Every day I imagine what it must be like to live in a righteous place. Really, what must that be like?
Imagine we had leaders who proclaim with absolute clarity and certainty that Australia is a nation, is an international citizen, that will always do everything it can to act on its obligations in respect of the international instruments to which it is a signatory, such as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Or that we join wholeheartedly with the highest court in the world, the International Court of Justice, in upholding its findings concerning state actors that breach international law.
Imagine how you might feel if you could always look to Canberra with full confidence that our leaders, on both sides of the aisle, would always speak up for human rights and take action to ensure Australia’s voice is heard on the international stage, the way it was when we helped to bring down the South African apartheid regime.
I wonder how ordinary people feel in those countries whose leadership has stood for human rights and acted on their morals and obligations and not only called on Israel to stop its vicious assault on Gaza and the Palestinian people, and now the people of Lebanon, but acted on this. How might it feel to be a South African, knowing that your country has taken Israel to the International Court of Justice and made an unassailable case that Israel is committing genocide?
How would it feel to be a Malaysian, whose Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim has bothered to understand the history of Palestine and who has said recently that the US has abandoned morality in its complicity in the Gazan genocide?
How might it feel to be a citizen of Spain, Ireland or Norway, where the governments of those countries have at the very least now recognised Palestine as a state?
How must that feel?
I wonder every day.
Every day my gut lurches as I wake up and think, “what have they done while we’ve been sleeping? What will I find on my phone today?”
Every day I feel the desperation brought on by living in a country that denies it’s commitments and responsibilities in relation to what is right. That denies and demonises my voice and the thousands and thousands of us who march every week, who write letters every day, who meet together constantly to find ways that might mean our government will hear us.
Everyday, like so many of us, I feel my chest tighten and my temples throb as I listen to our Prime Minister, our Foreign Minister, our Opposition Leader, turn black into white, turn reality on its head and justify this genocide by declaring that Israel has a right to defend itself.
Every day I imagine what it must be like to live in a righteous place. Really, what must that be like?
Jeanie Lucas
Jeanie Lucas is a retired Adelaide Social Worker, a long time peace activist and the Secretary of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA).