Three Years of Genocide: Labor Has Seen Everything and Chosen Complicity

Israel began destroying Gaza in full view of the Australian Government. The bodies beneath the rubble, the orphaned children, the amputations, the razed hospitals, the engineered hunger and the cities erased from the map have been documented in real time. Labor knew from the beginning that Israel was killing a captive civilian population in Gaza and chose to shield it from political consequence.

For years, our community was told that influence meant building relationships, securing meetings and sitting at the table. It is astonishing that those relationships survived Labor’s refusal to name genocide, its obstruction of scrutiny and its honouring of Isaac Herzog, proving that access without changed decisions is not influence but containment.

To date, not a single relationship with any Labor politician has been able to induce a single specific word "genocide" from Labor, light up a single building with Palestinian colours, produce a single sanction against Israel itself, stop a single Australia-made military part from entering Israel, trigger a single investigation into returning IDF soldiers to Australia, or pass a single law for Gaza.

The "Reported" Number

More than 74,000 Palestinians have been reported killed and more than 175,000 injured since October 2023, with the true toll still concealed beneath buildings and unrecorded killings. UNICEF reports that at least 21,700 children had been killed by June 2026, while 45,000 had been injured and more than 11,000 were living with life-altering injuries.

The latest UN satellite assessment found 201,290 structures damaged, amounting to 82 per cent of every structure in Gaza; 134,422 were assessed as destroyed, while more than 328,000 housing units had been damaged. Gaza now holds an estimated 61 million tonnes of rubble, including human remains that families have still been unable to recover. Homes, schools, hospitals, roads, water systems, farmland, mosques, churches, universities and entire neighbourhoods were directly targeted by Israel. Not that the world needed confirmation, but a recent documentary by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor detailed how the Israeli army systematically and deliberately targeted and killed civilians in Gaza.

The supposed ceasefire did not end Israel’s assault or return Gaza to its people. By 30 September 2026, another 1,431 Palestinians had been killed and 5,026 injured since the ceasefire was announced in October 2025. Daily airstrikes continue, 65 per cent of Gaza’s land remains inaccessible and the surviving population is compressed into the remaining 35 per cent. The UN reports that 94 per cent of people still need urgent shelter assistance, while 65 per cent of households survive in tents and makeshift shelters. A ceasefire that permits continued killing, territorial control and obstruction of reconstruction has changed the vocabulary, not the reality Palestinians are forced to endure.

Labor rejected the measures that could impose a cost

Australia is bound by the Genocide Convention to prevent and punish genocide. Albanese’s refusal to name the crime has practical consequences: it shields defence exports, intelligence relationships and diplomatic protection from being tested against those duties.

That refusal by Labor to support any action that could assist Palestinians was made explicit on 17 September 2026, when Labor joined the Coalition to block a Senate inquiry into the Red Lines package. The proposed laws would stop arms exports where they risk enabling genocide, prevent Australian investments from supporting genocide or illegal settlements, prohibit trade originating in occupied territory and require Australian companies to identify and prevent their involvement in grave crimes. A Senate inquiry would not have enacted those laws; it would merely have examined them publicly, heard evidence and tested their consequences, yet Labor would not permit even that scrutiny.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong then declined to join Britain, France, Canada and other governments moving against trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Authority supported such action, yet Labor invoked practical difficulties and withdrew from the developing international effort. Israel’s ambassador welcomed Australia’s refusal. When the government’s restraint is celebrated by the state committing the dispossession, the beneficiary of that restraint is not difficult to identify.

Herzog turned complicity into official honour

If there was anyone left confused about Labor's position, Isaac Herzog’s visit should have removed any doubt. After declaring that “an entire nation” was responsible following 7 October 2023, and signing his name on missiles that would fall on children, Herzog was identified by a United Nations Commission of Inquiry as one of the Israeli leaders whose statements amounted to direct and public incitement to commit genocide. Amnesty International and Australian legal and community organisations demanded investigation rather than hospitality. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese invited him anyway, welcomed him at Parliament House and extended the dignity of Australian office to the head of a state that had reduced Gaza to rubble.

As Home Affairs Minister, Tony Burke was directly urged by Jewish organisations, Muslim bodies, legal advocates and members of his own party to refuse or cancel Herzog’s entry under the character provisions of the Migration Act. Those provisions allow the government to deny a visa when a person’s conduct or character makes their admission contrary to the public interest. He ignored those pleas. Herzog was granted a meeting with ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess. Burke later defended that meeting as part of the security partnerships Australia maintains with other states. The government had presented Herzog as a visitor coming to comfort grieving Jewish Australians, then quietly opened the door to Australia’s domestic intelligence leadership.

This record must carry a political cost

Palestinian history did not begin on October 7, 2023; that date came after nearly eight decades of Israeli dispossession, expulsion, occupation, apartheid and siege. The Albanese government erased that history from its statements, treated each Israeli atrocity against Palestinians as though it stood outside that history and preserved the relationships that allowed Israel to escape material consequence, while Palestinians paid for those choices in graves, amputations, orphans and ruins.

Australia must impose a comprehensive two-way arms embargo, prohibit settlement trade, apply meaningful sanctions against Israel, disclose defence permits and cooperation, end official protection for Israeli leaders and support investigation wherever Australian law permits it.

TMV will not answer Labor’s failure with a private meeting or a request to be heard. Political influence is not measured by whether ministers know community leaders by name, but by whether they know that protecting Israel will cost them votes and seats. The language of friendship and relationships does not shift politics or policies, except to keep a community subdued. The only real language they understand is the language of the vote, and they've never been threatened at the ballot box.