Why I can’t bear the talking points: A mother’s response to Australia’s role in Gaza

External contributor piece by Rita Jabri Markwell

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In case you’ve only started paying closer attention to why Australians are angry about Gaza, and wondering what’s up with our leaders' talking points, yes, it’s painful. They’re not only out of touch, but they’re also doing crazy amounts of damage to Australian children.

Last week, Foreign Minister Penny Wong finally admitted what so many already knew — that Australia is supplying parts for the machines murdering Gaza. But don’t worry, we’re told, they’re only the “non-lethal” kind — the kind that help fighter jets find their targets, hold their course, and drop thousands of bombs on families already caged in by an occupier’s siege. As if death is only in the payload, and not in every bolt, wire, and bureaucratic signature that makes it possible. The Royal Australian Air Force facilitated the transfer of weapons parts to Israel, as reported by Declassified Australia.

Then on Sunday, 250,000 Australians marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. They were calling for sanctions. On Monday, the Prime Minister confirmed there would be no further targeted sanctions on Israeli individuals.

Australia has drawn a line — just not one that touches the Israeli Prime Minister, the IDF, the US weapons giants, or their decisions that have reduced Gaza to rubble, choked off aid, and pushed a people into an irreversible fate of slow, relentless suffering. Not only starving to death, but watching one’s children starve. That is, if your children are not being snipered in the head, chest and genitals while desperately trying to get slivers of food from the US/Israeli-run ‘killing fields’.

Albanese takes from Dutton’s playbook

Asked whether he agreed with Ed Husic’s assessment that political leaders had misread the strength of public feeling, the Prime Minister opted for familiar terrain.

“What’s important is that we recognise as well that Australians don’t want conflict brought here," he said. "They understand that Australia isn’t a participant in the process and that’s important as well.”

Set aside, for a moment, the strange disappearance of Australia as a “participant” in what I thought was every country’s job - upholding international law. What Albanese did here is a familiar rhetorical manoeuvre—much like Peter Dutton calling the Voice for Indigenous people “divisive.” Quietly framing those who seek equality, transparency, and accountability as dividing the nation.

“There will be no Palestine left to recognise”

Penny Wong continued to issue statements of concern this week. “There will be no Palestine left to recognise if the world does not act,” she warned. But the action, it seems, is limited to increasing aid — and continuing arms exports. Recognition of a Palestinian state is pencilled in for discussion at a meeting in September.

In a testy exchange on Monday’s 7:30 Report, Sarah Ferguson pressed Wong on whether the international community is failing to force Israel to allow aid into Gaza.

“As you know, we’re not the central player,” Wong offered.

“Is Israel using starvation as a weapon of war?” Ferguson asked.

“I think it is impossible to justify the withholding of aid from civilians,” Wong replied. But she declined to call it a war crime. Ferguson pressed again: “Does that make it a fact then that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war?”

Wong held her talking points.

Does Israel even want peace in Gaza?

“Well, you can't see into people’s hearts and minds, can you?” she said.

What’s your interpretation?

“Israel has a right to security… The only pathway, long-term, to peace and security is two states.”

But the international community — and Australia within it — appears to be waiting. For something. Possibly until there is “no Palestine left to recognise”.

When Ferguson raised the West Bank ‘settlements’, Wong returned to the limited suite of sanctions already imposed on “extremist settlers”. Ferguson noted, pointedly, “And yet it goes on…”

Wong persisted: “We have sanctioned those… because we want to preserve the possibility of a Palestinian state.”

That “possibility” appears to hinge on seven individuals.

Since October 7, 2023, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been murdered by Israeli in the West Bank, another part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Australia has sanctioned just seven Israeli individuals.

But the media remains fixated on recognition—because that’s exactly where the UK and Australian governments want the spotlight to stay. Yes, they’re coordinating to maybe recognise the Palestinian state. As a friend said to me, “They're trying to get ahead of the photographs of the rows of starved corpses that are going to come out now that it's nearly over.”

On Today, Karl Stefanovic asked what, exactly, would need to happen for that recognition of Palestine to occur.

“Well, [in] September, there will be a high-level leaders’ meeting at the UN,” Wong said.

Meanwhile, speaking on Tuesday to Radio National, Wong made a point to acknowledge a wrong that the Prime Minister had already acknowledged: “We believe it is a breach of international law to stop food being delivered, which is the decision Israel made in March.”

That was five months ago, yet no sanctions have been applied.

The blockade first began on October 9, 2023 when the defence minister publicly declared it, referring to Palestinians as “human animals”.

Human Rights Watch concluded that starvation was being used as a weapon of war in 2023. In May 2024, the ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan filed applications for arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister for using starvation as a weapon of war, and issued those arrest warrants in November last year.

The PM and Wong’s attempt to rewrite collective memory – in essence, restarting the clock, as if the evidence from before didn’t exist – shows a different kind of violence that our children are quick to pick up. ‘Why mum? Why are they pretending this started only in March?’ It’s the kind of behaviour that bullies use to cover their tracks.

Of course, the ABC did not push the point.

“What is the right thing to do here”

Yesterday, when asked about taking swift action, Defence Minister Richard Marles said:

“Fundamentally, this Government is thinking this through based on what is the right thing to do here – what’s the right principle... ”

The day before, when asked about reports that Israel’s Prime Minister was seeking cabinet support to “fully occupy Gaza” (which it is already doing and what they actually mean is “fully annex Gaza”), Marles couldn’t find it in himself to speak of international law:

“Perhaps I’ll be reluctant to speculate on what Israel may or may not do.”

On ABC Melbourne, journalist Ali Moore cut through the fog: “You may — as Penny Wong has said — have nothing to recognise.”

Still, Marles stuck with the message: “factors need to be balanced… fundamental principles… two-state solution…”

Moore: “But Israel currently doesn’t back two states.”

Marles: “Well, again, all we can do is reiterate where Australia stands…”

On Afternoon Briefing, Patricia Karvelas tried another angle: “You don’t need [hostages] returned before you can declare that you’re committed to statehood…”

But again: two-state solution, end to hostilities, hostages.

It was hard not to notice the similarities between how Marles addresses Gaza and how he responds on Indigenous affairs. When asked on the same day about children being treated “like animals” in NT prisons, Marles offered only, “We are very mindful of these issues, and we will work very closely with the Northern Territory Government in respect to all of them.”

I'm at a loss for words to describe that response.

250,000 marchers supported the government?

On Monday, Defence Minister Richard Marles took to suggesting that the people on the bridge were simply echoing the Government’s position: a ceasefire, an end to hostilities, and the return of hostages. A message he repeated at several press conferences. Not a single journalist challenged his attempt to rebrand the movement.

It’s just like John Howard saying that 150 000 people walked across the bridge two decades ago because they liked his take on “Practical Reconciliation” and not because they wanted him to say sorry.

Marles keeps going on loop:

“Israel has a right to defend itself… We need to see a return of the hostages… The terms in which Israel seeks to defend itself matter… history will judge that…”

On the same day, Minister for Defence Personnel Matt Keogh fronted ABC Perth. Asked if he was comfortable with the Prime Minister’s “not yet” stance on recognising Palestine, Keogh replied:

“We also need to make sure that we’re doing that in a way that respects Israel’s sovereignty… It has to be a situation where Palestine and the region support the continued existence of Israel…”

And there it is, again. The demand that Palestinians— without security, without protection—must pledge allegiance to their occupier’s safety, disarm themselves in the face of a genocidal state, and perform their humanity ‘just right’ before we even consider recognising it.

This discourse is disgustingly dehumanising.

Not a single journalist asked the obvious—not because they didn’t know the question, but because they already knew the answer.

We talk about social media bans and teaching our kids things like consent and respect, and don’t be a bystander, while speaking (or not speaking) about a whole people as if they have to die. And while applying the law would mean doing the basic decent thing to treat them with humanity, we won’t, because [insert talking points].

Our children have consumed it for months and months, and we will face the consequences for generations to come, not only in Gaza, but here.

For 669 days, as credible observers called what is unfolding in Gaza a genocide, the Australian Government has clung to the same cold lines in the face of feeble journalism. Those lines have done more than scrape against the public conscience; they’ve assaulted our humanity and left our children bereft.

That is what makes every act of activism a labour of love. It’s why I, as a mother and a lawyer, have poured myself into helping in whatever small way to draft the Red Lines package, which introduces three key bills of reform designed to hold arms companies accountable, divest from illegal settlements, and stop exports linked to war crimes. Despite the precious nights it has taken from my children. It’s why we have done what we can. Because they must know: we tried.

We tried with everything we had. Not only because we love the Palestinian people as our brothers and sisters in humanity. Not only because we honour every human life. Not only because we grieve for their lost children. But because we love our own.

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About the Author

Rita Jabri Markwell

Rita is a Muslim solicitor and policy strategist at Birchgrove Legal, working across not-for-profit, employment, and human rights law. A Lebanese-Anglo mix with family roots in Beirut and regional Australia, Rita grew up swimming near the Great Barrier Reef thanks to her lighthouse keeper uncle. She’s worked with Aboriginal and Stolen Generations advocates in and outside parliament, including on the National Apology. She’s celebrated legal wins taking on former senator Fraser Anning and X platform, and pioneered definitions of dehumanising material to protect all communities. Daughter of a lifelong activist and mother to social justice warriors, Rita loves creative projects, mentoring advocates—especially other mums of kids with disabilities—and dreams of becoming a deep diver someday, currently only in her head.

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Sources

https://declassifiedaus.org/2025/07/11/revealed-australia-has-exported-f-35-fighter-jet-parts-directly-to-israel/

https://www.lemkininstitute.com/single-post/israel-shooting-palestinian-teenage-boys-in-the-genitals-say-doctors-in-gaza

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-ordered-to-shoot-deliberately-at-unarmed-gazans-waiting-for-humanitarian-aid/00000197-ad8e-de01-a39f-ffbe33780000

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