Are Western governments complicit in the commission of war crimes in Gaza?

At a press conference on 28 May, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was asked whether Australia would join the UK, France and Canada in imposing sanctions on Israel for what they have called a “disproportionate” escalation of the war since the 7 October attacks and the continued “denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population” of Gaza. Albanese responded by stating, “we follow our own path and Australia determines our own foreign policy”. He went on to say, “unlike some of those countries, we don’t provide military assets to Israel or to that region so we’re in different circumstances”.

The prime minister’s response, however, was somewhat disingenuous. It is true that Australia does not export military hardware to Israel but, like the UK, France and Canada, it does export some component parts that are used in the maintenance of Israeli weapons systems. Just what those component parts are is difficult to know, since the weapons trade is surrounded by a certain degree of secrecy, but there are around 50 export permits that touch on defence components — including communications technology and parts for the Lockheed Martin F-35 strike fighter.

If one looks at the DFAT site on Israel, it would appear that all is more or less business as usual. Australian exports to Israel in 2024 included coal and electronic equipment, as well as small arms and munitions even though the Defence Department stated that “Australia has not supplied weapons or ammunition to Israel” since the conflict in Gaza began in 2023. 

The ABC revealed that, despite the government’s continued insistence that there have been no Australian defence exports to Israel since 7 October 2023, Australia has continued to import weapons technology from Israel and has made purchases worth millions of dollars from Israeli-owned defence companies Elbit and Rafael since the 7 October attacks. Furthermore, a number of Australian universities continue to maintain research collaborations with weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, which has had a long-standing relationship with Israel, supplying not only the F-35 fighter jet but also the Multiple Launch Rocket System.

There are two issues here that I believe are worthy of interrogation: 

• whether Australia should adopt a stronger ethical stance towards Israel with respect to the killing of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank;

• whether there is a legal responsibility on the part of Western governments to not knowingly aid and abet a country that is committing what international law institutions, legal theorists, genocide scholars and human rights groups deem to be war crimes.

Legal challenges to arms exports

In the UK, there is a debate about the extent to which, notwithstanding rhetoric to the contrary, the government continues to provide assistance to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). £100 million worth of military equipment has been approved for export to Israel — including spare parts for the F-35 fighter jet, components for both armed and surveillance drones, as well as training for Israeli military personnel. In France, according to a recent report compiled by a group of NGOs, the government has “regularly and continuously” delivered military equipment to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza. Similarly, in Canada, companies continued to sell arms and components to the IDF throughout 2024.

The Canadian government is now facing a legal challenge over its continued exports of military goods to Israel. The lawsuit alleges that Canada violated both international and domestic legal obligations by issuing permits authorising the export of arms to Israel. Similar lawsuits have been filed in other countries like the United States, Germany, France and the Netherlands. In the UK and Denmark, the courts have thrown out lawsuits attempting to ban the provision of arms to Israel.

This kind of lawsuit is unlikely if not impossible in Australia, given that the Attorney General has to consent to any legal proceedings regarding genocide or related atrocity crimes. An attempt to amend the Criminal Code Act in order to bypass the approval of the Attorney General failed in federal parliament last year.

A shift in attitude

The federal government’s response to the conflict in Gaza has been cautious, to say the least. In May, Australia joined 22 other nations in condemning Israel over its decision to allow only limited aid into Gaza, adding its voice to a joint statement also signed by the UK, Canada and New Zealand. This is one of a number of such statements calling for the cessation of hostilities in Gaza.

Indeed, there appears to have been shift in the government’s attitude over recent months as the world increasingly finds Israel’s behaviour in Gaza unacceptable. In an interview with Laura Tingle on 19 July, in what has been the strongest statement to date, the prime minister described the killing of Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza as “completely indefensible”.

But despite being critical of the situation surrounding access to humanitarian aid, Australia has not joined other Western allies in threatening to impose sanctions on Israel over the blockade of Gaza. The language used by Albanese has been diplomatic, and we do not know what efforts have been made behind the scenes. International pressure brought to bear on Netanyahu obliged him to resume limited aid on 18 May — even though this met with a howl of protests from right-wing politicians and groups in Israel who did not want aid to resume until a mechanism was in place that would circumvent Hamas.

Dehumanising rhetoric

However, on 11 June Australia did impose, along with the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Norway, targeted sanctions on two Israeli ministers — Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism Party, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of Jewish Power — for inciting violence against Palestinians. Their rhetoric is certainly extreme, if not genocidal.

As Minister for National Security, Ben-Gvir oversees the detention of Palestinians amid widespread allegations of starvation and torture. Smotrich recently declared that he would not allow “even a grain of wheat” to enter Gaza. On 6 May, he declared that Gaza would be “entirely destroyed” and its citizens forced to “leave in great numbers to third countries”. He has also stated that it may be “justified and moral” to starve Palestinians in Gaza. It appears to be a sentiment that many in Israel share.

This kind of dehumanising rhetoric, though hardly new, seems to have pervaded Netanyahu’s coalition government and is frequently voiced on television talk shows. The danger, of course, is that such language is often a precursor to genocide.

Recall that last year, the International Court of Justice made an interim ruling which confirmed that the people of Gaza have a “plausible” right not to be victims of genocide. International human rights organisations have concluded that the State of Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide. Most recently, two prominent Israeli historians of genocide — Omer Bartov and Amos Goldberg — expressed their belief that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. 

The complex vocabulary of atrocity

The term “genocide”, as scholars know only too well, is notoriously problematic. There are more than twenty-two definitions (and counting) used by scholars in the humanities and social sciences — which, if it does not highlight the lack of consensus in the field, certainly points to endemic conceptual difficulties. Proving incitement to genocide in a court of law is even more difficult. Part of the problem is the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which defines genocide as action carried out with an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. However, distinguishing between inciting genocide and inciting violence or racism can be difficult.

To be frank, I have never been particularly fond of the term. There are other more accurate descriptions of what has been taking place in Gaza, including: 

• “massacre” — the killing of unarmed civilians by armed forces, of which there have been a number in Gaza;

• “mass killing” — which political scientists use to denote the killing of 50,000 or more civilians over five years or less, which has certainly been the case in Gaza;

• “ethnic cleansing” — the forced displacement of civilians so that the territory is then freed to be taken over; we can see this taking place in the West Bank with a marked increase in settler violence against Palestinians since the start of the conflict, resulting in at least 870 Palestinians killed, including children, and more than 6,700 wounded in attacks by the Israeli army and settlers.

All of these atrocities can happen at the same time; one does not preclude the others. Politicians and journalists, however, have been reluctant to use the vocabulary of atrocity with which historians and social scientists are so familiar. I will return to this point below.

One can argue about whether genocide is happening in Gaza, but the debate at this point in time seems academic. What can be said without much hesitation is that “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” have been committed — on both sides of the conflict, yes, but the balance sheet is weighted heavily on the side of the Israelis. The conflict is profoundly asymmetrical, which is not to suggest that Hamas is an innocent party.

Nevertheless, far more Palestinian civilian lives have been lost due to what can legitimately characterised as blatant disregard for human life on the part of the IDF, despite its declarations to the contrary. The Israeli government has evidently used starvation and collective punishment as a weapon of war, while the IDF has committed massacres and has deliberately targeted the infrastructure of the Gaza strip — including homes, markets, schools and universities, mosques, hospitals and water networks in what appears to be an attempt to make continued living in Gaza untenable.