The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) backs Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s rejection of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s false equivalence of calls for Israel to abide by international law with antisemitism.
Foreign Minister Wong has made it clear that holding Israel accountable for its violations of international law is not only justified but essential for ensuring justice, peace, and human rights.
In her recent speech, Wong emphasised that Australia expected Israel to abide by international law, just as it expected Russia and China to.
In its genocide in Gaza – confirmed last week in a meticulously researched Amnesty International report – Israel has killed what renowned medical journal The Lancet estimated in July was more than 186,000 Palestinians, wounded more than 100,000 others, created the largest cohort of child amputees in history, manufactured starvation by blocking access to humanitarian aid, ethnically cleansed northern Gaza, and decimated infrastructure essential to life including residences, hospitals, schools, mosques, bakeries, farmland, and water, sanitation and electricity facilities.
It is replicating this brutality and entrenching its apartheid across the illegally occupied West Bank.
Demanding that Israel is held to account for these gross violations of international law is nothing more or less than a call for the protection of human life, rights and dignity.
We stand firm in supporting Wong’s statement that no nation, including Israel, is above the law.
Comments attributed to APAN President Nasser Mashni:
We thank Penny Wong for her principled statement holding Israel accountable to the same international legal standards as every other nation. Her stance reinforces the important truth that no nation is above international law.
Demanding an end to Israel’s genocide, manufactured starvation, collective punishment, illegal occupation, apartheid policies, and violence against the Palestinian people is not antisemitism – it’s an urgent call, rooted in the unshakeable principles of international law, to defend human dignity and uphold justice.
We must distinguish between legitimate demands for justice and accountability and dangerous attempts to silence criticism and intimidate those standing up for human rights.
And Australia’s foreign policy must be unwavering in its dedication to justice, not swayed by political pressure from a state that is clearly hellbent on annihilating the people of Palestine.