watch-details-hundreds-of-war-crimes-by-hamas-led-terrorists-on-oct-7/, https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/07/17/october-7-crimes-against-humanity-war-crimes-hamas-led-groups, and https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/MDE1588032024ENGLISH.pdf) and the subsequent Israeli response (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gaza_war&oldid=1337351430 - and, regarding proportional self defence, see https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/calibrating-proportionality-and-self-defense-in-gaza, https://theconversation.com/can-israel-still-claim-self-defence-to-justify-its-gaza-war-257822, https://opiniojuris.org/2023/11/09/israels-war-in-gaza-is-not-a-valid-act-of-self-defence-in-international-law/, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2023/12/7-10-the-question-of-israels-right-to-self-defense-under-international-law/, and https://www.juancole.com/2024/03/dangerous-conflicts-geopolitics.html) made it clear that that notion was utterly absurd.
However, by continuing to hold to that view, the PM has shown:
- his shortcomings on human rights (also
shown by his failings on transphobia ... and the Queensland state
government is continuing to imperil the lives of trans kids without any
intervention from the federal government - not even a critical comment
that I can find);
and
- that he thinks
(b) that it is OK for those abhorrent views to continue.
Now, to be clear, the ICJ (which deals with matters between states [nations]):
There have been definitive findings on these matters by other, reputable organisations (e.g., https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds),
and my honest personal opinion is that Israel, to the horror of some Jewish people
within its borders and many outside, is committing genocide in Gaza,
and, to a perhaps less strong or less widespread horror, committing apartheid
in the Occupied West Bank - just as H___s and other organisations and
individuals committed crimes against humanity in Israel (against people of many nations, not only Israelis) on 7th October, 2023.
And, in terms of definitive matters, taking action under the Genocide Convention is NOT
optional ... although too many people, organisations, and nations have a
terrible history of trying to weasel out of doing so, which leads us
back to leadership.
By aligning
himself with populism, rather than compliance with Australia’s
obligations under international law, the PM is doing Australians no
favours. To take a different stance, however, would require education of
Australians on international legal matters - especially including
relatable commentary on WHY that is a good thing.(This sort of change goes beyond that mentioned in the article I linked to at the start of this post.)
As an example of the sort of comment that might be useful, what about:
“Ensuring
justice against those who commit human rights crimes elsewhere means
other nations will become safe places sooner, and that will reduce the
flow of refugees - from those places, as well as other places where
despots may be thinking about committing human rights abuses - more
assuredly and reliably than any other measure we could take.”
(Consider that LBJ’s war on poverty and civil rights actions in the 1960s may have been FAR more successful if the USA’s budget and political capital hadn’t been being bled dry by the war in Việt Nam. Also, the Rwandan genocide was part of a series of violent events/genocides: what if effectively stopping a previous genocide prevented it from happening? The eastern DRC wouldn’t have been destabilised, and hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive and the millions of internally displaced and refugee people would still be at home ... )
The
problem is, education of this type requires time for reflection/absorption, and proper debate (including responding to points on both sides, followed by more reflection/absorption - plus whatever time is needed for any emotional adjustments to worldview, grieving of lost worldviews, etc) - it cannot
be just started when a disaster has occurred, meaning it must be a part of
the government’s ongoing, active agenda, and ongoing, regular
communication, including responses to concerns, doubts, and differing
views.
That requires leadership - sustained, principled leadership ...
- Jordan occupied and later annexed the West Bank (I had known that Jordan and Egypt wanted to get as much of Palestinian land as they could), but later surrendered its much criticised annexation for a new Palestinian state;
- a peace treaty was agreed and enacted between Jordan and Israel, and, much as with the Oslo Accords, seemed to outsiders such as myself (read the link to see more information on the opposition/anger on all sides) to be going well - the King of Jordan was even working on a 30 year truce between H___s and Israel, when everything was undone by an Israeli assassination attempt.
In the course of trying to resolve that, apparently the then US President Bill Clinton described Netanyahu as an “impossible man” (see the Wikipedia article note 22) - which extends the time he was a problem further back than I had known by around a decade.
In “Is Violence Part of Resistance?: No River, No Flood” , public resistance historian Tad Stoermer says violence has been a part of historical political resistance, and the only time the violence always failed [as a part of political resistance] was assassination ...
I’ve also read a suggestion that the acts being revealed by the testimony and formal complaints of victims of the E_st__n network and, more recently, the released materials of the E_st__n files, constitute genocide.
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article III
The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
My
view is that what has been revealed clearly shows that at least II(a),
II(b), and likely other actions have been committed - and note that “intent to destroy, in whole or in part” (emphasis added) is crucial here.
This possibly has two parts:
- to subjugate those being targeted - children especially - into a
condition of sexual slavery, which it would probably be necessary to argue in court is
emotional, mental, and spiritual destruction leaving behind a physical
shell without the crucial essence that makes the human victims human; and
- to
kill those who they don't want for those abuses, or who cannot be
broken to those perversions - which is very clearly destruction of a
group "in part".
I’m
not a lawyer, and I would be interested in a suitably experienced legal
expert’s opinions on this, but I would expect being able to successfully
argue the first point above should be achievable (especially given the available victim testimonies), and the second is fairly clearly obvious, in my non-legal opinion.
It
might have been easier to address this, though, had the proposed
convention on crimes against humanity been in place, especially if it particularly included oppression of women and girls.
The
other issue that possibly needs to be addressed here is of the term
"group". The convention addresses acts against “a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group” - which, I’ve read (too long ago to try to track the book down),
apparently means that, strictly speaking, the Cambodian genocide wasn’t
a genocide as it was members of “the group” (Cambodians) committing
genocidal acts against other members of “the group” (Cambodians) - urban
vs rural, being one characterisation I’ve read.
However,
given the widespread use of the term Cambodian genocide, and the Lemkin
Institute’s finding of a transgenocide, I consider that at least public and likely expert opinion has gone beyond arbitrary limits on who the victims of a
genocide could be, although I don’t know if the law has caught up with
that.
From the point of view of
genuine justice, I consider referring to the acts as a genocide likely
to increase the emotional impact - especially if those trying to
deflect blame/responsibility had to specifically consider their parts in acts listed in
Article III (I’d like to see the response of some of these figures regarding conspiracy, incitement, and attempt), and might give some (corporate) journalists the motivation to grill abusers more effectively.
This
also leads in to the other idea I’ve thinking of writing about, which
is the endemic misogyny shown in some workplaces. Of the many such
incidents over the years, the one that particularly comes to mind of a
senior male staff member (with a history of problematic behaviour in a
range of gendered and other human rights areas, and a professed
admiration for the Koch brothers) who strutted across the office
floor loudly proclaiming it was "natural" and "normal" to him to refer
work matters to other males. It was the sort of loud mouthed rant that
silences quite a few women - particularly younger women. At the time, I
was already fighting against a few other incidents of discrimination, so
I didn't do anything - I was exhausted.
But overwhelm and exhaustion was itself part of the problem.
The world is a different place now - there are some laws that would have helped with that
(especially the positive duty requirements), that organisation is now a better place
(thanks to its DEI committee), and I am more capable than I was then, but the problem, I suspect, still exists - in far too many places, as shown by
the
testimony and formal complaints of victims of the E_st__n network and,
more recently, the released materials of the E_st__n files. .jpg)
