It’s time to stop just talking about the Gaza atrocities. It is time to do something about them.
Marches and demonstrations, posters and articles, are not going to make any impression on hard-boiled Zionists. If anything, they wallow in the pleasure of seeing their opponents mired in futile protest.
Something stronger is needed.
Perpetual demonstrations before offending embassies on the model of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was always an idea I liked. Governments are sensitive to how their embassies are treated.
But an even better idea is the formal breaking of diplomatic relations and the expulsion of all embassy and consulate staff.
Examples exist – Columbia, Bolivia, Nicaragua have all broken diplomatic relations with Israel. Breaking relations with a nation as a mark of protest is not unusual,
For much of the fifties and sixties, Canberra boasted broken relations with the Soviet Union over the Skripov spy affair.
But over Gaza we do nothing.
We should be ashamed of ourselves – Latino governments far removed from the Israeli problem have the courage to break diplomatic relations while we just plead impotence.
The Columbia Conference of 30 nations on 16 July this year called on all others to sever relations with Israel.
The Hague Group of eight nations from the Global South formed on 31 January this year “invites all states to take all possible actions and policies to end Israel’s occupation of the State of Palestine” and to “co-ordinate all legal and diplomatic measures against Israel’s violations of international law”.
It recently convened a 32-nation meeting to demand “suspension of all ties with Israel”.
And where was Canberra in all this activity? Nowhere.
The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.
Gregory Clark was the first postwar Australian diplomat trained in Chinese, with postings to Hong Kong, Moscow and the UN before retiring in protest against the Vietnam War. After PhD studies at the ANU he became Japan correspondent for The Australian. A spell in Canberra’s Prime Ministers department led to professorships at Tokyo’s Sophia University and emeritus president of Tama University, Tokyo, before becoming co-founder of the very successful English language Akita Kokusai Daigaku. He has now retired to Latin America (Peru) and Kiwi fruit growing in Boso peninsular south of Tokyo.
His works include ‘In Fear of China’ (1969) and several books in Japan on education and foreign policy.
He used to speak Chinese and Russian with fluency. He now speaks Japanese and Spanish.